Miena Hamfest

Sponsored by CHARCT in the thriving Central Highlands town of Miena will be the Biennial VK7 Central Highlands Hamfest.

What a fantastic day yesterday. The weather was great. And of course the venue was excellent as well.

Officially there was 156 people who attended included many XYLs and children.

There were some great raffle and door prizes that were donated by our wonderful sponsors who were:

• TTS Systems and Dave & Chloe,
• TET Emtron and Mark,
• P.K. Antennas and Peter,
• Active Electronics.

The prizes included a 12m HF Vertical, Charger Kit, 4:1 Balun, Digital Set Top boxes and Dipole Centres and many attendees went away very happy people.

There were many stands of pre-loved equipment including a stand manned by John VK1CL all the way from the ACT and all these stands were doing a brisk trade.

A big thank you to Marilyn VK7FMAZ and her band of merry caterers in the kitchen and the crew on the BBQs there were saveloys, hamburgers and snags which disappeared quickly during the day.

A big thank you to Dave VK7OB and all the members of the Central Highlands Amateur Radio Club of Tasmania who hosted the hamfest and organised the many many items that go into making the VK7 Hamfest a real success, which it certainly was yesterday.

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

REAST End of Year Celebrations

Our end of year quiet gathering at the Queen’s Domain clubrooms saw about 12 people at lunchtime and about 15 people at the evening session with the BBQ fired up each session.

At the evening BBQ we welcomed Leigh our recent successful Foundation Licence candidate and even got him into the hot seat in the DATV studio.

Justin VK7TW demonstrated the ease and portability of the VK7JJ squid pole antenna and also brought along his HPSDR which sparked some discussions between enjoying an amber liquid or two...HIHI.

Thanks to all who came along and anyone who has helped to make this a successful year at REAST.

73, and seasons greetings from the

(REAST Committee)

ACMA Presentation

The November presentation to REAST was given by David Hay and David Long from the Field Operations Section of the ACMA.

They covered in detail the many aspects that the Field Operations staff get involved in. This includes the management of complaints, HF monitoring at the Quoin Ridge facility, EMC/EMR compliance activities, they supporting major events like the grand prix, pylon racing, etc, it includes conducting technical investigations to support legal action and the Digital Switch-Over field surveys along with some interesting experiences and anecdotes.

A big thank you to Dave Hay and Dave Long for their time and presentation and providing an insight into some of the activities the ACMA undertake.

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

Grote Reber Museum and 3D Virtual Reality Cinema - 

The 16th October saw about 40 people and about 10 kids visit the Grote Reber Museum at the Mt Pleasant Radio Observatory at Cambridge.

The museum has many wonderful artifacts and information about amateur radio operator Grote Reber (SK) and his experiments mapping the Milky Way using HF from his square kilometre array about 5 miles North of Bothwell.

There are also radio astronomy displays and much information about what radio astronomy is used for.

After visiting the museum Dr Stefan Deiter took the visitors over the 26m Radio Astronomy Dish and described what that was used for and then took people through the control room for the large dish.

We then went back to the 3D Virtual Reality Cinema and experienced flying to Mars, the Sun, pulsars, black holes, and many astronomical phenomena.

Phil Watkins who is President of the Astronomical Society of Tasmania brought his 10inch Solar Telescopes and setup outside and we were able to see the two current sunspots when the clouds cleared. It was a little sobering when Phil described the size of these two specks in the view finder as each being the size of the earth!!!

A great big thank you to Karen Bradford and Dr Stefan Deiter, the curator of the museum and Phil Watkins who all made this visits a memorable one.

http://www.groterebermuseum.com.au/

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

A Trip to Macca (Macquarie Island)

Firstly it was great to see so many along for our presentation last Wednesday night especially Peter VK7KPC and Mike VK7MJ’s friend Kelvin.

We were treated to a great presentation by Warren VK7FEET who gave us a presentation with pictures on the big screen on his recent trip to Macquarie Island and back as part of the Antarctic Division support of the Pest Eradication program.

