| |
VK7AX > BCAST 13.12.22 07:33l 346 Lines 19593 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 14066_VK7AX
Read: DJ6UX GUEST
Subj: VK7 Amateur Radio News 11Dec22
Path: DB0FHN<DB0PM<OE2XZR<OE1XAB<HG8LXL<CX2SA<VK7AX
Sent: 221213/0242Z @:VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC #:14066 [Ulverstone] $:14066_VK7AX
From: VK7AX@VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
To : BCAST@WW
VK7 Amateur Radio News 11Dec22
Text edition:
--------------------------------
VK7 AMATEUR RADIO NEWS BROADCAST
FOR SUNDAY 11th December 2022
--------------------------------
Welcome to the VK7 Amateur Radio News and this was first broadcast on Sunday the 11th December 2022. At the mike of VK7WI this week is Peter, VK7PD.
On Sunday this broadcast goes out on repeaters all over VK7 and on digital radio - DMR Talk Group 5 and D-Star Reflector 91C by Clayton VK7ZCR.
We go out on medium and high frequency courtesy of the following rebroadcast stations:
On 1.862 MHz by Graham, VK7GS,
On 3.670 MHz by Garry, VK7JGD,
On 7.140 MHz by Dale, VK7DG,
On 14.130 MHz by Peter, VK7TPE and
On 28.525 MHz by Tony, VK7VKT.
We also go out on UHF CB Channel 15 thanks to Mark VK7FMAC in the Hobart area.
You can hear this broadcast again on Tuesday night at 8:00pm on repeaters VK7RAA in Northern VK7 and VK7RAD in Southern VK7.
--------------------------------
Contest News
WIA Spring VHF/UHF Field Day
Thanks to everyone who operated in the WIA Spring VHF/UHF field day.
Please remember that you have until midnight EAST, this Monday 12 December 2022 to upload your log at the web address on the email edition of this broadcast.
https://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/upload/
Checkout the WIA website for all the rules and other information.
https://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/vhfuhf/
73, Richard, VK7ZBX
--------------------------------
Statewide News
VK7 Centenary Celebration
As announced a few weeks ago we have confirmed that the centenary of organised Amateur Radio in Tasmania will be celebrated in June 2023.
We are putting out a call for anyone who would like to be involved in a group to plan, organise and deliver the Centenary activities.
Thanks to those who have already offered to help and if you are interested then please email vk7tw(at)wia.org.au.
73, Justin, VK7TW
--------------------------------
Thursday Night SSTV Nets
Another great net night that saw the following participants VK7s – OO, ZMS, JUF, PD, TW, WP and ZBX all sharing over thirty photos. There were various subjects like:
Start of the Festive Season with a Christmas tree and Santa weighing himself
Comedy from Tony Hancock, Mont Pythons Mr Creosote, The Young Ones and Red Dwarf
A VHF/UHF field day setup, activation at Bonners Hill and The Hex beam antenna
Transport - a DC3 aircraft with floats for water operation, a propeller and jet fighter together and a diesel Railcar
A diagram of possible solutions if you get into a difficult situation
Gates in a gate – ones that are recognised as electronic logic symbols
A burger that looks like the “leaning tower of pizza”
Sydney Harbour Bridge
The main theme was “I Like Traffic Lights”. From single arrays through a tree like massed structure to a small prototype board using single LEDs. Also lighting effects in fog and a woman comparing personal relationships to traffic lights
Remember Ken VK7KRJs and Steve VK7OOs fully automatic 24/7 monitoring site allows anyone who has sent an SSTV picture the ability to check them on their pages almost immediately, any time, both South and North Tasmania.
A reminder in Southern Tasmania, VK7RAF (146.650 -600kHz) can be used both locally and linked to VK7RJG by using different CTCSS tones. 123Hz for local Southern operation and 141.3Hz for linking RAF to VK7RJG (438.55 -7MHz).
We get underway from around 7:30pm.
https://vk7oo.tasme.com/vhfsstv
https://www.ntarc.net/blogs
https://sstv.vk7krj.com/scrolling%20web%20gallery.html
73 Andre VK7ZAB
--------------------------------
NEWS FROM THE NORTH WEST
North West Tasmania Amateur Radio Club
Bar B Que and Meeting
On the 3rd December, the club meeting was held at Legion Park which is on the banks off the Leven River near its mouth, it was a glorious summers day and idyllic conditions, with yacht races occurring from the nearby yacht club.
Before the meeting, we had a Bar B Que which allowed members to chat in a very pleasant environment.
At the meeting, members voted not to adjust the yearly membership fees.
We had local resident Mark attend the meeting, who wants to dab his toes into the world of amateur radio.
