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WIANEWS FOR WEEK COMMENCING APR 11 2010.
ALL UP AND COMING IN THIS EDITION OF NEWS FROM THE WIRELESS INSTITUTE OF
AUSTRALIA FOR WEEK COMMENCING APR 11 2010
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NEXT WEEKEND IS DEEMED WORLD AMATEUR RADIO DAY
World Amateur Radio Day will be celebrated on Sunday 18 April 2010, the theme for
2010 is "Amateur Radio: Combining communication experience with modern digital
techniques." This Sunday can be a great opportunity for radio clubs to
demonstrate amateur radio to the public at a shopping centre or mall.
(SARL)
weekend after is ANZAC Day and that's when Amateur radio salutes the
servicemen and women in the many conflicts.
CW - Morse code - was used as a means of communication during
WW2, Korea, Malaysia and even early Vietnam.
Museum ships, including the HMAS Whyalla, will be utilised to
honour this event.
Whyalla Amateur Radio Club together with the Whyalla Maritime
Museum invite you to attend the HMAS Whyalla on ANZAC Day
from 12.30 pm (0300 UTC/GMT) to witness and share in the
experience of Morse Code communication.
For further information please contact either :
Whyalla Visitor Centre & Maritime Museum
Freecall 1800 088 589
Whyalla Amateur Radio Club:
vk5bwr@hotmail.com
WIA CENTENARY
Announcing a QRP contest for the Centenary
The VK QRP Club is sponsoring a new commemorative contest that should have
very wide appeal and be a lot of fun too.
The WIA Centenary QRP Contest is open to all radio amateurs whether they
be Foundation, Standard or Advance licensees with the aim of encouraging
interest in the use of low level transmit power.
For the entire UTC month of May the contest will be on the 80m and 40m bands
using either CW, AM or SSB.
It?s hoped that a lot of stations will be calling ?CQ WIA Centenary QRP Contest?.
The rules will be published in the April edition of Amateur Radio magazine
and on the WIA website.
(AUDIO ON SITE ROBERT)
Publicity support for all clubs
The 21 clubs rostered to use the special callsign VK100WIA in June and July
have received a comprehensive package of material to help them promote
amateur radio, their club and the WIA Centenary.
The material is ideal for any club that wants to promote an event or activity
and gain positive media publicity for amateur radio.
While clubs on the VK100WIA roster will automatically receive this material
eight weeks prior to their three-day rostered slot, any other WIA affiliated
club can request a copy from the WIA National Office.
In a covering letter the WIA President Michael Owen VK3KI explains that the
resources being provided include media liaison advice, a template media
release, background sheets and guides.
Clubs using this package will easily be able to create a 'Media Kit' to send
to their local news media.
Michael VK3KI said a number of clubs had asked him and other WIA directors
at hamfests and meetings for this kind of support. We now look forward to
seeing the results of club media campaigns.
HAMS ACROSS AUSTRALIA.
VK2
web service:- http://www.arnsw.org.au/html/news_vk2wi.htm
VKG Roundup http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news
Amateur Radio New South Wales
Amateur Radio New South Wales will be holding their A G M
next Saturday morning the 17 th. Aptil at the VK2WI site
For further details see http://www.arnsw.org.au
Oxley Region Amateur Radio Club 35th Annual Field Day.
The Oxley Region Amateur Radio Clubs 35th annual field day is being held on
Sunday 13th June 2010 at the Sea Scouts Hall in Buller Street Port
Macquarie. NSW.
A good representation of the trade will be in attendance on Sunday 13th June, along with the sale of preloved
gear etc. Free coffee, tea and biscuits as well as a BBQ on Sunday from midday, if necessary we will fire up the
BBQ for lunch on Saturday.
Entry is a mere $5 per person, children under 5 free.
(John McLean VK2KC ORARC Publicity Officer.)
Stafford Simpson VK2AST tells us that the Albury Wodonga Amateur Radio Club
have their Riverina Field Day 25th July.