Warren started from the wharves in Hobart aboard the French Antarctic Research Vessel – L’Astrolabe and headed down to Macquarie Island over three days. Warren commented he was the sickest he has ever been and finally made use of the sea sickness tablets after way too many technicolour burps. Fortunately there were no pictures of this part of the trip....HIHI.

Upon arrival on Macca it was unloading time and the ex-army amphibious “Lark” vehicles were used to unload cargo the cargo is a well orchestrated marine dance.

It was then down to business with Warren acting as radio operator from the very well equipped radio room on Macquarie Island. Mainly marine VHF is used with repeaters along the island. The pictures hanging in the mess hall show all the wintering expeditioners from the Mawson 1911 support crew to the present day.

Warren then gave a tour around the facilities on the Island including many pictures of the friendly seal inhabitants and the four helicopter operation to spread baits over the island. Unfortunately the weather proved to be too much for the operation and it was postponed.

Warren then showed a series of pictures about how the Aurora Australis refuels the diesel tanks on Macca to fuel the generators. A four inch flexible pipe is floated out to the ship and compress air put through the pipe to ensure it is ready for the diesel. Approximately 200,000 litres was pumped into holding tanks over two days which supplies the Island for approximately a year. Once the pumping is finished the operation is reversed to clear the pipe and bring it back to the ship.

Warren was on Macca for a fortnight and then came back on the Aurora Australis to Hobart.

This was fascinating look at Tasmania’s most Southerly sub Antarctic island.

A great big thank you to Warren for the presentation.

The presentation was recorded and will be presented at a future ATV night.

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

International Space Station Contact with South Hobart Primary School

Friday afternoon (27 August) at about 4:43pm local was a contact with the International Space Station.

Ten students from South Hobart Primary School asked questions of Colonel Doug Wheelock KF5BOC on the ISS for the 9.5 minutes of the pass.

This telebridge contact was made with the amateur radio tracking station at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland USA by Dave Taylor who is K6DUE.

Media Release

Contact Report

Mercury Article - 28 August 2010 P.17

Audio Recording of Contact thanks to Graham Lawton G7EVY (5.6Mb)

VK7TW Interview with Michael Veitch on ABC Local radio (3.1Mb)

YouTube Video of the event

 

Remembrance Day Contest

VK7OTC operated for the 24 hours of the RD and a big thank you to all amateurs who helped out especially Thomas VK7NML who operated with Justin VK7TW for the full 24 hours plus setup and tear-down and Warren VK7FEET who operated for the best part of the 24 hours fitting in family duties throughout the time....on ya Warren. Thanks also to the many amateurs who dropped in throughout the night and day and operated.

And a great big thank you to all those amateurs we contacted especially Danny VK7HDM who operated for the 24 hours and gave VK7OTC many of the over 250 VHF/UHF contacts.

We made a good number of contacts on HF and VHF and above and had much fun doing it.

We even used a VK7BW portable 12m mast that supported the 6m/2m/70cm/23cm antennas and this proved very handy with good contacts being made from Bothwell to Woodbridge and everywhere in between.

VK7OTC has not been on the air as a club contest station from the Domain so, we have blown out the cobwebs ready for the National Field Day on 23^rd October...HIHI.

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

Show and Tell Night

The format of the night is a show and tell of homebrewed or home constructed/ assembled equipment.

We had a great roll-up to night.

Many interesting items made their way into the clubrooms and sparked much discussion and interest.

We started with Bob VK7ZL who demonstrated his regenerative and TRF valve receivers that he built. Bob also showed his homebrew attenuators that he has been using with his QRSS experiments and a HF receiving splitter using a toroid for two receivers on the same antenna.

This lead to a discussion about front panel lettering that sparked Martin VK7GN into action. Martin presented a technique for making professional looking front panel designs and techniques for mounting them on the box. Martin showed tow he had made and advantages of the techniques, this sparked much discussion.

Then we went onto Graham VK7ZGK’s two metre three stage class c power amplifier using PT4167B RF transistors that he build back in the UK in the 1970s.

