Plenty of hands on deck to set up and staff the “Emergency Amateur Radio Station” booth!

(WIP – waiting for more photos and comments from others who were there.)

It was a rainy Saturday morning in the city as the University of Sydney held its annual Open Day, and hordes of potential students (and their parents) descended on Camperdown to check out the academic offerings.

Philip VK2APL, who is Professor of Computer Systems at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering (as if being an MWRS member weren’t impressive enough!) invited the club to set up a booth for the day, under the banner Emergency Amateur Radio Station.

A number of club members, and three of Philip’s PhD students*, turned out to set up the station and talk to visitors about it. Left-to-right in the photo above:

  • VK2JPK Philip
  • VK2APL Philip
  • Binglei*
  • VK2HX Chris
  • Jingyi*
  • Wenjie*
  • VK2SKY Richard
  • VK2ZYP Zara
  • VK2GMT Charlie
  • VK2MDP Michael
  • VK2TGO Geoff
  • VK2FS Nick
  • Caelan, son of VK2XE
  • VK2XE Greg

No actual emergencies occurred on the day, but we were able to explain to visitors the role that Amateur Radio can play in emergency situations, and other great things.

The team set up the station in the rain, erecting a multi-band HF vertical and a VHF/UHF vertical antenna. HF conditions were challenging, with many surrounding buildings, electrical interference etc. We did hear a couple of HF stations on 40m and 20m, but didn’t have any contacts. At least the rain cleared up by the afternoon!

Station setup: VHF/UHF antenna on left, HF vertical on the right

We did however do a little bit on the club 2m simplex frequency, including exchanging pictures between the two IC-705s on hand. Not as fun to listen to as old school analogue SSTV, but a nice piece of eye candy.

Demonstrating Icom’s “Picture Mode” (digital SSTV) on the IC-705.

PSK Reporter map

Speaking of eye candy, we add access to a decent size video monitor, on which we displayed the near real-time PSK Reporter Map of all digital signals sent/received from QF56 square (i.e. Sydney region), so we could discuss where our signals would be travelling on different bands.

Digital Image Transmission

WebSDR test

Pacific Island communications

One pair of visitors was particularly interested our portable radio setup, and took numerous photos. They said they were keen to improve radio communications on a number of Pacific islands, especially for when disasters occur. We discussed the December 2021 eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, and how it was unfortunate that at the time there was only one Amateur on the main island of Tonga, who was reportedly off-air due to equipment failure.

Last minute ISS demo (failed)

As luck would have it, or not, the International Space Station was due to fly over just before 3pm, the official end of the event. So, we tried an impromptu demo of the ISS cross-band repeater. According to the Heavens Above app, it operates with an uplink frequency of 145.825MHz, and downlink of 437.550MHz. Tried it. Result: total failure – nothing heard. A bit surprising given that the elevation on that pass was up to 53°. The reason why is further down…

I was talking but the ISS wasn’t listening!

Lessons for next time

(“next time” being the next time we interact with any non-members, not just the annual SydUni open day!)

  • Brief everyone on a list of questions to expect and topics to discuss, e.g.:
    • how HF signals propagate, depending on band and time of day – practice using PSK Reporter web site to illustrate
    • how VHF/UHF signals are short range, and how repeaters (including the one on ISS and internet linked repeaters) extend the range of handheld transmitters. DMR demo?
    • WebSDRs (nice eye candy via map.kiwisdr.com.
  • Update the flyer to answer common questions
  • Brief everyone to hand out flyers!
  • Weather permitting, a more open tent, and have a proper Amateur Radio teaser video and other eye candy running on the monitor. Laptop on a pedestal so display can be changed without crouching on the ground HI.
  • Before doing an impromptu ISS demo, check the ARISS status page first: as of four days ago, it’s 145.990MHz up (with a 67Hz CTCSS tone) and 437.800MHz down, not the frequencies listed on the Heavens Above app!
  • Hopefully the HF APRS project will be in a state to show off!
  • Ideally, speak from first-hand experience: “Radio Amateurs can do X” communicates less than, “as a Radio Amateur I do X”