The January 2010 event was much more successful for me than the Spring field day about 6 weeks earlier.

This time Dale VK1DSH and I operated as a multiop station on 50, 144, 432, 1296, 2403 and 10368 MHz.

Successes:

• Dale made several contacts on 10 GHz with Andy VK2AES operating south east of Bungendore.
• Despite leaving the feed for the 2.4 GHz dish at home, we still made a contact with Andy on that band, using a “field day special” feed constructed onsite from a piece of wire and a N type socket connected to a piece of cable through the dish centre and attached to the normal feed hardware.  Signals S9 over the 70 or 80 km path.
• Several successful contacts with Dave VK2JDS near Bathurst on 1296 MHz. Some persistence was needed for the first contact, when conditions were not so good and we had to get our beam headings right.  More power at both ends would have been a help.
• Other than that, we had a fair contact rate on 144 with many throws to other bands.
• For this event I used one of Owen VK1OD’s Roger Beep boards.  I assembled the board on the previous weekend, mounting the board into a small box with the Icom mike plugging into a socket on the RB box, and mike output to the IC910 through a short section of shielded cable. I set the CW speed to 30 wpm and selected the K option.
• Despite some thunderstorm activity in the area, we didn’t have to shut down.

Activity was a little lower than in the past.  Chris VK2DO was away on a business trip and Matt VK2DAG was roving up and down the NSW coast and unfortunately we didn’t work him once. Our score was just over 2000 points, though, with the help of the additional microwave bands. We were grateful for Andy VK2AES’s efforts in going portable on both days and giving us contacts on all bands, in particular 2.4 and 10 GHz.

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