Tom VK7TL then showed the group his experiments with Peltier devices to cool a instrument under test. Tom took the group through the issue that confront you when playing with these devices, including the need for substantial cooling to remove the heat. Tom achieved -8 degreesC in the demonstration.

Rex VK7MO then took the group through his portable 10GHz offset feed dish Az/El mounting issues and the issues he had on his recent trip around Australia making contacts and how he was aligning the dish using Sun noise, a GPS or peaking on available signals.

Justin VK7TW then took the group through his recently constructed portable Az/El mount that he has constructed from many recycled items. This leads to a demo of an simple device for helping solder SMT devices. Justin also showed an optical encoder and a 1250MHz PA created from Minikits kits.

Mike VK7MJ then took the group through his recently re-constructed Candlestick Microphone complete with new insert and two transistor preamp. Mike then showed the many optical test instruments both transmitters and receivers that he has built over many year to assist with his optical experiments.

We finished up with Warren VK7FEET who demonstrated his impressive four 115VAC fan bank with them all in series that he uses to draw the solder fumes away from the work bench. It is nice and quiet and provides a gentle breeze. The feet were provided by threaded rod and corks.

Following a final discussion about LED lighting the night finished off with the obligatory cup of tea and much more discussion!

A great night of sharing and ingenuity and thanks to all involved. I suspect we will be having another one of these nights in the future!

(73, Justin, VK7TW) 

Home Brew Construction Night

As a result of last Wednesday evenings event there are now 20 more optical transceivers in Southern Tasmania and even two on their way to VK5 for a science fair!

It was fantastic night with a full house of constructors all eager to get into building their transceivers. We even had a few guests along in young Sam who is Patrick VK7FPJB’s cousin and dare I say it ….. young Sean who came along with Ben VK7BEN.  

All the kits that were started on the night were finished and we got them all working and tested. Mike VK7MJ brought along his test transmitter and Justin VK7TW brought along his big optical transceiver to send and receive a signal along with a range of lenses both traditional and fresnel and reflectors to demonstrate how the lens or reflector provides gain and increases the distance that can be worked.  

From the feedback it was wonderful night and we will certainly be planning another for next year.

We will be putting all the details on the REAST website for anyone who would like to build and experiment with one of these optical transceivers.  

A great big thank you to all the others who came along and brought their soldering irons and tools for others to use and helped many of the constructors and especially Mike VK7MJ who came along with his test transmitter.

Thanks again to all who came along and made the night a great success.

At the August show and tell night I would like to see these transceivers mounted in boxes with lenses and long distances worked….HIHI.

The Kit Instructions can be found here.

The PCB design can be found here.

These have also been posted to the files section of the OpticalDX mailing list.

(73 Justin VK7TW)

REAST Hosts VK100WIA

Over the UTC days of 22^nd to 24^th June 2010 REAST activated the Centenary callsign VK100WIA from the historic REAST clubrooms.

Over the three days the operators made 415 contacts from all around the world using CW, PSK31, SSB, ATV and FM modes.

We setup three stations connected to three different HF antennas each with logging computers to log to the WIA website.

Some of the contact highlights were Antarctica on the Palmer Base, Russia, Costa Rica, Durban/South Africa, Japan, Spain and many others along with every state around VK.

Early on the Thursday morning Justin VK7TW was interviewed by Michael Veitch on 936 local Breakfast program and we have a recording of the interview (see below)

We had a good half dozen people turned up at the Domain who were interested in what they heard that morning.

There was also going to be a segment on ABC Stateline however given the changes in Canberra on Thursday this didn’t happen…HIHI.

Next week Justin will be interviewed by Chris Wisby on ABC local radio – Tasmania –  see below.

A great big thank you to all those amateurs who helped with the station including: VK7TW, VK7TBM, VK7RO, VK7FEET, VK7JGD, VK7ZGK, VK7FRRT, VK7FPJB and VK7HGO.

This was a great activation of the Centenary Station and a credit to the REAST Club.

