Following a tip from Hugo Matten I was trying to receive Charleville Radio VMC, Australia, transmitting weather fax messages on 13920 kHz for a while. Initially I didn’t succeed. On my suburban home QTH I’m very pleased with my Megaloop FX antenna on lower frequencies. However I am a bit worried that the performance in the higher frequency bands leaves room for improvement.
While camping I decided to test my new Boni Whip antenna in combination with the RSPdx. I purchased these specifically for camping trips. And on the first attempt I was lucky! Below you see one of the pictures I received, using HDSDR and MultiPSK. Australia is easily recognizable.
Weather report by FAX from Charleville Radio VMC, Australia
My reception on May 1st was awarded by Craig from Kordia with their beautiful eQSL card. Within in a day! Now I’m trying to catch Wiluna Radio… I got some signals, but not enough for a decent FAX image.
Charleville Wiluna Radio with DCS messages on 16804.5 kHz is a relatively easy catch. Two things are a little bit more complicated:
First problem: what was the station I was actually listening to? Australia is a big country. In the 80-ies, individual stations had dedicated callsigns. I received VIP (Perth), VIS (Sydney), VIM (Melbourne) etc. in CW. But like in many other countries everything is now centralized, and Charleville (east coast, near Brisbane) and Wiluna (west coast, near Carnarvon) operate under the callsign VIC (formerly the Carnarvon callsign if I’m right). Mind you, both Charleville and Wiluna are not even coastal towns. Bad news: this is probably not going to change anymore…
1988 OTS QSL received via VIP Perth Radio, showing all call signs in use in those days
Second problem: whom to write to? Again “modern times”. As far as I know RCC Australia falls under the responsibility of AMSA “Australian Maritime Safety Agency“. But my email to them was answered with “this is something for Kordia”. Kordia is a service provider in Australia. But when I searched the internet I learned that Kordia was changing to “Ventia”. From my own experience I know that such changes typically result in a change of email addresses etc… so I decided to send a physical letter to the RCC Canberra address. And here comes the good news: my letter ended up with Craig Bloom, Senior Communications Operator at what is still Kordia. Craig answered with a kind email and the beautiful VIC QSL card! Drop a comment if you want to receive the contactdetails as I don’t like to publish email addresses that are not part of public domain.
UPDATE: Craig confirmed that rebranding of Kordia is complete, but their part of the operation will continue as Kordia.
QSL Charville Wiluna Radio, RCC Australia VIC
BDXC : SWL 2262 PRe VERON : NL 14228 If you want to get in touch, just leave a message on one of my posts. Please note that I don't publish email addresses of verifiers which are not part of the public domain. So if you don't see the QSL address, just leave a message and I'll get back to you.
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