VK4GED RMS on HF bands in Queensland, Australia

Our monoband RMS is usually on the 40 metre band. We 'shadow' VK4DJC's RMS which is on 7050.5 kHz dial. There's 400 kilometres between us, so select whichever station gives best access to Winlink email from your location on that frequency.

Antenna-wise, we usually use a compact horizontal dipole on a rear balcony. The NW/SE radiation pattern suits most radioamateurs in Queensland who live along the east coast of northern Australia. The dipole is made up of two back-to-back Shark Hamstick mobile whips.

Sometimes the dipole comprises one standard length whip and one Shark mini (shorter) whip. The mini version fits easier on our balcony amongst the outdoor furniture. There seems to be about an S-point difference between the standard and mini antennas.

On request, to check propagation with your station, we can mount mobile whips on top of a vertical pole, providing omnidirectional Winlink signals on the 80, 40, 30, 20, 12 or 10 metre bands.

Our RMS's transmitter is a fan-cooled Xiegu G90 outputting 20 watts. The receiver preamp is on during daylight hours and off at night, and the AGC is set to Fast. The audio interface is a SignaLink USB box connected to a DreamQuest miniPC running RMS Trimode software on Windows 11.

The RMS settings are:
. Mode = VaraHF only.
. Session Timeout = 45 minutes, unregistered VARA connections limited to 30 minutes.
. Maximum Daily Usage = 150 minutes.
. Wide channel bandwidth = 2750 Hz, 500 Hz connections accepted.
. Morse ID = on.
. Service Codes available = PUBLIC (default), with EMCOMM, WICEN and VK4WICEN on request.
. Availability = H24, except when testing or for voice transmissions (check our VARA status on https://winlink.org/RMSChannels).

Once a week (on UTC Saturday at 2200Z) our RMS is used for Winlink check-in messages in parallel with the VK4 WICEN voice nets on the 20, 30 and 40 metre bands. Schedules and frequencies are on the VK4 WICEN/EmComms group page at https://groups.io/g/vk4-emcomms .

Hope to see you in the RMS logs. 73