Mark had some great fact-finding discussions with the members attending.
It was also pleasing to have VK7PD from the North attend bearing gifts, delivering a projector screen donated by the Australian Plant Society Tas Northern group, and a data projector donated to the club by NTARC.
The next club meeting will be at our usual venue, the Scout hall, 73 Alexandra Road, Ulverstone on the 4th of February after the AGM on that day.
73, Eric VK7EV, News Officer
North West Tasmania Amateur Radio Club
--------------------------------
NEWS FROM THE NORTH
SOTA/WWFF PARKS GROUP
The Summits On The Air/World Wide Flora and Fauna parks group meets twice weekly – Mondays and Fridays 10.30AM till 12.00 at the Glebe Gardens Cafe, Henry Street, Launceston.
For more information contact Al on 0417 354 410.
73, Al, VK7AN
--------------------------------
Northern Tasmanian Amateur Radio Club Incorporated
www.ntarc.net
As I am now “firing” on a couple more cylinders with things not being as hazy as they were last week and as promised, we have an update of the clubs Technical Night from the previous week.
Lyonel VH7ZLB presented us with a magnificently assembled home project of his from last century. A standalone, crystal locked, weather satellite receiver. It has a full set of front panel controls including a decent sized signal strength meter. Going by the receivers four channel frequency selectors naming of NOAA Satellites 9 through to 12 and a few Meteor ones, it looks as though it would have been constructed in the early 90s as NOAA 9 was decommissioned in 1998. However there still seems to be one frequency shared with the currently operating NOAA 15 on 137.62MHz. The unit was assembled in a “Horwood Case”, any constructor worth his or her “salt” from that era treated these cases with reverence. To complete the level of impressiveness, all his front panel lettering was applied using the “Letraset” process. This was sheets of individual transferable letters that were rubbed over to transfer one letter at a time. This eventually made up every word and heading required! Some of us will appreciate the fact that he got them all level! Well done. It will be interesting to decode the audio output using some modern software and see the results of a NOAA 15 satellite pass. Worth a try one Technical Night when flight paths and times converge.
Ian VK7IG brought along his recently designed and constructed 11 element 1710 to 1880 MHz Yagi antenna. He used a commercial miniature multi-layer rectangular duct with removable cover as the Yagi boom. With the duct cover removed internal wiring can be easily achieved. Once the cover is reinstated the end result is an extremely rigid antenna boom. The elements were cut from 3mm solid brass rod and sourced from a well-known local brass foundry. Nice to see a project evolve from the formula and calculation stage through to completion. Above all it worked in the field and also returned very respectable frequency and matching plots. Nice job Ian.
While we are on the subject of home-made antennas, Peter VK7KPC brought in his recently arrived and constructed QuadraFiliar Helix antenna or QFH for short. QuadraFiliar meaning four threads or in antenna language four elements and in this case constructed in a helical orientation. This was an Internet purchased kit and included printed circuit board, connectors and element wire, the tricky part being the bending up of the four helical elements. Its intended purpose is to receive the high band higher resolution down linked images from NOAA and Meteor Weather Satellites in the 1.7 Ghz L band. With its omni directional characteristics it should be an excellent compromise as every over the horizon satellite pass is different. The next best thing to a fully tracking antenna system with its inherent complications.
All Peter needs now is a remoted Low Noise Amplifier to mount with the antenna and see what can be captured from the passing satellites. Another work in progress which hopefully will come to fruition next year.
From the images Peter and Phil, VK7ZPD have been posting on Discord they are getting some excellent quality images from both NOAA and Meteor satellites on the standard 137MHz band. Well worth the Discord channel perusal as some of the satellite weather map passes include Antarctic coastline.
Ross, VK7ALH came in with an example of what he has been repairing at the moment, an Invertec 170TPC Lincoln Electric DC TIG Inverter welder. This is a full function unit that runs from single phase household power, and comes in at 12Kg weight. It features a full function user-friendly control panel layout with graph and a numeric display that appears to make it easy to set all welding parameters. When I think back to the domestic unit that you un-locked a rod by turning a knob and pulled it in or out to vary the transformer spacing for weld current adjustment, also from memory it weighed the preverbal “ton”, these units certainly have come a long way.
Another item of interest was a main board from a Plasma Cutter that Ross was repairing. One feature that caught our attention and we recognised was a built-in “Spark Gap” that runs continuously when cutting and evidently at a frequency of 2MHz! This is one area that I feel we may need a deeper explanation one Wednesday Technical Night too. Thats a lot of spark energy to shield! Thank you Ross for bringing in your modern spark gap transmitter, HiHi
Equipment photos are available on the NTARC web site under “Blogs” for this broadcast date
Just a reminder, Stuart VK7FEAT has an assortment of electronic and radio paraphernalia set up in the main hall for sale. These items are from the deceased estate of Lyn Williams, VK7AJ. Most items are priced, those that are not can be considered as a gold coin donation. All proceeds are to the estate. There is one more Technical Night and morning tea to peruse these items this year.
