RaDAR – Ham radio sport

From a South African perspective.

Imagine each division in ZS will have a dedicated RTS (RaDAR Traffic station) for the four hour duration of a RaDAR Challenge. Let’s say HF only, 40m. A moving RaDAR station will call on a dedicated RTS frequency,
say for ZS1 7.085 MHz, “ZS1RTS ZS6BNE RaDAR Traffic”. No answer,
switch to 7.090 for ZS5. “ZS5RTS ZS6BNE RaDAR Traffic”.
ZS5 RTS station will reply, “ZS6BNE ZS5RTS Send”.
“ZS5RTS ZS6BNE Name Echo Delta Delta India Echo Grid Kilo Golf Three Four Alpha Charlie One Niner Foxtrot India”.
“ZS6BNE ZS5RTS Confirm grid Kilo Golf Three Four Alpha Charlie One Niner Foxtrot India”
If all OK, “ZS6BNE” (To sign out). In this case there is no two way exchange as the fixed RTS station operators and Grids are known. Once the moving RaDAR operator has five successful QSO’s he / she can move for redeployment elsewhere. There can however be a dedicated watering hole frequency for R2R (RaDAR to RaDAR) QSO’s if there is such a chance of a successful TWO way exchange between RaDAR operators. The first QSO having five bonus points. A QSO with a fixed RTS station counts as one point. …….. and so on.

Imagine country wide about forty hams taking part in the RADIO SPORT of RaDAR. Each chooses his own method vs distance of transport but he / she is free to change the method of transport at any time during the challenge – walk, bicycle, canoe, quad, SUV. They each have their individual routes planned, their tactic. Propagation will have minimal effect with the RTS stations distributed amongst each province / division. At the end of the four hour challenge period the logs are submitted to a website where the results are computed online giving the results. Prizes could be a year’s free SARL membership for the top contender etc. Naturally each contender has his / her own individual plan. Like Sid last weekend could have walked 1km faster than he could drive 6 km in his vehicle after the SOTA activation. Walking in that case could have been a better choice.

I was thinking it would be a little tough but really if out of the five QSO’s , one was incorrect then that whole deployment section of 5 contacts become NULL because only four out of the five could be counted ….. It actually makes sense to be that strict because in RaDAR, accuracy is worth more than a high QSO count. In my example way above where the RTS station confirms the grid it is quite important that he does that both stations do a final check for accuracy before continuing …..

Something to think about and any country in the world could take part in a similar way, anytime!

73 de Eddie ZS6BNE

Sid’s RaDAR Challenge – November 2020

Sid ZS5AYC and his wife Adele ZS5APT are regular SOTA activators and take part in all the RaDAR Challenges too. This is Sid’s report ……

Saturday morning for Adele and I started at 04:45, the summit we had decide to activate was between Kokstad and Underberg, we had deciding to first activate the summit ZS/KN-145 Belfast and then start the RaDAR challenge to coincide with the other RaDAR operators, this was the first time in South Africa that there would be so many RaDAR ops and we were excited to be part of the challenge.

We misjudged the time it would take to reach the summit and after hiking up we were 19 minutes behind schedule. After the first few minutes we realized that this would have to be our first RaDAR station, because the temperature was already 26°, we needed to keep operating because the chasers were piling up, within an hour we had made 17 contacts, with Eddie ZS6BNE being our first RaDAR to RaDAR contact.

I set off for my kilometre walk, but once we had descended our friends asked if we were still up on the summit, we then went back into the activation zone and set up to make contact with them, unfortunately they couldn’t hear us, so we broke station, and I continued with my walk, with Adele making her way down in the Toyota.

We quickly set up station and started calling, making 4 contacts, one with Denise (ZS1DS) who was participating in the Day of the YL.

As we had spent so much time activating the summt, we decided to drive 6km, big mistake ……. the trip down on the farm rode took us nearly an hour to reach the 6km distance, I would have walked the 1km faster.

After the 5 contacts we drove the next 6 kilometres but by the time we had set up we only had 5 minutes to make 5 contacts. We managed 3 contacts before our time was up.

All in all we had so much fun, making contact with three of the other RaDAR stations.

Looking forward to the RaDAR Challenge in April 2021.

My RaDAR Challenge – November 2020

I heard my friends Sid ZS5AYC and Adele ZS5APT were going to activate a SOTA summit and at the same time start their RaDAR Challenge as it was going to be a hot day. I was glad really as I wanted to support their SOTA effort but also wanted save my batteries and energy for the RaDAR Challenge we would have started later. I grabbed my kit and walked a circular route on my “E-Trail” deploying at grid KG34ac19fo.

I took the Icom IC-7200 for it’s first walk in the outdoors and I am its third owner! I was a little concerned but the weight was not really that bad in my back pack. I carried a Waeco battery pack in my hand. The pack contained two 7 A/Hr Gel Cells wired in parallel. I set up on the top of a rock.

I’m very happy with this radio. I usually get an answer to practically every call I make with it! I made five contacts from this location, two SSB and three CW. CW activity is on the rise in ZS and that is such good news!

I had an antenna breakage on one of my link insulators. Why it had to happen now was just another test. It’s my link antenna I use all the time and it has seen some rough storms in its lifetime and by the way all the bullet connectors are crimped and not soldered. Nothing wrong with a crimped connection by the looks of things. I had to walk back home to make a new insulator out of a piece of plastic sheeting.

I packed up and walked the circular route back to the starting point at my QTH and set up the antenna again making another five QSO’s. That was another three CW and two SSB QSO’s. That was all in all five R2R QSO’s!

Because there is a lot more CW activity in the RSA I opted to only do HF this time round and no satellite communications. I have found doing both can become quite distracting.

My friend Mike ZS6MSW, the driving force behind CW in ZS, made a video of his first RaDAR Challenge. Our R2R QSO and quick information exchange serves as a good example how RaDAR Challenge QSO’s should take place.

Thank you Mike ZS6MSW!

73 de Eddie ZS6BNE