Biography

greetings !
first licenced in 1976 and have kept vk3zzc ever since
retired after 40 years work in electrical and electronic and communication engineering.
last 20 years as network engineer at Monash University Australia, best university on earth !

early ham years was VHF and UHF exclusively. Was given an amazing IC7300 by a friend and is now fully active on all HF bands + 6 meters using FT8 digital mode exclusively
.
Voice modes and other baseband audio signals are denied to me due to extremely high local noise from all my neighbours' digital devices. Please forgive me if you have been hearing my modest 25 Watt signal and tried to reply without success. My high local noise level is to blame. I am also constrained by lack of larger antennas due to domestic reasons.

Favourite bands are upper HF, current best band is 30 meters at sunrise.
I do try 40 meters and lower with mediocre results due to lack of good antennas. Despite things being less than optimum I was surprised to discover 126 dxcc entities worked in my most recent log. How is this even possible ? It has only taken me 45 years !

Favourite ham activity is restoration of vintage Hewlett Packard test equipment and
construction of test and measurement equipment and FT8.

My historical webpage which I can no longer edit as I have retired from Monash U.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240331151934/https://users.monash.edu.au/~ralphk/
I will be constructing a new site for my ham stuff sometime "real soon now" . Looking for a good hosting provider.

Trying now to get my CW proficiency above zero words per minute. Studying Mathematics now. Why ??? "Because" !

Stop the Press ! Halt the Internet ! After nearly 50 years of hamming, I have had my very first international contact on 6 meters. Melbourne Australia to Japan. Thank you to JH0HZO for completing a complete FT8 exchange on the remarkable opening of 12 November 2025. My log book ran over with many JA-VK contacts over the two days of the X class solar flare and CME event. I now have a total of 3 DX countries on 6m!

Worked DXCCs:

Equipment

a very elderly Icom IC-730 that outputs 25 Watts on a good suuny day, whilst going downhill with the wind blowing behind me !

an assortment of very effective ATUs based on roller inductors and 1200pF broadcast tuning caps, that makes for effective operation with random wire antennas.

computers salvaged from dumpsters and roadsides for doing the FT8 decoding.

Nice collection of vintage HP and GenRad test equipment, whoose journey to landfill I have interupted, mostly aquired through dumpster diving.

antennas: a not very long , long-wire, a self standing 6 meter vertical monopole and a combined groundlplane for 6,10,12 meters which is loaded up with a nice ATU to barely work down to 17 meters ! not very nice at all ! That such an abomination even just barely works at 17 meters is a tribute to a good ATU. After some DX success with 6 meters, it is now time to construct a horizontal 2 element yagi. Antennas are only 8 meters above sea level, so its amazing that 6 meters works at all.

FT8 decoder is wsjtx running on both Linux and Doze. The Doze box will be retired soon.

A very nice antique brass telegraphic morse key, which I severely promise to use on the air when I feel brave enough.