Don’t think that because the Amateur TV experimenters group is having a break while waiting for a new studio to become available that things on a Wednesday night have slowed down. This past Wednesday saw a cracking display of activity at the club rooms.
Every Wednesday evening the REAST clubrooms are open for members to attend, being up their projects to work on, or just sit down and have a bit of chat about the week with friends.
Tom VK7NTK was busy tuning an analogue filter to boost frequencies in the 1000Hz – 1500Hz range. It is hoped that this board will help improve the attenuation issues being seen with the raspberry pi based IRLP node that is a whole tale in itself!
One of the bigger projects that Justin VK7TW has taken on this year is the replacement of the amateur beacon VK7RST, with a relocation and some significant improvements to the beacon signal. He brought in his progress to show everyone.
The picture to the right shows the beacon, which will have a GPS disciplined output and operate on 6m, 2m and 70cm bands. the new unit incorporates all three transmitters and power supply into one box and greatly reducing the required physical footprint of the infrastructure. When complete the new beacon will be be set up at a new location near snug with the current beacon located at Mt Nelson being decommissioned.
It’s also a pretty exciting time for Scott VK7LXX, with most of his parts arriving to complete his SatNOGs base station this week! The SatNOG is part of a DIY satellite base station network around the world and is an open source methodology. We’re really looking forward to seeing the end product here with full tracking receive station promising some fantastic results!
And speaking of satellite tracking, Justin is also continuing work on using an RTL-SDR in conjunction with with FT-817ND radio to provide full duplex audio when attempting amateur radio satellite contacts. Many amateur satellite people will tell you it is important to have full duplex audio because that is how you monitor your signal and audio quality when transmitting through the satellite!
Lastly, Martin VK7MA was out in the radio room once again proving that Morse code is anything but dead on the air, participating in the weekly CW communications net.
Does any of this interest you? If so why not drop by the REAST club rooms on top of the Queens Domain in Hobart any Wednesday evening from 6.30pm and come and find out why Wednesday nights are a great night out!