WICEN FEBEX2 exercise at VK2MB, 9-10 Jan 2021

The weekend of the 9th and 10th of January was WICEN’s FEBEX-2 communications exercise. A year since the catastrophic NSW bushfires, and with COVID locking down everything since, WICEN felt the need to get members active in sharpening their message passing skills, trying out any new portable gear, and experimenting with new modes.

It was also an opportunity for some of our club members to participate and give the clubroom a bit of use while staying within COVID guidelines.

For this exercise, we tried out VK2SKY’s recently-acquired Sotabeams Band Hopper IV (80/40/30/20) link dipole, instead of relying on the club’s fixed antennas. The antenna was fairly low, to allow testing NVIS (Near Vertical Incidence Skywave) communications around the Sydney area.

We also used a Raspberry Pi loaded with the JS8Call software. The message relay and store-and-forward capabilities proved very useful for passing long messages between stations. The mode performs well under weak signal conditions, even with low-powered portable stations. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go!

HF conditions were constrained on the weekend, with F2 Critical Frequencies barely high enough for 80m communications. foF2 is the frequency at which a signal aimed straight up will return to earth; this gives a good indication of how local NVIS communications will fare. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Space Weather Services provides a useful map that updates every 15 minutes. Here’s how things looked worldwide on Sunday morning: all of Australia was in the 3-4MHz range.

The event ran from midday Saturday (9th) to midday Sunday (10th), though most stations closed down from about 10pm to 6am. The net control station was at Little Bay in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, hence the need for reliable short-range HF comms.

As well as HF JS8Call, communications were on HF voice and VHF FM and DMR. (WICEN operates a DMR network on commercial channels, separate from the UHF Amateur DMR.)

At least two portable DMR repeaters were in operation, one at Dural and one at Kings Tableland in the Blue Mountains. Both provided reliable coverage around the Sydney basin and surrounding areas.

In the morning, Dominic VK2JNA dropped in with emergency caffeine supplies (cappucino for me) which helped the station get back on air. Thanks Dom!

Nick VK2FS and Zara VK2FZYP were also active out in the field. Hopefully we’ll have a report and pictures from them too.

WICEN debriefs are still underway, but a few lessons were learned and ideas to improve the next activation are being shared.

While setting up for the exercise, we also checked out Sajith’s Christmas present, a portable multiband HF vertical antenna. The antenna analyser gave it the thumbs up!

(More details to come, so check back again later).