NAIDOC 2021

I acknowledge and respect the Wakka Wakka and Wulli Wulli people, the traditional owners of this land that I live, work and play on and I respect their cultures, their ancestors and their elders past and present and future.

New Host

Since moving to the boonies I have had to think about our internet situation quite a bit. We have gone from a reasonable NBN connection in the city to fixed wireless in the bush. While our general download speeds are ok, for some reason some of our traffic is either being limited or its just being routed poorly.

Same ISP but different internet technology and downloading server backups has gone from 5 Meg/s to 1/2 a Meg/s, try downloading 7Gig of data at that slow speed HAHAHA.

So anyway, its meant trying to find a better server host with a better pipeline into Australia or a host based in Australia. And after spending the morning speed testing a bunch of different hosts, i found one that is slightly better than the one I had.

So here we are, everything has been migrated over and the site is backup and running again and everyone is none the wiser.

HAHAHA.

VK2IO @ VKFF-2873

VK1CT @ VKFF-0856

James VK2TER @ VKFF-1361

FT8 on 15m

I have gone and done it now. Got out the laptop and a couple of cables and after waiting for forever while windows crashed and updated and was just a typical pain in the arse, I finally got it all working and with a flat battery and only putting out about 10w, made a single contact into the USA with NT9J as proof its working on the 15m band.

I only called CQ 4 times and worked the one station before putting the battery on the charger to top it back up. Next I will have to find where the power supply is and get it out and use it. I have power out in the sun room so its no problems to hook up, its just cold out there at night and on days like today when its overcast and raining.

One thing I know is, once i have some better antennas in the air, I should be able to do quite ok from here. No noise floor means I hear everything and I know that I am already putting out a better signal than i did at the old house. I would never have been spotted in the EU this early in the day and certainly not with the 30w i typically run on FT8, let alone the 10w im currently doing.

Its looking promising.

EDIT: Gave the battery 30mins on charger and had another go. Antenna seems to favor the USA, going to have to change its orientation and try again tomorrow and see if things are different. I do not think i have ever seen so many spots in the USA on 15m. Its a bit early for all the action on 40m. But the spot in Chile is promising.

Fireplace Bread

Now that I have plenty of time on my hands, I have been playing with high hydration break making. This took all day in prepping and just came out of the fireplace oven.

Good bread making is all about technique. So for this loaf I started with 500g flour, 350g yes grams of water, this gives about a 60% hydration ratio, a teaspoon of salt and the same of yeast. I weighed out everything and put it in the stand mixer and kneaded it for 5mins.

It was then left to rest for 30mins and transferred to large tupperware container for proving. Every hour i returned and stretched it out and folded it into 3, that went on for 6 hours, before it was shaped and placed in a rattan bread mold for the final proving and cooking in the fire at bloody hot degrees C.

Now i just need it to cool enough so that I can cut it open and see if i have nice air bubble formation. It should have some, but it really needs to be done overnight and be closer to 24hours before it would get nice big holes.