Audio File of 936 Local Radio Interview with Chris Wisbey and VK7TW

Audio File of 936 Local Radio Interview with Michael Veitch and  VK7TW 

Amateur Radio Turns 100 - MEDIA RELEASE

Amateur Radio Background Info

WIA Background Info

Amateur Radio History Fact Sheet

More Info available on the WIA website

Amateur Radio & Telemedicine in Antarctica

Dr Graham Denyer VK7JN gave a great talk last Wednesday night about his experiences as a medical doctor based in Antarctica and his experiences operating an amateur radio station in the frozen continent. 

Graham has been an amateur for about 20 years although he joke he has been active for only about 2 of those years. He wintered at Davis base in 2006 and is now based in Kingston supporting the Doctors that are down at the three Australian bases.

Graham gave a short history of communications and medicine within Antarctica and the support models that are being employed by the Division. Telemedicine is developing and Graham used the example of the ultrasound machines and soon to be purchased updated xray machines that will make it much easier to get digital images for review back in Kingston.

This was a fascinating presentation and a big thank you to Graham for his time and thanks to Paul VK7PAH for organising.

The presentation was videoed for the ATV Library and will be available within the next few weeks.

(Justin, VK7TW)

WIA Centenary Annual General Meeting in Canberra

A Quick Précis

Firstly it was great to also see Reg VK7KK, XYL Annette and Rex VK7MO at the AGM weekend as the VK7 contingent.

The Friday night saw a great tour of the Black Mountain communications facility and then dinner in the revolving restaurant.

Black Mountain is a fantastic facility and a great demonstration of what you can do when you build a very impressive purpose built communications building.

Black Mountain is a 195.2m high tower consisting of five layers starting with TV and Radio layer, then the Mobile Phones, microwave, fibre and telecommunications layer. At the 58.5m level is the revolving restaurant which affords a commanding view over Canberra and revolves at a rate of once every 83 minutes. Above the restaurant are the observation decks then the tower.

The tour started in the television and radio transmitter halls. In both areas you are confronted by large copper and aluminium coaxial cables of at least 100mm in diametre that run from large powerful transmitters into combiners, filters, dummy loads and eventually head up the tower to the antenna. This is major plumbing! 

We then ventured upstairs to the mobile phones area and the microwave links, optic fibre equipment and the trunked radio services on 160 and 80MHz.

It was then up to the observation decks and down to the restaurant for a delicious meal whilst you slowly moved past Canberra.

The Saturday morning saw the official parts of the weekend with the WIA Centenary AGM and Open Forum. There were over 150 people at the AGM and it flowed smoothly under the guidance of President Michael Owen VK3KI.

Lunch was served and it was in to the afternoon of historically oriented talks which included early WIA records, formation of ALARA, early pioneers, experimental methods over the ages, ARISS history, broadcasting, and finishing with a talk by Justin VK7TW on modern communications technologies and the future.

Then about 200 people attended the Centenary Dinner. This was a highlight with 10 students from Trinity Christian School asking questions of Astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson KF5DBF. This was a fantastic public demonstration of the nature of our hobby. The keynote speaker at the dinner was given by the Patron of the Centenary – Dick Smith VK2DIK and this was very entertaining. There were many guests who came from all over the world including the IARU President, representatives from the ARRL, President of the Indian Amateur Radio, IARU regions 1, 2 & 3, NZART, Bugaria, Korea, JARL and many others who presented gifts and congratulated the WIA on reaching 100. It was a great night.

Justin VK7TW was up early Sunday morning to place a Geocoin in a nearby geocache and then attended the live broadcast by the WIA Directors on the VK100WIA weekend broadcast. Unfortunately the encoding and uploading took longer than anticipated however the broadcast was uploaded and available only 10 minutes late. It was great to get so much material from each WIA director on our National broadcast.

Later in the morning it was then off to Dick Smith’s property called the Bowylie Flying Club at Gundaroo which was about a 30 minute drive North from Canberra for the WIA Centenary BBQ.

