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VK7AX > BCAST 07.03.20 23:45z 372 Lines 20708 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: VK7 Amateur Radio News 08Mar20
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Sent: 200307/2339Z @:VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC #:33292 [Ulverstone] $:33292_VK7AX
From: VK7AX@VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
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Text edition: VK7 AMATEUR RADIO NEWS BROADCAST
FOR MARCH 08 2020
(Note.. please remove spaces in email addresses before using)
VK7 AMATEUR RADIO NEWS BROADCAST
FOR SUNDAY 8th MARCH 2020
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Welcome to the VK7 Amateur Radio News for the 8th March 2020. This broadcast is brought to you by VK7WI, and read today by Peter, VK7PD.
This broadcast utilises repeaters around VK7 and the following HF rebroadcast stations:
On 3.670 MHz by Ross, VK7ALH
On 7.140 MHz by Peter, VK7TPE
On 14.130 MHz by Garry, VK7JGD
On 28.525 MHz by Tony, VK7VKT
On DMR Talk Group 5 and D-Star Reflector 091 by Clayton, VK7ZCR
This broadcast is repeated on Tuesday night at 8:00pm on
repeaters VK7RAA in the North and VK7RTC in the South.
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QSL NEWS
Report - from Herman VK7HW Manager of the WIA VK7 Inwards QSL Bureau
The current list of Cards held is included in the email version of the broadcast.
Please contact Herman if you can assist in delivery of any of the cards in your area.
If you have any questions re QSL cards, please contact Herman by email vk7bureau@wia.org.au
73, Herman, VK7HW, WIA Manager VK7 Inwards QSL Bureau
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AA, AAA, AB, AC, AL, AM, AP, AV
BA, BB, BM, BP
CC, CH, CJ, CV, CX
DD, DG, DK, DX
EK
FALX, FAZZ, FG, FGGT, FJFJ, FLAR, FOTR, FTAS
GA, GH, GL, GZ
HCH, HRW, HZ
IK, IS
JB, JJ, JJJ, JON, JP, JW
KBA, KD, KJ, KRJ, KT, KX
LAZ, LCW, LDH, LF, LH, LM, LW
MAG, MBD, MBP, MD(dm), ME, MHZ, MI, ML
NA, NC, NET, NMH, NRF, NSE, NTE, NWQ,
OK, OR, OT
PAL, PSJ, PW
RG
SV
TCE, TED, TK, TR, TU, TX
VAC, VAZ, VKV, VR, VZ
WA, WC, WT
XDM
YAD
ZA, ZCK, ZE, ZJJ, ZM, ZT, ZX, ZZ
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NEWS FROM THE NORTH WEST
CHAT and SHOW GROUP
Hello to our group.
On March 7th it will be the next group gathering at the Penguin Sports Centre, Ironcliffe Road, Penguin and it will commence at 2pm and is open to local members as well as visitors to our State if in Penguin on that day.
The aim of the group is to create interaction and friendship between operators, whether a club member anywhere or not, from any location. Just a meet and greet day with some other activities supplied by group members. So, if you have anything you would like to show, or you have made or collected something, bring it along, or, if there is a subject you would like to discuss, come along and join us.
I do ask for a small offering of food for afternoon tea from every one and I provide tea and coffee.
So, drop in any time from 2pm until 5pm, though getting there for the start will ensure you are less likely to miss any talks given. The doors do remain open until 6pm if necessary, but drop in until 5 is so that any late arrivals have time to chat.
Cheers from Shirl VK7HSC
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News from the North
SOTA and WWFF Parks and Reserves Group
Meeting times are from 10:30am on Monday and Friday At Glebe Gardens Cafe, 166 Henry St, Launceston.
For more details contact Al on Mobile: 0417 354 410.
(73, Al, VK7AN)
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Northern Tasmanian Amateur Radio Club Incorporated
www.ntarc.net
As mentioned last week, we commence today with a run down on the shack clearance and deceased estate auction held at the clubrooms last Saturday the 29th.
A good attendance on the day saw our main hall engulfed in goodies spread over numerous tables, all nicely numbered and ready for our Auctioneer Nic VK7BEE.
It was obvious from the results that many had perused the items well and truly over the many viewing days prior to the auction and had chosen their preferred lots. Bidding reached record highs for a number of items while others went at minimal amounts. Such seems to be the nature of auctions in general, with some obtaining great bargains while others may have gotten caught up in the excitement and bid more than they had intended. All seemed to be having a great time though, helped along by the humour and continuous banter of Auctioneer Nic.
