The Australian Antarctic Festival rolls around every two years and in 2024 REAST was asked if it would like to participate with a focus on radio in Antarctica.
https://www.mawsons-huts.org.au/2024-festival-program/
We jumped at the chance and thanks to Kim Briggs VK7KB and Justin Giles-Clark VK7TW we were able to source a chronology of ex-Antarctic radio equipment for the display.
AAF 2024 – REAST Stand
From the 1911-14 Mawson Expedition we had a spark transmitter / receiver thanks to Richard VK7RO and we had the output going out loud on an amplified speaker that caused people to jump when they heard it – the kids thought it sounded like a fart which got people laughing!
We moved to Collins gear from the 1940-50-60 with some great supplementary pictures from the Australian Antarctic Division.
Eddystone and Collins gear covered the 1960-70 and ICOM gear covered the 1970-1980s.
There was the Ionospheric Prediction Service Beacon on display (VK0MA) and an aviation Non Directional Beacon Antenna Tuning Unit both from Mawson Base.
The 1980-90s were covered by a Barrett 950 HF gear and the 2000s to the present day was covered by ANARESAT Satellite Technology pictures.
Mike Hawkins VK7DMH bought along his weather satellite receiving gear and we had weather satellite pictures coming through over the weekend.
There were five Arduino based Morse code decoder available for kids and parents to learn Morse code on and they were definitely the highlight of the weekend.
Morse Code AAF 2024
Those people who came along to the festival were able to learn and play with the very code that was being used to link Antarctic bases with the rest of the world in the past.
AAF 2024 – Morse Code
On the Sunday we also had a HF QRP station setup and live contacts were made with a range of stations including ALARA contest stations.
AAF 2024 – VK7WN Contact
A great weekend of promotion and celebration of Antarctica, radio technology throughout the ages and amateur radio.
A huge thank you to Kim Briggs VK7KB, Herman Westerhof VK7HW, Mike Hawkins VK7DMH, Warren Nicholas VK7WN who helped out making this weekend a success.
73, Justin, VK7TW