Its that time of the year again - All club members should have received an e-mail with instructions on renewing their membership for 2023 by now. If you havent received the e-mail please e-mail the secretary with your updated contact details. For those that we dont have an e-mail address for, you should receive a letter and renewal form send via snail mail in the next couple of days.
UPCOMING EVENTS
End of Year Celebration - will be held on Tuesday the 13th of December at the Mowbray Hotel.
The last Club Technical night for this year will be - Wednesday 14th December. Held at the NTARC Club rooms, 7.30pm until late. Technical nights will be resuming in mid-January.
The last Coffee Morning for this year will be - Friday the 16th December in the NTARC Club rooms. Time is from 10am to noon and we look forward to seeing you all there. So why not pop in for the last time this year and join us for a cuppa and chat.
The last TestNet and TechNet for this year will be - Wednesday 21st December. TestNet/CW course on 3.580MHz from 7pm till 7.30pm….and a TechNet on 3.567MHz from 7.30pm till about 8.30pm. Your host for the evening will be Nic VK7WW. This is the last “formal” night, but who knows it might be worth a frequency check as amateurs have been known to just talk for the fun of it.
FINALLY - A reminder to all members that if you have any items of news you would like added to our weekly roundup, no matter how trivial, then please email them to the Secretary at the following address news(at)ntarc.net all items to be received no later than 5pm on the Friday prior to the Broadcast.
Thats all folks,
73 from Stefan, VK7ZSB, Secretary NTARC.
--------------------------------
NEWS FROM THE SOUTH
Radio and Electronics Association of Southern Tasmania
https://www.reast.asn.au/
https://www.facebook.com/reasttas/
https://www.youtube.com/reasthobart/
DATV Experimenter's Night
https://fb.me/e/2JoFedbKt
This coming Wednesday night we will be taking a detailed look at the WIA response to the ACMA Consultation on the Class Licence and High Power operation and we will be taking a look at the latest AR Magazine along with much more.
We intend to have DATV Experimenters nights throughout the Christmas and New Year break so, why not come up and see what we get up to.
We stream the nights on the REAST YouTube channel.
https://www.reast.asn.au/news-events/live-stream/
https://www.reast.asn.au/special-interest-groups/amateur-tv/
We go out on RF - DVB-T 7MHz Standard Definition on 445.5MHz. So, if you have a TV, Set-top box or USB DTV Dongle that you can tune and scan 445.5MHz and you can see the Queens Domain, then you have a good chance of receiving the DATV Experimenter's Night Signal. Look out for VK7OTC. We also stream the nights on the REAST YouTube channel.
https://www.reast.asn.au/news-events/live-stream/
https://www.reast.asn.au/special-interest-groups/amateur-tv/
https://www.youtube.com/c/ReastHobart/
73, Justin, VK7TW
--------------------------------
Satellite News
GreenCube Designated Italy-OSCAR 117 (IO-117)
On July 13, 2022, the GreenCube satellite was launched on a Vega-C launch vehicle from the Centre Spatial Guyanais in Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite project is managed by the S5Lab research team at Sapienza University of Rome, and involves ENEA (the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) and University of
Naples. The satellite carries environmental and thruster payloads and as well as a 70cm digipeater for amateur radio use.
At the request of the GreenCube teams, AMSAT hereby designates the satellite as Italy-OSCAR 117 (IO-117). We congratulate all the involved teams, thank them for their contribution to the amateur satellite community, and wish them continued success on this and future projects.
Sourced from the AMSAT News Service.
--------------------------------
Weak Signal Narrow Band Digital News
Release Candidate WSJT-X 2.6.0-rc5 now available
Dear WSJT-X Users,
We are pleased to announce that Release Candidate WSJT-X 2.6.0-rc5 is ready for download by beta testers. The list of changes since Release Candidate 4 is extensive. Be sure to read the Release Notes: https://physics.princeton.edu//pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt
Links for downloading WSJT-X 2.6.0-rc5 can be found on the WSJT-X Home Page. Scroll down to find "Candidate release: WSJT-X 2.6.0-rc5".
https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html
Installation files for Raspberry Pi are not yet available, but will be
posted as soon as possible.