Continuous tea, coffee and biscuits was available to attendees for a gold coin donation and this part of the auction was also enjoyed by many. One attendee was overheard to express the wish that we had thought about putting on a sausage sizzle for the occasion. A great idea which simply hadn't occurred to us. We will keep that in mind for the next auction. Yes, we are planning another but need time for our setting-up crew to recover from this one. Overall the concensus was that the day had been a great success.
Technical sessions - as usual, with these events continuing, we will hand over now to Idris VK7ZIR to give you a rundown of happenings on last Wednesday 4th March;
This evening's presentation was from Trevor VK7TB, showing us the progress he had made in the design and construction of an RF amplifier to drive his dual magnetic loop antenna. The heart of the amplifier is a Russian made power triode, originally used in military applications and now available from on-line suppliers at very attractive prices. Trevor compared the material properties of the Russian valve against a standard broadcast power triode, the major difference being a ceramic envelope as opposed to glass, and its superior electrical gain characteristics. There are no pins as well, the connections facilitated by concentric electrode rings, further emphasising the rugged construction.
The amplifier components were assembled onto an aluminium platform for the testing phase. The power supply consisted of a large toroid transformer with extra windings, bridge rectifiers and smoothing capacitors. High tension is generated by a Cockcroft-Walton multiplier. Small PCB modules took care of voltage regulation and a timer for sequencing. This supplied a soft start period as well as an interval for filament warm-up. Filament voltage is regulated, and auxiliary voltage for relays and modules is 24 Volts DC. The connection and cooling assembly for the valve is a fine example of precision engineering, completely fabricated by Trevor with lathe and milling machine. Trevor showed us the many jigs and templates necessary to achieve this result. In fact the whole project showed a dedication to perfectionism itself. Thank you Trevor for an enlightening and interesting presentation and we will watch with interest as the project nears completion.
Also of great interest, Peter VK7KPC had his Nano-VNA set up to test some acquisitions from the recent auction. A broadcast band filter, which could handle 100 watts and several Bird bandpass filters. Using the Nano-VNA, the broadcast band filter exhibited 60 dB of attenuation across those frequencies. He was also testing a military antenna matcher which was now useable due to an auction find of another identical matcher with leads he was missing from the other one, enable connection of instruments. Thanks Peter.
We welcomed Owen from the world of CB who is interested in gaining his amateur licence. Peter VK7PD had a previous contact with him and was pleased he was now ready to start work. Kevin VK7KJL took him into the radio room for some basic practical instruction.
Simon VK7FSRM was busy attending to handheld programming.
Yet another birthday celebration, this time yours truly got the treatment, the actual day being on Tuesday. So the small quiche with the regimental' candle was presented with the usual serenade and wishing ceremony. Very enjoyable and a big thanks to Bernie VK7BR for preparing his special sandwiches. Our Entertainment Officer Ebenezer VK7AT was present, recovered from his brief stay in hospital, and was in fine form. We heard he caused some sore ribs among the nurses at the LGH!
A very busy evening enjoyed by all.
73, Idris VK7ZIR
Coming events
Technical session - The next session will be on Wednesday 11th March and will commence at the usual time of 7.30 pm, running through to 10.30 pm, at the Club room Archer Street, Rocherlea. Pop in catch up with fellow amateurs, bring along something that you are currently building or just ask questions. You might also be able to answer some from other attendees. That is what the evenings are all about, anything of a technical or near-technical nature, however defined, is fair game. Endless tea and coffee along with biscuits is available for a small gold coin donation.
March general meeting - Saturday 14th this is your final reminder about this event. Note that we will not be having a BBQ this time but instead we will be having sandwiches, fruit and cheese platters. We thought a change from BBQ's would be nice. NTARC will provide all the fare for the lunch, which will commence at noon. The cost will be the normal $10.00 per person and this covers your lunch and afternoon tea. The meeting will follow at 2.00pm. As always, we ask for donations of cakes, slices and other delights to share at afternoon tea. For those just attending the meeting and afternoon tea it would be appreciated if you could make a small gold coin or note donation.
Coffee mornings - are normally held every Monday and Friday in the NTARC Club rooms. Catch up time is from 10.00 am to noon and we look forward to seeing you all. Tomorrow, Monday 9th March is a public holiday for Eight Hour Day but we will be open so please come along and join us.
