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Water Bomber Arrives

Interesting what you see when you monitor the POCSAG pager networks.. I became aware of this large new DC-10 aircraft that will be used in Victoria this year to help with fire fighting.

I wonder why the government would do this, a DC-10 must cost a ton to run? I’m sure the Skycranes are not cheap either though.. but here’s the thing. The SkyCrane can drop 9,000 Ltrs of water in a hit then swoon off to the closest dam and fill up, quickly, and go drop another 9,000 ltrs again. It can fly quite low,  in pretty bad visibility and is very maneuverable. The DC-10 on the other hand can’t fly as slow, and I believe only down to 300ft, I would predict that because vis might be quite often bad and you need to be able to see what’s ahead of you the DC-10 might be limited at times.

Press says the DC-10 can be anywhere in the state within 1 hour and is based at Avalon airport.  I wonder, is it quicker to fly to a place, drop your 45,000 ltrs, fly back to base, land, fill up again then come back for a second run – Or is it more effective to have aircraft which can do 9,000 in a pinch, with forward logistics, dropping as and where needed, over and over and over. In 3 hours – how much can a skycrane do with water as opposed to the DC-10 ?

The government of course is challenged, damned i f they do and damned if they don’t – a real quandary. The DC-10 has huge voting power via media coverage, that can’t be understated. Just like everyone quoting ‘Elvis is here to save us’ if only they looked closely and realized that most of the time it’s not actually Elvis!?!?. Still, we like to believe, & the rock star value shines on.

What about crop dusters for this – a team of 3 or 4 should surely cost MUCH less than the Skycrane or DC-10. I just spoke to a crop duster, they can run 800-3500 Ltrs, depending on the size of the aircraft that’s an interesting factor into the total equation – and we could keep the $$ on shore – DC-10′s from California, SkyCranes from the US – where does that money go – not ultimately to the local greengrocer I’m sure.

Do go read this  very good article on the CFA website

All interesting I suppose, either way, from my mind good to see things happening – I guess I’m a sucker for the media like everyone else seems to be.. God Save me Elvis – Memphis, whoever you are.. :-)

73i

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January 28th, 2010 | Category: Scanning | Leave a comment

My Mobile Rig Setup

I’ve done a lot of research and a lot of thinking about what to have in my Mobile Rig and why and have now got myself to a situation where it’s a pretty damn good setup and works very well.  So I’ll share some thoughts here and if what I have learnt can be of some benefit to you then that’s all goodness.

You can see lots of pictures of my setup here

I Have..:

ICOM IC-706MkiiG – with DTMF Microphone for IRLP usage

HF : Icom AH-4 Tuner & 9Ft twin section modified Stainless Steel Whip

VHF/UHF : Diamond Tri band 2/70/6Mtr antenna

ICOM IC-2720H

Dual Band 2/70 Diamond atenna

Thoughts..:

The Icom IC-706 – I just love. It’s such a solid, compact and in comparison to other radio’s simple radio. In short, it’s powerful, feature rich and works bloody well. My only real criticism is the lack of Audio Voice Record and how it functions as a scanner. You can use it as a scanner but it doesn’t have all the normal stuff you’d expect from a pure ‘scanner’ as such. In the city however it will hold up against 50kW pager transmissions on 2Mtrs just half a Mhz away whereas others will fail!

The AH-4 Tuner – also I just love. It works a treat and is very fast with good tuning results. You can tune just about anything! Some tuners have a certain range of that they can tune but this thing seems to be able to tune pretty much anything.  I spent considerable time thinking and experimenting with the idea of using a tuner or going for something tuned like a Famparc or Terlin Antenna etc. I found that using tuned antenna meant you needed to stick to a reasonably narrow area of the band where they are tuned to, I like to go anywhere.

The one thing I don;t like about the AH-4 is the fact that the output post is where the radiating antenna starts. You can’t run Coax etc through your car to the antenna so you must mount it close to the actual antenna. This means you need to make sure you have it nice and watertight as well as well mounted in  a safe location.

I also love the ability to just press a button and hey presto, best tune in 1-3 seconds and you’re ready to TX.

See the pictures,  but I have the stainless whip cut in half with a joining section, that means I can easily put it into what I call ‘drive-thru’ mode – i.e. macca’s drive through etc. The whip when full 9ft is huge.. so it’s good that I can bring it down to a nice size for driving around town where looks/practicality outweighs on-air performance. When full 9ft is assembled I have found this is the best antenna I have owned for a mobile.

If I was going to go for anything else I would look at a Hi-Q antenna. But, they’re a bit dorky looking – in the nicest nerdy way.

The Hi-Q antenna are around $500-800 AUD .. whereas the AH-f and Whip is about say $400 AUD – and I think probably better. The AH-4 integrates very well, just press the tune button with the Hi-Q you have to manually tunes it, it’s quite a bit slower etc. I would love to be able to have both and check on air performance against each other.

The Icom IC-2720H – Well this is just s super radio. Two in one! Which I love. I find that it gets hammered by pagers etc so therefore is not a lot of use in the center of the CBD.  I have also found the RX to not be as sensitive as the IC-706MKiiG. But, having two independent radio’s in one of a op idea and all things considered it works pretty well. I do think the menu’s and software is a little over complicated.

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January 17th, 2010 | Category: Radio | 2 comments

D-Star anyone..?

A friend of mine (VK3VCS) said to me some time back, Maaate you have to go D-Star, it’s ‘the thing’ and so cool. Much better than IRLP, you can do Data, GPS, tracking etc, and there is a Node within eye sight of you!

I was sceptical. I said, what’s the point of doing digitized voice? Added complexity for no real gain, and, I have repeater linking and reflectors etc now with IRLP, which works well.

Plus I said – it’s very expensive and proprietary! – what-the? Doesn’t that go against the grain of amateur radio?

And so, he loaned me his IC-92AD. a very nice little handheld indeed. And, I proceeded to try out D-Star. I must say it wook me a while to get my head around. I was keen to try the whole repeater linking thing. Terry – VK3BMX kindly expedited my inter-repeater linking ability on the D-Star Oz network. I was now set to go.. I could like to the world – if I could just work out how?

I had a real good play with D-Star, enough to come to a pretty solid conclusion which ultimately killed my interest in buying a IC-2820H and an IC-92AD(which I had pretty much sold myself on buying).

Without boring you to absolute death, here are my reasons..:

  • Everyone sounds like a Robot; poor choice of codec
  • 4 second delay between transmissions – painful!
  • Hard to break in even with 4 sec gaps
  • The Node linking is confusing at best
  • It’s expensive as you need to have NEW icom radios
  • You can only talk to others on Icom Radios
  • The Data component of DStar is a not viable
  • It just adds little value to Ham Radio and is a major exercise in marketing hype – in reality the D-Star protocol is, in my opinion very ‘beta’ and not ready for production, even to amateur circles.

If you want someone to get onboard with D-Star, the best thing is to not let them try is like I did.

Quite sad as I really wanted to like it, but the pragmatist in me won out over the optimist.

<AR>

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January 17th, 2010 | Category: Radio | 2 comments
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