The event will be held at Lavington Scout Group Mutsch street Lavington.
There will be major suppliers and second hand equipment WIA book shop and
others.
Email Address : staffordsimpson@westnet.com.au
Central West NSW, have no monthly get togethers for 'Hams' but, as the song
goes "help is on it's way".. Next week we will hear of how a groups ARE
trying to domething about that!! Oh and in the mean time have a listen to
tourist radio PHFM at 0410 utc Fridays for a ham radio segment!
VK3
web service:- http://www.amateurradio.com.au/news/
VKC Roundup http://www.police
Digital Amateur TV repeater with stereo sound
The latest on the VK3RTV repeater on Mt Dandenong which services the
Melbourne and Geelong areas is that stereo sound is now available for both
its digital and analogue inputs.
Peter Cossins VK3BFG advises that for analogue the sub-carrier frequencies
at 6 and 6.5 MHz, and operators need to activate it by DTMF code Star Zero
Three Hash (* 0 3 #).
About seven stations transmitting digital DVB-S uplink also have the
capability to transmit stereo sound.
New 23 cm antenna arrays are yet to be completed and the system is
currently running VK3RTV-1 on a temporary antenna.
Peter VK3BFG also advises that experiments are being made with Internet
streaming via the British Amateur TV Club.
The VK3RTV repeater digitisation has been primarily funded by Amateur
Radio Victoria with $1,000 also provided by the WIA Club Grants Program.
(Peter Cossins VK3BFG)
Chris Chapman VK3QB reminds all Gippsland Gate Radio & Electronics Club's
2010 Hamfest is 17 July 2010.
EDUCATION YOUTH AND ADVANCEMENT OF AMATEUR RADIO
www.hamcollege.com.au
Congratulations to Hayden VK7HAY for being awarded the Best Electronics
Project (North) and Jarrod VK7RJ for Best Soldering Project (North) as
apprentices with the Tasmanian Skills Institute.
It's great to see our young amateurs getting a good grounding in the
electronics trade.
Keep up the great work!
(VK7NEWS)
INTERNATIONAL NEWS With thanks to RSGB, Southgate AR Club, the ARRL,
Amateur Radio Newsline, NZART and the WW sources of the WIA.
Bahrain
Licensing of the amateur services in the Kingdom of Bahrain has taken
a major step forward with the release of new regulations by the
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.
New additions for General Class licensees include 135.7-137.8kHz with
a power limit of 10W, an extension of the 160m band changing the
upper limit of 1,850kHz to 2,000kHz, the inclusion of the 40m band
extension up to 7,200kHz plus the 30m band. Above 30MHz new additions
include 50-52MHz and improved access to bands at 430MHz and above.
With the exception of the segment 50-50.5MHz, which is Primary, all
new allocations have been granted on a secondary basis. Permitted
power to the antenna on all bands except 136kHz is 1500W.
A new Intermediate Class licence has also been introduced that
permits operation at 28MHz and above with power output to the antenna
of 100W. Aeronautical Mobile, Maritime Mobile, Mobile and Portable
operations are also permitted within the terms of the new licence.
The IARU say that congratulations should be offered to those who
negotiated these new regulations. Negotiations continue for the use
of other bands in use within Region 1.
And Digital v Analogue TV is "in the news".
US Amateur Radio operators want old residential TV towers.
Bowling Green area ham radio operators want to give new life to residential
TV towers by incorporating them into an emergency communications system.
The Kentucky Colonels Amateur Radio Club (who have come up with this 'finger
lickin good' idea along with the Kentucky 4th District Amateur Radio
Emergency Services are seeking donations of the TV towers, which have become
increasingly obsolete as more households have turned to cable, satellite and
digital TV providers.
Bill Schlicht of the KCARC said members will remove the towers for free,
recondition them and install them at numerous locations in the 10-county
Barren River Area Development District to support emergency communications
among ham radio operators, hospitals, county emergency management directors,
American Red Cross chapters and other emergency workers.