Please remember that aside from the good company, freely offered philosophical views, maybe less than expert political analysis, tall tales and funny stories by our Entertainment Officer Ebenezer VK7AT and genuinely good fare on offer, these coffee events are normally a good opportunity to collect your QSL cards. Currently though we have no cards awaiting collection.
As I remind all every week, please demonstrate your appreciation of all the effort that goes into operating the club and its facilities and the other services we provide, by joining us at these sessions, enjoying the company, coffee and the cake and leaving a gold coin or two, or even a small bank note, in the jar to assist in our on-going operations. I donâ€Öt know of any other venue in Launceston, or further afield for that matter, where you can get endless coffee, tea and eats for a donation of this miniscule amount.
Finally
A reminder to all members that if you have any items of news you would like added to our weekly roundup, then please email them to the following address
ntarc.emails @ gmail.com
However, it would be appreciated if any news could be sent no later than 17:00 hours on the Friday prior to broadcast, to allow its timely insertion into the NTARC segment.
That gives all a chance to get the NTARC segment together and off to Hobart in time for collation into the VK7 Broadcast. Your continued cooperation in this regard will be gratefully appreciated.
As always I look forward to seeing you at Rocherlea.
73, Yvonne VK7FYMX, Secretary NTARC Incorporated
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NEWS FROM THE SOUTH
Radio and Electronics Association of Southern Tasmania
https://www.reast.asn.au/
Clubrooms Reno Help Wanted
Over the next month there will be much work undertaken on the Queen's Domain Clubrooms to improve them.
On the 16th March two new heat pumps will be installed thanks to a Tasmania Community Fund Grant and Scott Hutchins VK7HVK. These heat pumps will replace the power hungry resistive heaters.
On Wednesday the 18th March the equipment in the main room will be sorted to identify the equipment we wish to keep for the museum. This will be a joint lunchtime and DATV Experimenterâ€Ös night task. This will no doubt result in a range of equipment becoming available for members!
Then the 19-20 March the main room and toilet will be prepped (and we don't mean buying more toilet paper...HIHI) for painting and this is where we are asking for some helpers.
On the 21 March the Main room and toilet will be painted and we are looking for some helpers.
So we need go-fers, general assistants, dab hands on the brush that felt confident in painting the odd door or two on both the prep and painting days.
If you would like to volunteer for an hour, hours or days then please contact Tony VK7VKT on
secretary @ reast.asn.au.
73, REAST Committee
(ps, a huge thank you to Tony for taking this lead on this initiative)
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Innovative and Interesting Shack and Portable Operation Ideas Forum
This night was born from a group looking at pictures and videos of various amateur's shacks.
Amateurs are resourceful people who have been re-purposing, recycling and re-using things for a very long-time.
The night was in the form of a forum where everyone can come along and bring your interesting and innovative ideas that you have in your shack, outside, inside, etc.
We covered a range topics including power connector, cable management and storage in the shack, lightning protection, towers and tower design, surface mount jig, battery connections, cable tidies using Velcro, SOTA squid pole anchors, utility bags, 18650 lipo batteries recovery and usage, use of PVC pipes to route cables and coaxes and tilt over tower designs.
There was no limit to the ideas - simple, complex, easy or hard, that were discussed.
The forum discussion was streamed and recorded and is available at the link on the email edition of this broadcast.
https://youtu.be/HkaB-tDILPc
Thanks to all who came along to the forum and participated in the discussions.
73, Justin, VK7TW
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DATV Experimenter's Night Wrap-Up
This Wednesday night we get back underway with our DATV Experimenter's Nights from 7:30pm.
If you have a project you are planning, working on or have finished then bring it along on the night and we will get it into the studio and you can talk about it.
We go out on RF on 445.5MHz DVB-T 7MHz Standard Definition. 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 and Facebook.
https://www.reast.asn.au/special-interest-groups/amateur-tv/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC64To_tq1E7PfK1pqtX_vRw/
https://www.facebook.com/reasttas/
We get underway with the DATV Experimenter's Night from 7:30pm.
We look forward to seeing you there.
73, Justin, VK7TW
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TECHNICAL ARTICLE
NBN Sun Transit Events
Last week nbn released their regular advisory on "Sun Transit Events".
Twice a year nbn satellite service transmissions are adversely affected by "Sun Transit Events". Sun Transit Events occur when the sun comes into direct line with the nbn satellite and ground station or the satellite equipment at an end user's premises. Radio-frequency noise from the sun reduces the signal-to-noise ratio during the event and can potentially create a loss of connectivity.
