Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race 2008

That time of year again, I've been broadcasting the primary race frequency and making recordings of the Radio Skeds for Position and Safety, hope you all enjoy and we'll see how the race goes :)

Radios and QTH Background
The primary race frequency 6516khz has been clear as bell since I've been testing my new setup at the Canberra QTH preparing for remote controlling the radio from Brisbane via internet.

Beside the normal bastard of a Shortwave Station that starts broadcasting on 6518khz from 2155 AEST until 0805 AEST the next morning I was fairly happy with the results.

However things went to custard sometime from Xmas-eve and Boxing Day morning, when I logged on to monitor the audio on 6516khz, I was getting blasted with a S2-S4 electrical RFI. Since I'm in Brisbane, I was unable to diagnose or locate the possible source of RFI, except to come to the conclusion that one of the bloody neighbours must have got a new present / device for xmas and has plugged it in and now causes +/- 500khz from 6500 to have a very annoying RFI. All other frequencies I've scanned on the Icom R75 are clear of this RFI noise.

I put up with it for the first day as the fleet when broadcasting could be fairly easily be heard over the RFI. However the next morning when preparing for the 0735 AEST sked, HF propagation between the S2H fleet and the Canberra QTH fell through the floor (and has remained that way through out the race so far!) and had to resort to the Sony ICF-SW7600GR Portable and the Brisbane Special homemade inverted V antenna. This gave me enough signal to monitor the race when the Canberra QTH was crap, and visa-versa Canberra QTH was perfect for the 4483khz frequency.


S2H Radio Schedules

20081226 20:05 Position Report - (Listen Here)

20081226 21:15 Yacht Georgia sinking - Pan Pan / Mayday

   Part 1 - 2008-12-26  21:13 AEST (~47mins 10 Mb) - (Click Here)
            (NB at 21:55 AEST Shorwave Station starts broadcasting on 6518 kHz, it a pain in the ARSE!!!! 
            and the station does not stop broadcasting till 0805 AEST following morning.  
             Not much I can do about it, got the R75 Filters and DSP tuned / configured as best 
             as I could to filter the station out.)

   Part 2 - 2008-12-26  22:00 AEST (~60mins 12 Mb) - (Click Here)

   Part 3 - 2008-12-26  23:00 AEST (~15mins 3 Mb) - (Click Here)

20081227 00:05 Safety Report - (Listen Here)

20081227 07:35 Position Report - No recordings, nothing heard from QTH Canberra except for the annoying interfering Shortwave Station broadcasting on 6518khz since 2100 to 0900, I was however able to hear them on the Sony Portable with a small hookup wire from hear in Brisbane, but was not able to setup any recording via the laptop in time. I'm, going to set up the Brisbane Special inverted V antenna and hook it up to Sony as a backup and get this recording issue sorted.

20081227 12:05 Weather Report - (Nothing of interest and HF was still fairly poor)

20081227 17:35 Position Report - Canberra QTH was a wash out after two afternoon storm came through the region / area (God I hope the house is ok, heard on the news this morning there was flash flooding)

20081228 00:05 Safety Report - Good signal, nothing of interest a few of the yachts that did not report position earlier came in nice and strong.

20081228 07:35 Position Report

   - Audio from Sony SW76000GR - Located at Brisbane - (Click Here)

   - Audio from Icom R75 - Located at Canberra - (Click Here)  

Regards
Mark