Now, "seirously' is the Ten Tower up for grabs here? or would the Nine one
"still be the one".
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WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
NEW MORE ISLAND IS NO MORE ISLAND
If you are thinking of sponsoring a DXpedition to New Moore Island in the
Sunderbans you might as well forget it. This is because the disputed
island in Bay of Bengal has disappeared into sea.
For nearly 30 years Bangladesh and India have argued over ownership of a
tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now Mother Nature has resolved the
dispute for them. Due to rising sea levels, as of March 24th the island's gone.
According to news reports, its disappearance below the waves has been
confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols and one might now say that
New Moore Island is, no more.
(arnewsline)
OPERATIONAL NEWS -
SPECIAL EVENTS AND ON AIR CONTEST COLUMN - D A T E L I N E 2010
Apr 24 Harry Angel Memorial Sprint
APR 30 - MAY 6 Westlakes CQ Repeater contest
contestmanager@westlakesarc.org.au
May 8 WIA VK Trans Tasman 80m Phone
Bruce Renn vk3jwz@wia.org.au
May 15-16 NZART Sangster Shield
http://www.nzart.org.nz/contests/index.html
WIA Centenary QRP contest
The VK QRP club is sponsoring a low power contest during May to
commemorate the Centenary of organised amateur radio in Australia.
All three grades of Australian licence can join this one, provided they
limit their output power to five-watts CW and 10 Watts for AM and SSB.
The contest will be on the 40m and 80m bands. Operate each evening in May
between 1000 to 1300 UTC and then submit an entry for your best 20 days.
More details and the contest rules can be found on the WIA website.
Winter VHF-UHF Field Day
John Martin VK3KM WIA Contests Manager lets the vk7news guys know last week
that the rules for the Winter Field Day, which is held on the 19 and 20 June,
are now available and can be found on Australia's only official contest pages
when you click the link that just WON'T go away, wia.org.au
Via the 7 news team we learn there HAS been a major rule change:
the introduction of a separate section for rover stations.
This new section will allow portable and rover stations to compete against
other stations that have similar scoring potential. The rover section will
apply to all stations that operate from more than two grids, or change
location more than twice.
This allows stations in the regular Portable sections to change location once,
and return to the original grid square, without being required to enter the
Rover section.
2010 International Museums Weekends
The 2010 International Museums Weekend special event will again be a
double-weekend and will take place on 19th and 20th June plus 26th
and 27th June.
Radio amateurs are encouraged to participate in this event by setting
up stations in their local museums. Harry, M1BYT, who is organising
the event, asks that all those intending to take part should register
their museum via e-mail to harry.m1byt@tiscali.co.uk
Full details of the event can be found on the International Museums Weekend
website at www.ukradioamateur.co.uk/imw
(rsgb)
All shapes and sizes
We have the very tall, some are broad while others stout. Most are white,
some black, blue or even red in colour.
Looking at them in wonder takes you back in time. Many will blink back at
you?
What am I? Uuuummmmm?
With all those clues clearly the answer is a 'lighthouse', and this a
reminder that the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend run by
Scotland's Ayr Radio Group GM0AYR is only four months away on the 21st and 22nd
of August.
So far 135 registrations from 23 countries have been received from radio
clubs and individual radio amateurs for this popular and friendly on air weekend.
An interesting trend in VK this year is the number of lighthouses that
will be put on air for the very first time.
These include VK4DMC Archer Point Lighthouse, VK5PBZ Port Germein, VK6FLAM
Guilderton and VK7ZM Rocky Cape Lighthouse.
Each lighthouse has an interesting history.
For example the Guilderton Lighthouse in Western Australia is one of our
youngest, a red brick structure built in 1983 at the place where guilder
coins were found from a Dutch ship Vergulde Draeck (Guilded Dragon).
The sailing ship came to grief in 1656.
