Tag: Australia

A sky full of satellites, musings on the lot of the YL and the ACMA engaging us in a consultation. Not a bad mix. Welcome to NewsWest, the Amateur Radio news programme for the VK6 call area and beyond. I’m Bob, VK6POP, the NewsWest producer this week, and the team is Andrew, Onno and Glynn

In this History of Amateur Radio edition of Newswest, we take a look at this time of the year in 1958, as revealed in the Amateur Radio magazine and newspapers of the day.

Lots of things happened in 1958. NASA was formed, the world was putting satellites into orbit. Sputnik, Explorer. Vanguard. Amateurs were hearing the satellites. The microchip was invented. Elvis is drafted. Kruschev becomes the premier of the USSR, and Charles de Gaulle becomes the Prime Minister of France.

Roy’s still absent, hopefully he’s recuperating, so we don’t have Helpline. Onno presents his weekly offering of Foundations of Amateur Radio. (more…)

We as radio amateurs log things. We log our contacts, we log our progress towards an award, we log how many different countries we’ve contacted, which stations we heard with WSPR, how many kilometres we managed per watt, which stations were in a net, what callsigns received a QSL card, what location we’re in when we made a contact. You get the point, we log things, many things and for many different reasons.

Here’s a log that I started last week.

An asset log.

You heard me, an asset log, a thing that logs what amateur radio stuff I have, when it came into my life, where it came from, what brand it is, what model, what the serial number is and if I spent money on it, how much money I spent. It shows things that I’ve loaned to other amateurs and it shows things that are on loan to me.

It started with a conversation about a silent key. That’s what we call radio amateurs who have died. The idea of a silent key is one that reminds us that everyone is unique, that every manual Morse code transmission has a (more…)

The Australian regulator ACMA is holding a public consultation on new approaches to amateur radio qualification arrangements
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Welcome to today’s NewsWest broadcast. It’s a pretty jam-packed 30 minutes.

Once again, I’m Glynn, VK6PAW, your lucky producer this week.

In this broadcast:

It’s our CLUB FOCUS week, and we’ll hear from clubs around VK6 including Ham College and the NCRG, and of course – what’s been going on at WA Amateur Radio news.

Onno talks about have the internet has revolutionised amateur radio over the past 20 years… and how analogue and digital can co-exist on repeaters.

We’ll point you to a great publication from Surrey, a little beyond the VK6 borders.

There’s a number of important AR notices and reminders, and we’ll put a call out to Roy’s helpline.

If you have questions or comments, feedback, good or bad, the address is newswest@vk6.net.

You’ll find links to resources on the vk6.net website where you’ll also find information on where to hear the news, where to download it, how to rebroadcast this news and how to register your callbacks. (more…)

The topic of how radio evolves and embraces available technology is one that describes the hobby itself. From spark-gap through AM, SSB and FM our community picked up or invented solutions to make communication possible. When the internet came along it too became a tool ripe for picking and in 1997 a connection between a radio and the internet was made with the Internet Radio Linking Project or IRLP when Dave VE7LTD, a student at the University of British Columbia, joined the UBC Amateur Radio Society. Using a radio, some hardware and a computer, you could send audio between radios across the internet.

Since then this field has exploded with D-STAR, Echolink, DMR, AllStar, Wires, CODEC2, System Fusion and Brandmeister.

At a glance they’re all the same thing, radio + internet = joy.

Looking closer there are two distinct kinds of internet radio contraptions, those where the radio is digital and those where it’s not. (more…)

Mike (VK4DX) is active as VK4DX/P from Russell Island, Southern Moreton Bay Islands OC-137, 1 to 3 Jun 2018.

Many of you will have read with concern reports regarding the ‘expulsion’ of members from the WIA
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To our knowledge, Summerland Amateur Radio Club conducted VK’s first net for new hams. (Under the catchy ‘moniker’ of F-TROOP.) Well in Canberra their Foundation of F net is attracting newbies far and wide
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How to find other Amateurs on Air

Where are all the Amateurs is a question that I am asked regularly by new entrants into our community. The journey most new amateurs go through and the one I followed starts with becoming interested, getting a license, buying a radio, setting it up and then turning on your radio. If you’re lucky you are at this point surrounded by other amateurs, hopefully in a club setting, or you have a friend nearby and you’re off and running.

