Sunday, 4 August 2013

Sunday 4th August 2013

Today was once again perfect weather at -28c and no wind and it was killing me sitting around and not being out somewhere enjoying it. I just wish I could head out on my own for a while but the fun police won’t have a part of that. So after a very relaxing morning I wandered down to the ham shack and decided to have another look at my sick radio. After messing about for a few hours I found a way to use SSB voice by using software to kill the PTT. It’s a bit rough and clunky, but it works and allows me to use phone once again so I am back in business.

The next thing I did was down load WSJT – HF and after I painstakingly set it up I made a few contacts and found it to be so much better and easier to use than the moon bounce version I had been using. Wow, so far so good, two down and one to go. I want to try and interface my Flex5K with the Yaesu Quadra FL-1000 amplifier. I down loaded a utility program called DDUtil that will output my Flex5k band data in BCD code on the PC parallel port to hopefully control the amplifier. It’s got potential, but I won’t know for sure till I make up a cable tomorrow and do a lot more playing around.

While I was messing about doing this I heard my close neighbour from Perth on the radio so I gave him a call and we had a chat for a while. After talking to Ken I had a chat with a bloke in Victoria but I had to cut it short as I was needing a drink and a feed as I had hardly eaten or drank anything all day.

I spent the rest of the evening working on my blog and answering more emails. Keldyn called and said there was a movie just about to start in the cinema so I wandered up to take a look. I was a Japanese horror movie and I lasted about ten minutes before walking out. I worked on my blog till very late into the evening. There was a lot of auroral activity going on outside when I crawled into bed but I was too tied to gear up and go outside to photograph them.
 
 
The new climbing wall taking shape in the green store
 
 
The JCB
 
 
A couple of cranes used for construction and resupply
Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous6 August 2013 at 04:17

    I was scratching about looking for stories and photo's of Tractors in the Antarctic for a forum that I am involved with ( AULRO member wrinklearthur ), and came across your blog.

    I'm not on air at the present, as I don't have any aerial's set up at my home -- poor excuse !
    But it's time to do so as I feel in the mood for some 80 metre fun.

    Now I have broken the ice ----- Sorry !

    Cheers Arthur Blackwell VK7KBA

    ReplyDelete
  2. Craig Hayhow7 August 2013 at 00:24

    Hi Arthur,

    What sort of tractors are you looking for?

    Regards,

    Craig
    VK0JJJ

    ReplyDelete
  3. Arthur Blackwell8 August 2013 at 00:30

    Hi Craig

    I have a thread running on AULRO, http://www.aulro.com/afvb/general-chat/179430-antarctica-tractors.html
    .
    Looking for a couple of stories and photo's of tractors being used at the present around the Antarctic continent, I have added a fair amount of information about Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary and now looking for more about tractors used in the time from then to the present day.

    I could include dozer's, grader's, forklift's and material handling machine's.

    Thanks for your enquiry.

    Cheers Arthur

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)