To see where Australian lighthouses are located you can download
a Google Earth file - the URL can be found on the text edition of this broadcast
(http://illw.net/australia_lights.kmz) or from the website illw.net
The International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend, 21st and 22nd of
August will again be a lot of fun.
(Jim Linton VK3PC)
SPECIAL EVENT CALLS, REPEATER BEACON DX AND NET ADVICE
hf nets ON the net, www.timroberts-vk4yeh.id.au/
An international team are operating as 3W6C from Con Co Island, Vietnam, which
is IOTA reference AS-185, started 10th wirelessing till 18th April. Plans
were to run four stations 24 hours a day for the two weeks with a goal of
60,000 QSOs.
(sourced to rsgb)
THE QNEWS WORK BENCH - the nuts and volts report -
(Measure twice - Cut once!)
NEW FORMAT OF HARD DRIVE STORAGE COMING IN 2011
Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30
years. Amateur Radio Newslines Norm Seeley, KI7UP, in a recent report said that
By early 2011 all magnetic hard drives will use an advanced format that
changes how they go about saving the data people store on them. The move
to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce
bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable. However, it might
also mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using
the changed format.
According to Science On-Line, since the days of the original DOS operating
system, the space on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes
in size based on the floppy disks of that era. Each 512 byte sector has a
marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error
correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector.
While 512 bytes made sense hard drives were only a few megabytes in size,
its of less significance when drives can hold a terabyte or more of
data. As a result, in large drives this wasted space where data cannot be
stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.
Drive makers say that moving to an advanced format of 4 kilobyte sectors
means about eight times less wasted space. This will allow drives to
devote twice as much space per block to error correction technology.
Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association
all hard drive makers have committed to adopting the 4 Kilobyte advanced
format by the end of January 2011.
WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- ATV (Every pixel tells a story) - Video
arvideonews.com
hamradiotube.com
youtube.com
Operating Amateur Radio while skydiving is an aspect of the hobby that has been
attracting interest as a YouTube video shows.
The YouTube description reads:
Skydive Monterey Bay at Marina Airport in Marina, CA. These are "parachute mobile"
jumps which skydivers are amateur radio (ham) operators that make radio contacts
while under canopy (this is impractical in freefall, at 120 mph airspeed noise is
extremely loud and duration of jump is too short for numerous contacts*).
These jumps are hop and pops at exit altitude to provide maximum canopy hang time
to make radio calls.
Watch Parachute Mobile at Skydive Monterey Bay Marina Airport just search out
youtube.com
(SouthGate)
WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- RADIO SCOUTING
http://www.scouts.com.au
http://www.scout.org/jota
http://www.international.scouts.com.au
Not only the WIA is in 100 year celebration mode, Bob Bristow tells us that
Boy Scouts of America in celebrating 100 years
In 1910 the United States Congress officially chartered the Boy Scouts
of America.
The San Francisco Bay Area Council of B.S.A. is hosting a centennial
anniversary celebration jamboree at the Alameda County Fairgrounds April 16-18
and part of the celebration includes two "Jamboree on the Air" stations where
amateur radio will be demonstrated to youth and adults Scouts.
Information is available from www.100thanniversaryjamboree.org
The station will be demonstrating HF voice and code operations, VHF/UHF
voice repeater operations, satellite communication, radio direction
finding, and, CW practice stations.
The station (WZ6BSA) will be on the air
7.190 SSB
7.030 CW
14.290 SSB
14.060 CW
IRLP
W6CX IRLP: 3057
N6LDJ IRLP: 7712
No matter where in the world you are, if you can't make it to the fair grounds,
please get on the air and talk to these Scouts for their 100th anniversary.
WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- RESCUE RADIO
PADDLE FOR LIFE CANOE MARATHON - 17-19 APRIL.
Summerland AR Club provide safety and control comms for this charity event.
A three day canoe paddle, Lismore - Coraki - Broadwater - Ballina abt 120Kms.
1 opr in SES boat, 1 mobile follower, 1 next stop loc. Others if available.
