IKARA becomes live

Everything now lives under one roof, and the station in the paddock is on the air.

All of it now sits under ikara.vk1hf.com. The pages are reachable from the bar at the top of every screen — the station itself, the public statistics, and the admin pages behind a password.

The station is out in the field at Spring Range, and it is running. Call it limited production for the moment: live, but not yet everything it is meant to be.

The end state is a FLEX-8400 alongside two software defined receivers. As of today there is one SDR on site. The plan for this weekend is to get the second one in, and Mark, VK2KI, will be making some changes to the antennas at the same time.

Ideally the two receivers end up with an antenna each rather than sharing one — north–south and east–west — so they are hearing genuinely different things. That part is a joint project between Mark VK2KI and myself, VK1HF.

There is more to come, and a few things will change along the way. Once the site has proved itself, the FLEX-8400 goes in as well — and there will be an update here when it does.