The next Sun Transit Event season will potentially affect satellite customers for up to about 10 minutes each day in the last week of March and the first few weeks in April.
Please be reminded that the Sun Transit Event is not an Outage or a Service Fault.
nbn provides indicative times and dates for Sun Transit Events in relation to each of its satellite gateways. The exact date and time of the impact on an end users service is dependent on the geographic location of the end users premises as well as on the satellite gateway used to provide the gateway-to-satellite portion of the access link.
(sourced from nbn advisory)
Rex VK7MO commented that the same problem occurs when the Moon gets too close to the Sun. The Sun produces about 9 dB noise on his 1.13 metre dish and thus costs about the same on system performance if the Moon is close to the Sun.
Hayden VK7HH also commented that a similar issue used to be notified by satellite pay TV providers when the sun moves behind their satellites you'd lose TV for 10 or so minutes.
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EMCOMM News
NSW announces $217m funding boost for GRN
NSW emergency services organisations and other government agencies will benefit from a $217 million boost to the state's mission-critical Government Radio Network (GRN).
The investment will be used to consolidate about 70 separate agency radio networks into one.
The radio network played a critical role in protecting communities and supporting the Rural Fire Service, Police, Fire and Rescue, Ambulance and the State Emergency Service during the recent bushfires, said Minister for Customer Service Victor Dominello.
During emergencies such as bushfires and floods, every second counts. We are making life easier for first responders by providing them with a first-class communications infrastructure that will help keep people and places safe.
Minister for Police and Emergency Services David Elliott said the funding will give first responders greater certainty and confidence when working on the frontline.
- In Northern NSW, the coverage will expand to Glen Innes, Inverell, Tenterfield and Ben Lomond and provide improved coverage for areas including Moree and Warialda, Elliott said.
- In Southern NSW, it is expanding across the Riverina to the Victorian border to provide greater coverage to the towns of Holbrook, Tarcutta, Gundagai and Albury.
The funding will enable the NSW Telco Authority to accelerate the Critical Communications Enhancement Program to reach 96% of populated areas.
The $217 million is in addition to the more than $401 million that has been allocated to the upgrade of the GRN since 2016.
http://criticalcomms.com.au/content/public-safety/article/nsw-announces-217m-funding-boost-for-grn-454639425
(Sourced from Critical Comms Web E-Zine)
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Regular VK7 gatherings and events over the coming months:
Regular gatherings:
SOTA Group - Monday and Friday Coffee Sessions from 10:30am at Glebe Gardens Cafe 166 Henry St, Launceston
NTARC - Monday and Friday Coffee Sessions from 10am, Technical Sessions on Wednesdays from 7.30 pm to 10.30 pm in the clubrooms Archer Street, Rocherlea, Launceston.
REAST - Wednesday Lunchtime Group from 12 noon then DATV Experimenters Group from 1930 in the Queens Domain clubrooms.
REAST - MICROWAVE QSO Party - following after the Sunday broadcast on 1296.15 MHz FM.
Events:
NW - March 7 - Meet and Show from 2pm - Penguin Sports Centre
NTARC - March 14 - General Meeting starts Noon and meeting from 14:00 - Rocherlea Clubrooms
VK - March 21-22 - John Moyle Memorial Field Day
http://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/johnmoyle/
VK7 - Meet the Voice - 22 March at Ross Recreation Centre
http://meetthevoice.org/meet-the-voice
WIA - 8-10 May - Annual Conference weekend
https://www.wia.org.au/joinwia/wia/2020agm/
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A reminder to those people rostered for next week's broadcast:
Newsreader: VK7RI
Repeaters: REAST, NTARC and Spectrum Tasmania
80m: VK7TW
40m: VK7ALH
20m: VK7TPE
10m: VK7JGD
DMR: Talk Group 5 and
D-Star: Reflector 091 VK7ZCR
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This broadcast is repeated on Tuesday night at 8:00pm on repeaters VK7RAA in the North and VK7RTC in the South.
Thanks to all people and organisations that assisted with this broadcast.
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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 at 0930 hours.
Items for the broadcast can be emailed to vk7arnews @ 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.
From the VK7 Amateur Radio News, it is 73 from Peter, VK7PD.
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(Posted to the packet network courtesy Tony VK7AX)
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