The reality is likely that even after a successful first on-air adventure, you’ll be on your own in your shack asking yourself where everyone went.

I’ve talked in the past about picking the right day, for example, a Wednesday is likely to have less people on air than a Saturday, but that’s only part of the story.

One of the things that had never occurred to me until a while after I became an amateur is that listening is a really important way to find other amateurs.

Let’s start with some things that might not have occurred to you. (more…)

In this broadcast:
Are you new to the hobby of Amateur Radio? This week, Newswest welcomes newcomers to Amateur Radio. In this New hams edition of NewsWest, you’ll hear about new licenses granted to new and re-qualifying Amateurs, and words of wisdom and encouragement to New Hams, and a press release from the Radio Amateur Society of Australia. We also have our regular spots of Foundations of Amateur Radio and Roy’s Helpline. And more. There’s always more. (more…)

With computers becoming more and more ensconced within the confines of our radio shack the variety of information available is increasing regularly. The introduction of a waterfall display has dramatically simplified the process of detecting what the activity level is on a particular band.

If you’ve never seen a waterfall display, it’s often a real-time, or nearly real-time display of radio activity. Leaving aside the mechanics of how this comes about, or how much you see, generally it’s presented as a picture that changes over time.

In reality it’s a very compact way of showing a lot of information.

You can think of it as a chart, showing the horizontal axis as frequency, the vertical axis as time and the colour as signal strength. So as you look from left to right you’ll look at higher and higher frequencies. For example, the left side might be 7 MHz and the right side might be 7.3 MHz. Halfway along is 7.150 MHz.

Similarly, now, as in zero seconds ago is at the top of the chart and 1 minute ago is lower. Depending on how fast you’ve set it to update the whole screen might represent 10 seconds, 10 minutes or 10 hours of information, (more…)

VK Team will be active as VK9LI, from Lord Howe Island, IOTA OC – 004, 11 – 18 May 2018.
For the full article

VK5CE/6 Craig, VK5CE inform dxnews.com that he will be active as VK5CE/6 From Woody Island, IOTA OC – 170, East Lewis Island, IOTA OC – 199, Direction Island, IOTA OC – 140, Cheyne Island, IOTA OC – 193, St Peter Island, IOTA OC – 220.
For the full article

In this broadcast:
It’s HISTORY week – and we head back to 1974, and before.
To warm you up for your trip to the 2018 Gold Coast WIA extravaganza, Onno brings you a wrap of “WIA Convention #37”
Bob discusses “A funny thing happened in the shack the other night”
I’m shaking up a can of magic LPS spray
We have news of the Limited AOCP
…and to end history off, a round the world yacht race.

And… then there’s our regular segments including news from SOTA, WWFF and FreeDV.
We’ve got Roy’s Helpline, as well as a note from the Surrey Amateur Radio Club.

If you have questions or comments, feedback, good or bad, the address is newswest@vk6.net.

You’ll find links to resources on the vk6.net website where you’ll also find information on where to hear the news, where to download it, how to rebroadcast this news and how to register your callbacks. (more…)

Retiring WIA Vice President David Ford VK4MZ looks forward to a future where amateur radio is one of the fastest growing hobbies on the planet and Multi-operator contest stations are streamed live online via YouTube and Twitch  Read the Original Article

The other week I participated in a contest. This particular contest was on the 80m band, around 3.5 MHz. The contest itself, while worthy of a mention, the Harry Angel Memorial Sprint, runs for 106 minutes and commemorates every year of Harry’s life, at the time, the oldest radio amateur in Australia.

I made two contacts. Count ‘m and weep. Two.

So, you could do the thing that I might have done in a previous contest, smiled, thought, “”Wow, that’s not very many contacts.”” and got on with life. You’re free to do that, but I wouldn’t be talking about this today if I shared your view. In fact I’m sure that in my activities as a radio amateur I’ve managed to learn, and in some ways unlearn some things along the way.

In a previous contest I might have operated a club station, made contacts a plenty, added to the overall club score, added new countries and multipliers, had some good natured ribbing to go along with it and walked away with nothing to show for it on my own log. (more…)