Can you help? advise 2JWA if you are available.
ARRL and Red Cross Sign Memorandum of Understanding
ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN, HAS signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)
with the American Red Cross, the MoU, which replaces an earlier Statement of
Understanding that expired in 2007, provides a "broad framework for cooperation"
between the ARRL and the ARC "in preparing for and responding to disaster relief
situations at all levels in rendering assistance and service to victims of disaster,
as well as other services for which cooperation may be mutually beneficial."
When one Sunday recently John Oakberg, NK4N, of Tennessee, went hiking in the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park he was about 1 mile up from Alum Cave Bluff,
and came across Judy Potter, 57, of Atlanta who had broken her ankle while on the
trail.
Oakberg reached for his cell phone to call 911, but there was no coverage available.
He then reached for his handheld transceiver and put out a call to any Amateur Radio
operators who may be listening via some nearby VHF 2 meter repeaters, back they came
and AGAIN Ham Radio saved the day! Congrats John.
(arrl)
GAREC-2010 date and venue announced
The Global Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Conference, GAREC, will
be held in Curacao, Netherland Antilles on the 11th and 12th October.
The annual conference for those engaged in providing emergency communications
will this year be organised by the Dutch Amateur Radio Emergency Service
(DARES) and the IARU radio society VERONA (Vereniging voor Experimenteel
Radio Onderzoek in de Nederlandse Antillen).
The conference theme this year is "Learning through practicing". The program
is yet to be finalised however the organisers are keen to include first-hand
accounts of emergency communications following the devastating Haiti and
Chile earthquakes.
The purpose of GAREC is to exchange information and experiences between all
radio amateurs and groups interested in emergency communications.
Presentations to previous conferences can be found at www.garec.net
(Jim Linton VK3PC)
REWIND - A LOOK BACK IN HISTORY
Rewind a look back at our history through the serialised written history
by WIA Centenary Committee member Peter Wolfenden VK3RV with assistance of
others, that is being published in the WIA journal Amateur Radio magazine.
Struggle to get back on the air
With the moves to re-start experimental wireless after World War I, as
reported by Sea, Land and Air magazine in September 1919, a national effort
was being made to represent all experimenters and private users of wireless
apparatus.
Prior to the Navy issuing receiving licences in November 1919, many
experimenters quietly re-built their stations and commenced tuning into
the ether again
The Wireless Institute of Victoria contacted other states requesting they
appoint proxies to represent them on a possible Federal Council, which would
approach authorities to re-issue transmitting licences.
However progress did not occur overnight. Most war-time restrictions were
not removed by the Government in late 1920 and the Postmaster General
regained control of operator examinations.
But transmitting licences were not generally made available until late 1922.
The new Controller of Wireless was Jim Malone, generally sympathetic to
experimenters and he issued a number of special transmitting licences, ahead
of time.
One was for the Wireless Institute of Victoria from May 1921 that granted
permission to transmit nightly. Another for the South Australian Institute
enabling it to operate from September of that year. There were a few others.
The authority wanted one experimenter or amateur voice to deal with, and
the WIA provided that representation.
SOCIAL SCENE
2010
No Hamfests etc on horizon until June - RELAX time! HiHi
JUNE 12 VK2
Oxley Region Amateur Radio Club's 35th Annual Field Day.
JULY 17 VK3
GGREC Hamfest Start Time : 10:00
AUGUST 1 VK6
Northern Corridor Group Hamfest Cyril Jackson Sports Centre Ashfield
Please think of the environment before printing this email
=============================================================================
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Thanks to to our dedicated band of broadcast volunteers who utilize
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The purpose of "WIANews" is to rapidly provide news of interest to
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We strongly encourage membership in the Wireless Institute of Australia
and participation in the activities of local clubs.
Opinions expressed in "WIANews" are those of the writers who submit
material and do not necessarily reflect those of the rebroadcasters,
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Material may be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form, a credit to
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