We hope you will enjoy using this beta release of WSJT-X 2.6.0. As a beta tester you should report on your experiences using one of the relevant WSJT forums. Bugs should be reported by following instructions found here in the User Guide:
https://www.physics.princeton.edu//pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx-doc/wsjtx-main-2.6.0-rc5.html#_bug_reports
WSJT-X and MAP65 are licensed under the terms of Version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). Development of this software is a cooperative project to which many amateur radio operators have contributed.
If you use our code, please have the courtesy to let us know about it. If you find bugs or make improvements to the code, please report them to us in a timely fashion. Additional licensing details can be found at the link on the email edition of this broadcast. https://physics.princeton.edu//pulsar/k1jt/devel.html
73 from the WSJT Core Development Team
Joe, K1JT; Steve, K9AN; Nico, IV3NWV; Uwe, DG2YCB;
Sourced from the AMSAT News
--------------------------------
Regular VK7 gatherings and events over the coming months:
Regular gatherings:
Sewing Circle Net – Daily on 3.640 MHz commences at 5:00pm AEDST.
Statewide SSTV Net - held every Thursday night via the North/South Link on VK7RAF/VK7RJG from 7:30pm. In the North and North West - VK7RJG on 438.55 -7MHz and in the South - VK7RAF (146.650 -600kHz) CTCSS tone 141.3Hz to link RAF North-South.
State-wide – MICROWAVE QSO Party – following the Sunday broadcast call-back on 1296.15 MHz FM. One group in the greater Hobart area and another in the greater Launceston area.
Then North-south digital contacts on 1296.2MHz using Q65-60B.
Stations in the Launceston area transmitting on the odd minute. Southern stations on the even minute.
SOTA/WWFF Group – Meeting Mondays and Fridays 10.30-12.00 midday at Glebe Gardens Cafe, Henry St, Launceston.
NTARC – Last Friday coffee session for 2022 – 16th December - Rocherlea clubrooms Launceston from 10:00am
Last NTARC Technical Night for 2022 - Wednesday 14th December from 7:30pm in NTARC clubrooms
Last NTARC TestNet and TechNet for 2022 – Wednesday 21st December - TestNet/CW course on 3.580MHz from 7pm till 7.30pm….and a TechNet on 3.567MHz from 7.30pm till about 8.30pm
NW VK7 – Wednesday from 8:00pm local – NW Tassie Amateur Repeater Group Net on VK7RMD
NW VK7 - Thursday commencing at 8:30pm local) - N.W. Tassie 2m DX Net 144.190 USB (upper sideband).
REAST – WAGS – Wednesday Afternoon Group meet in the Queens Domain Clubrooms from 12 noon.
REAST – DATV Experimenters Nights from 7:30pm live in the club rooms also on DVBT RF and YouTube Streaming
CCARC - 28 January 2023 - SSTV nights from 7:30pm using VK7RMD 2m repeater on Mt Duncan on the 4th Monday in the Month.
Events:
NTARC - 13 December - End of Year Celebration at the family friendly Mowbray Hotel. It will be at 6pm for a 6:30 meal and let the Secretary know if you are coming.
VK7 - June 2023 - VK7 Amateur Radio Centenary
ALARA - November 2023 - ALARAMeet 2023 - Hobart Tasmania
--------------------------------
A reminder to those people rostered for next weeks broadcast:
Newsreader: VK7RI
Repeaters: REAST, NTARC and in the NW thanks to N W T A R C, West Coast Radio Group, Cradle Coast Radio Amateur Radio Club, VK7AX, and VK7DC
160m: VK7GS
80m: VK7DG
40m: VK7TPE
20m: VK7ALH
10m: VK7JGD
UHFCB15: VK7FMAC
DMR: Talk Group 5 and D-Star: Reflector 91C VK7ZCR
--------------------------------
You can hear this broadcast again on Tuesday night at 8:00pm on repeaters VK7RAA in Northern VK7 and VK7RAD in Southern VK7.
A huge thank you to all people and organisations that assisted with this broadcast.
--------------------------------
That concludes our VK7 Amateur Radio News Broadcast for this week.
You have been listening to or have just missed VK7WI. Next week the National WIA news can be heard at 0900 followed by the VK7 Amateur Radio News around 0930 hours.
Items for the broadcast can be emailed to vk7arnews(at)gmail.com
Further information about the broadcast can be found at the VK7 Amateur Radio News Groups.IO Group.
https://groups.io/g/vk7arnews
The deadline for items is 21:00 on Friday prior to the Sunday of the broadcast.
VK7WI is now closing but will reopen shortly for callbacks and relay reports. Callbacks will be taken on the frequency to which you are listening. Relay stations will use their own callsigns during the callback.
On behalf of the VK7 Amateur Radio News Team, 73 and stay safe from Peter, VK7PD.
--------------------------------------------------------------
(Posted to the packet network courtesy Tony VK7AX)
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
