On Australia’s Eastern Seaboard, our Dx Adventure Radio Club (DA-RC) is thrilled to welcome 43DA305 Karl into the group in late September, 2020.

A friendly and knowledgeable radio comms hobbyist, Karl (Pictured above left) is a licensed ham radio operator and keen 27 MHz DX Hunter who’s been involved in the hobby for more than 20 years.

43DA305 Karl resides in Brisbane (affectionately known as the River City), Australia’s third largest city and the capital of Queensland.

Hemmed in by the gorgeous sandy beaches of the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane is the perfect cultural antidote to a sun-and-surf overdose.

Popular tourist attractions here are museums which host some of Australia’s most cutting-edge exhibitions, diverse flora and fauna at many National Parks that also have waterfalls and glow-worm caves, wildlife places such as the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, lush Botanical Gardens, and — offshore — many of Australia’s most beautiful islands.

Karl’s city is rightly famous for its amazing WX that’s near perfect all year round, and its proximity to many of Queensland’s major tourist destinations has helped make it into a Mecca for visitors to Australia.

43DA305 Karl’s station consist of Icom 9700, Icom 7300, Kenwood 480SAT-HX and Stryker SR955HP transceivers, a Retevis RT82 dual band DMR radio, a number of old CB radios such as a Uniden President Washington, Pearce Simpson Super-Cheetah, and a range of high quality dxcessories.

Outside his home in the state of Queensland, a G5RV long wire, Benelec Half Wave, and a number of mobile Sirio antennas provide fantastic options for DX across multiple bands.

Like most DA-RC members across the globe, 43DA305 Karl’s interests within the hobby are diverse.

In addition to being a keen DX adventurist, his main passion is digi modes.

Some of these include digital mobile radio (DMR), D-STAR (Digital Smart Technologies) simplex which offers digital voice and data communication, P25 and others.

When he’s not playing around with digi-phenomena, chasing DX on ham or 27 MHz frequencies, or rag chewing with local mates up and down the SEQ coast, 43DA305 Karl enjoys spending many hours on the water.

He’s the proud owner of a 2008 Quintrex 4.2m boat and is a keen fisherman in local estuaries, chasing species such as bream, flathead and whiting with his dad Peter, also an avid CB radio operator.

Here, a Uniden Bearcat 980 AM/SSB radio in the cabin of his runabout is ideal for comms on the water as well!

A regular at the old broadwater car park days, 43DA305 Karl also loves motorsports and is riveted, in particular, with Japanese import cars.

“One of my old faves was a N13 Pulsar Hatch Rebook Edition packing a CA18DET Silvia engine and LSD 5 speed,” he recalls.

“This was later taken out and put into my N13 Nissan EXA….”

“I’ve also owned fifth generation BF and BG series Mazdas and 1.6L and 1.8L 4WD turbos…”

Keep a listen out for 43DA305 Karl’s dulcet tones when the propagation is in to the Pacific area – he’s QRV most days across the bands and is always keen to work international DX.

QSL INFO

“Will QSL First”