OPR: Ron Burchell
Grid: QG63KF
Rig: Yaesu FT-847
HF Antenna: GAP 20 Metre Mono.
HF ATU: MFJ-994BRT.
6M / VHF / UHF Antenna: Diamond V 2000
A very Simple Station that seems to work well.
First Call sign was VK2NEQ, then later that same year I passed the Intermediate Exam and moved on to VK2KBG and an Yaesu FT-980.
1994 - 2000 I became VNNV International Marine Mobile aboard A.Y. Sea-D whilst Sea-D circumnavigated the World.
Moved to Queensland in 2000 and my Call changed to VK4KBG.
I let my Licence expire for a number of years, then applied for a new licence in 2019 and was given the Call Sign VK4JE.
As you can see I have remained in-active for some years on the Amateur Air Waves.
I have 'Dusted' off the my Yaesu FT-847, upgraded my Antennas, purchased a CAT control cable and Digital Mode Interface and set about dragging my outdated knowledge upto date.
Made a NYE resolution in 2021 to make 2022 the year I mastered CW, check the log book entries below at the end of 2022, if there are plenty of CW contacts, I made it, if not!!
As part of getting the Station back up and running these modifacations were made to my Yaesu FT-847.
Retiring to town sounds a lot easier than done when it comes to Amateur Radio Antennas. However a bit of home work and luck provided a final result that is much better than expected. I decided to try to have a clean simple station that would work as many Bands as possible, however 20M is my main focus. I installed a GAP 20M Mono at ground level in the best position I could find on my small town block, which is far from the best position I would have chosen if I had more space. The antenna is 30M away from the Radio, I installed an MFJ-994BRT at the base of the GAP20 along with an Ugly Balun made up with 7M of LL400 coax wound on a 120mm PVC core. Surprisingly this provides a better that 1.3 to 1.00 SWR on 10 - 40 Metres. My VHF - UHF Antenna is a 3 Band V-2000 mounted on a TV Facia pole.
As the world moves from 'Wires' to 'Wireless' changes need to be made to keep things moving forward and EchoLink is no exception. Upon disconnecting the Landline and National Broadband Network and moving to a 4/5G
Cell Network, I needed to rethink my internet connections for EchoLink and Allstar. After reading about some limitations associated with using a free PUBLIC Proxy Server I decided to create my own Private Proxy,
this is how I did it.
1) Find a VPS Host, I went for the most reliable and affordable that I could find for around $1.00 per week VPSServer
2) I decided on Ubuntu 20.40 as the Operating System, purely because I use LinuxMint which is based on Ubuntu on my desktop.
3) I am used to using cPanel and DirectAdmin so I installed Webmin on the VPS, there are plenty of Tutorials on Webmin installation available.
4) This is the EchoLinkProxy instalation tutorial I used, when you have it all done, don't forget like I did to run java -jar EchoLinkProxy.jar
in your Terminal program to bring EchoLinkProxy on-line.
Currently the nature of the script requires a manual start-up if the server is Stopped, Restarted or something else goes wrong, I understand that Anthony may extend the Tutorial in the future to cover auto recorvery, which in my opinion would be good.
I now have a quality, reliable Echolink connection that does not rely on the generosity of others at a cost of less than $5.00AUD per month
By mistake I left the Radio powered up over night, next morning the FT-847 was 'alive'. I decided to remove the Original Battery and replace it with button battery cradle and new battery that was easy to replace as required. Works well and has not missed a beat.
After reading how others had resolved the issue I decided to drop the voltage to the fans from 14.5V to 11.6V with the view to reducing the fan noise level from F1-11 status to Dreamliner level. This has been achieved by connecting a number of IN4148 small signal diodes in series encasing them in shrink wrap tubing, cutting the positive lead to the fan, inserting the strip of doides and a Tempature switch.
The Tempature switches came in some clear plastic tubing which I have attached to the heat sink case with Araldite, now it is a pleasure to work with as the fans run quietly. During a recent 2 hour session of FT8 on 20M using 100 watts the Air Tempature being exhausted from the rear fan did not exceed 38C.
My Time Zone is +10