Dick Smith has created a great “oldie worldy” feel to the flying club and the detail is phenomenal with even a past presidents board that includes the likes of Bert Hinkler, Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, Nancy Bird, Major Bigglesworth and Lester Brain. There are restored aircraft, engines, the flying club lounge and a replica of his Uncle’s amateur radio shack. There is a narrow gauge railway that runs around the property and a large hanger with the sign “Dick’s Toy Shed” proudly displayed on it.

As the Yaesu sponsored BBQ started four army helicopters flew in low and landed next to the air strip. These guys were flying from Sydney to Adelaide and were forced down due to bad weather and could not get into Canberra. There guys were invited to lunch and I don’t think could believe their luck. Not sure what they told their CO….HIHI. We talked with these guys whilst eating our delicious lunch.

After the BBQ Dick Smith then told the story of his solo round the world helicopter trip in 1983 and the dangerous trip from Japan to Alaska. He had to land on a container ship to refuel. It was a fantastic story and Dick is a great story teller. The Army Helicopter pilots were riveted to his every word.

A great big thank you was given to Dick Smith for opening up his property from all who attended and the day wound up around 4pm with people heading back home.

All in all this was a very successful and well attended weekend and great big thanks you to all who were involved with organising it.

Justin VK7TW has put together a photo montage of the weekend from all the photos he has take and this will be shown at the next REAST ATV Experimenter’s group night on Wednesday.

For further details take a look at the WIA website.

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

VK0IR Heard Island DXpedition Presentation

Our May presentation saw two presentations of the professional video presentation created by James Brookes, 9V1YC of the 1997 DXpedition to Heard Island. The presentations were projected on to the big screen and we had a great roll-up. The video had many references and some great archival film of the original Antarctic Division expeditions to Heard Island in the 1940 and 50s.

Called “Outpost at the Edge” it covered the whole DXpedition starting in the Reunion Islands and transporting using the French Antarctic vessel, setting up the operating tents and keeping antennas in the air, the operating, with over 80,000 contacts logged in 3 weeks and then the tear-down.

It was interesting during the afternoon screening as Ian Fletcher VK7IF came along and brought the book of the DXpedition and added a postscript to the film about his involvement when he was in the Spectrum Management Agency at the time and undertook an investigation of a complaint about the DXpedition operating out of band on 80m.

Harvey VK7HK added some great information about the earlier DXPeditions to Heard that both himself and Ron VK7RM were involved with and Harvey is digging out some archival film that may form the basis of a presentation at a future ATV night.

We also had Alan VK7KAJ along in the afternoon session and Alan told the group of his many trips to Heard Island and his impressions of the Island both positive and negative…HIHI.

It was great to see Tony VK7FGMH and Winston Henry VK7WH along to the evening session, it was great to see you along.

(Justin, VK7TW, REAST Presentations Office r)

REAST Hosts ANZAC Day WIA Broadcast

WICEN Capability Display and BBQ

Last Saturday WICEN Tasmania (South) members put on a great show and tell session of their capability in the Queen’s Domain compound.

Items included a 12m winch up trailer mounted tower, Roger VK7ARN’s fully equipped trailer with an array of radios, computers displaying APRS and position data and the trailer has it’s own tower.

Gary VK7JGD displayed his impressive portable HF and VHF operating position and car stabilised tower.

The WICEN tent housed a impressive display of many of the portable radio equipment cases that WICEN use that contain a complete radio set.

An of course not forgetting Chris VK7FCDW’s contribution to the day as the WICEN chef for our great BBQ lunch, thanks Chris.

If you are considering becoming involved in WICEN activities then I suggest you take a look at their very informative website and the link can be found on the email and internet editions.

http://tas.wicen.org.au/ 

There is a great presentation on the day on the WICEN website and the link can be found on the email and internet editions.

WICEN Website

There was steady interest shown during the day and thanks to the WICEN crew who came along and displayed their impressive equipment display.

(73, Justin, VK7TW)

Tour of ABC TV & Radio Studios Wrap-Up

A great big thank you to Jim Parish and Damien Styles (VK7HDS) who showed a large group through the ABC from top to bottom.

