On Saturday, 7th November 2009, Balint and I took some of our radio gear to the hill in Sydney Park to see what we could listen to.

We used a 12V car battery for power, a cheap Jaycar Inverter, two of Balint's receivers and a wide band scanner (25MHz to I think 2GHz).

For the antenna, Balint brought a 20m length of wire and a Benelec discone. The discone was connected to the scanner and we picked up Sydney airport with over +20dB on the s-meter (line of sight really helps!). We attached the 20m long wire in a slope with a 7m squid pole and we set our radios at the base, using cable ties to lash the pole to a park bench.

Instantly on powering up Balint's primary receiver it defaulted to 10.000MHz and we had the WWVH time signal coming in crystal clear (no pun intended) from Hawaii. It was Balint's first time hearing it and he was ecstatic - it was kind of my bread and butter from SWL when my father used to listen in. Within a few minutes we heard VK3LWB in Victoria talking with a second VK3 station who left the QSO just as we found them (the second VK3 was quite weak for us), and then we caught VK5PX in South Australia to join in. I was really hoping to hear a VK6 or ZL, but we only really heard CW contacts on 80m after that. We also spent time playing around with two receiving antenna tuners (including a Yaesu FRT-7700 with an in built antenna, which didn't perform as well as our 20m sloper, but I'm not surprised there).

The exciting part was tuning into what we thought was the "Cherry Ripe" numbers station. Sadly, we could not receive it, though we did hear a beep at just after 10pm AEDT (09:00 UTC) which possibly indicated the end of a transmission. We were perhaps a minute too late to tune into that particular band.

The things we learned for next time:

1. Use multiple radios on an antenna switch, that way we can be ready to move between two rigs at the drop of a hat.
2. Pack a small alarm clock to alert us when approaching the top of the hour.
3. Synchronise clocks with UTC (perhaps the 10MHz clock signal).
4. Use VFO memories so we're not wasting time punching the frequencies in.
5. Charge torch batteries so I'm not fumbling in a semi-lit area.
6. Have printouts of the frequencies required.
7. I think we should have placed two or three other lengths of wire at the top of the squid pole so we could have tried different receive antenna combinations simultaneously.
8. I don't not recall if we used an earth. Putting a stake in the ground is probably against a state or federal Parks & Wildlife Act, so we thought best not to risk it.
9. Bring a camera!

Sadly no pictures, it was dusk, and it was a picturesque scene, setting up the antenna with our silhouettes against the background of a golden orange and purple sunset on top of the hill, but we knew our camera phones could just not do it justice, so we didn't even bother to take a shot.

UPDATE: The beep we heard was probably not Cherry Ripe. We later discovered Cherry Ripe does not transmit during the weekends. It pays to read the transmission schedules!

UPDATE 2: It turns out the signal we heard is not the Cherry Ripe station, and we have no firm idea what it was.