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A bit of history behind AREG.
I remember back in 1994 when Rod VK5UDX and I went on a radio service trip in the far North of South Australian. One town we did visit was Woomera,the town of space and rockets. After work we visited the local rocket museum and we became very inspired wanting to build something. Reading a 73’s magazine back at ELDO motel room we saw a story of how American hams were launching balloons at high altitudes with radio payloads, WE MUST TRY THIS! (typical hams)
Back
at work a week later we talked
about what we saw and what we would like to do.You had to be there, to see a group of technicians jumping with idea’s. Ben VK5ABE suggested we involve schools, they could building scientific payloads for measuring upper atmosphere conditions. This way us hams could play around with what we really liked, RF!
Ben named the balloon idea as Project
Skyhook. We still needed a name to recognise us few hams as a group.
One suggestion was the Amateur Radio Satellite Experimenters. This
didn't go down well, we had a hard look and saw the work ARSE. Well
the next idea was much better, Amateur Radio Experiments Group, this had
a ring to it, we did like this! Ben commenced in the investigation
of insurance for such a group, no body wanted to insure a house brick floating
at 100,000 feet
“Damn now what”.
Ben did find out, the weather bureaux were willing to allow us to put a small payload on board there sounding balloons. The deal was that we would pay for the extra gas need for the extra lift.
Mean while Roy VK5ASY had idea’s of a live CCD video camera on board, Steven had other idea’s, he was more interested in making a rocket to carry the payload. Mark Grebe had even more ambitious thought, Why not build a satellite!!!
I did build a small light weight transmitter for Skyhook called AREG Phase One, but this became a test transmitter for my fox hunting kit. As you can see such a simple idea’s was becoming Sputnik. Sadly the idea did die, we all moved on to different to new projects.
Late 1996 the AREG club idea was reborn with an interest by Matt VK5ZMC, Grant VK5ZWI and Peter VK5TZX. Lots of electronic designs started to have the AREG logo, a group was needed to bring together all our skill into one working force. AREG was Incorporate in July 1998.
Adrian Waiblinger 26 August 1998
Long Live Amateur Radio, get out there and
make a difference!
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Page updated on 12 August 2005 |  |