The current building started life in 1987 where it was built as a replacement radio studio. In the early 1990s television joined the building from Sandy Bay Rd with a focus on News and Current Affairs and TV was squeezed in to one of the large radio recording studios and is still there today.

The tour started in one of four radio studios and Jim described what was around us in the way of acoustically isolated studio complete with an acoustically tuned elements in the walls, multi-angled multiple glass windows which all provide an even acoustic environment through the studio.

There is very little “audio” actually in the studio. Even the microphone audio is digitised and fed into the digital audio stream along with control signals and it is not controlled by traditional audio controls but by digital control surfaces with all the audio switching, mixing, etc done in the control room.

One of the key features that is obvious from the start to end of the radio and TV chain is redundancy. Ever piece of equipment is at least duplicated and there are controls that seamlessly swap to the other one if one fails.

Jim described a day in the life of the “talent” radio or TV presenter and what they and their producers do to prepare their program and then put it to air. Annie Warburton was doing her evening program in a radio studio just down the hall and we could watch her through the window. It was fascinating.

Jim described the fancy new portable digital codecs that enable radio presenters like Peter Cundell to sit at home for his gardening program with a pair of headphones and microphone connected to the plain old telephone line and be speaking as if he was in the studio in Lonnie!

The music used is chosen by a National Music director and he chooses from a digital library of 1200 tracks and these are offered to the local presenters to maintain a similar feel to the radio no matter where you are listening to ABC radio throughout Australia. These music tracks are encoded and stored using BWF (Broadcast Wave File) which in Jim’s words has “gentle” compression and it can better survive its travel through many digital links, etc.

Jim also described the talk-back 7 second delay antics that presenters have to remember and go through when leading up to news segments, etc.

We then went into Radio Master Control where all radio signals, links and broadcasts are monitored with an impressive array of equipment. Any part of the control chain can be monitored to ensure a high quality signal is always ending up at the transmitter. An interesting device that features in the middle of the vast array of LCD screen was the phase monitor for FM stereo signals to ensure that the phase difference is sufficient to ensure that mono FM receivers actually receive a signal.

We then ventured into the TV studio which houses the ABC News and Stateline sets. This studio has acoustically adjustable walls, an array of lighting rigs and three remotely controlled cameras. During the News there are only three people in the studio – the newsreader, the autocue operator and the weather presenter. In the control room there are two people – the news director and the producer. Much of the program can be controlled remotely with the news program digitally stored and embedded coding controlling the vision mixers, cameras and audio mixing automatically.

Jim and Damien demonstrated the cameras that are being used by camera operators that store the video to memory cards which are handed to the Journalists who edit the video using special software using the time coded low resolution version then once it is a complete story the software applies the changes to the high resolution version that is uploaded into the news system for the News Director to sequence.

Damien then demonstrated how it is all sequenced together and ran a small portion of that evening news file to demonstrate how everything is automatically sequenced and happens in the studio, very impressive!

Jim described how the ABC uses the 23M/bit/second channel it has for all it’s services and how statistical multiplexing is used to ensure that there is relatively even demand from each service/channel wanting bandwidth. Jim also described the suitcase device that can be used by remote journalists to post video stories via NextG or satellite.

We then moved to the satellite room and Jim described the facilities that many of us see in the large dishes on the top of the ABC building and how the ABC uses these facilities.

Then it was out to the very impressive outside broadcast semi-trailer and the Newseye vehicle with impressive hoist-able microwave dish demonstrated by Damien.

It was off to the fibre room which contains the racks of multiplexers, modulators and fibre drivers to Mt Wellington and Mt Barrow.

We finished off in the UPS battery room which can continue to run critical pieces equipment whilst the generator is started and stabilised.

A great big thank you to Jim and Damien for their time and expertise in showing the group the ABC facility.

A DVD presentation of the pictures taken throughout the facility is being created for a future ATV night.

(Justin, VK7TW, REAST Presentations Officer)

VK7 EVENT

Receiving Antennas

Annual General Meeting