Author Archives: VK5QI

AREG April Meeting – Good Friday Park Picnic / Foxhunt / HF Activation

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For April’s meeting (on Friday the 18th of April, the Good Friday public holiday), AREG will not be holding a meeting at the Fulham Community Centre. Instead, we’ll be trying something a bit different and meeting up in a park for a BBQ lunch, HF activation, and some fox-hunting!

We’ll be meeting at the lower section of the Morialta Conservation Park from around 11AM with parking available off Moritalta Falls Road. We’ll be near one of the BBQ areas, so look out for a red AREG flag!

We’ll have a HF station going to activate the Morialta Conservation Park (VKFF-0783) so listen out for VK5ARG on the bands! There will also be a fox-hunting (amateur radio direction finding) course set up around the park, with plenty of equipment available to borrow and give fox-hunting a go.

If you’re coming along, we suggest you bring a chair, drinks, and food for lunch (the club will provide some basic BBQ fare too).

Hope to see you there!

Next Fox-Hunt – Friday 7th March

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AREGs next car-based fox hunt will be held this coming Friday the 7th of March. We arrive at the start location around 6pm, and depart at 6:30 PM.

We are also looking for volunteers to hide the foxes each month. If you would like to give this a go, please contact Mark at vk5qi@rfhead.net

Our start location is the Beaumont Road carpark, off South Terrace in the southern CBD Parklands. 

We’ll have three foxes deployed around the Adelaide area, on both the 2m and 70cm bands, so come along and have a go!

Area where the foxes might be hidden.

The frequencies will be:

  • 145.300 MHz (1W transmit power)
  • 144.390 MHz (100mW transmit power)
  • 439.400 MHz (50mW transmit power)

As usual, liaison will be on the VK5RSB Summertown 70cm repeater which operates on 439.900 (-5MHz) 91.5 CTCSS. Please come up on the repeater so we know who is out hunting, and how you are faring throughout the evening! If we don’t hear from your, we may recover the foxes before you find them!

We also have a mailing list, and a Facebook Messenger group – please contact Mark VK5QI (vk5qi@rfhead.net) if you would like to be added to this!

The event is open to anyone with radio direction finding equipment, with the foxes hidden within the bounds shown on the above map. We would love to see you there!

73

Mark VK5QI

Next AREG Meeting – “RADE – Machine Learning for HF Speech” by David Rowe VK5DGR

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The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 21st of March at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham.

This month we have a presentation from David Rowe VK5DGR, on the ‘Radio Autoencoder’ (RADE) digital voice mode, which is in active development and available for preview right now in the latest version of FreeDV. RADE combines machine learning techniques with classical DSP to send high quality speech over HF radio at SNRs as low as -2 dB.

Doors open at 7.00pm and the presentations kick off at 7.30. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you’ve never come along to one of our meetings, we’d love to see you there, all guests are welcome. For our remote members, the meeting will be broadcast via Zoom, and the talk will be recorded for later viewing on Youtube.

After the talks we’ll all be given an opportunity to have an eyeball QSO among ourselves whilst enjoying a tea or coffee and a biscuit.

73, Mark VK5QI

160m Interference Investigation by Arthur VK5AI – Presentation Recording

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Thanks to Arthur for a great example of how with the right approach, interference to the amateur radio bands can be resolved amicably and with great results!

Arthurs presentation was recorded and has been uploaded to Youtube here:

Arthur’s presentation slides are available here: 160 m Interference Investigation.pdf

During the presentation Arthur gave some examples of near-field E and H-field probes, with further information on constructing these available at this link.

73, Mark VK5QI

AREG’s Adelaide Amateur Radio & Electronics Sale – Back in 2025!

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AREG are happy to announce that our Amateur Radio & Electronics Sale will be back again in 2025 on Sunday October 26th, at David Roche Park, Kilburn!

We hope to build on our success in previous years with more sellers, more demos, and even some technical presentations throughout the day!

More details will follow in coming months – but for now you simply need to:

Sunday

October 26th

2025

We hope to see you there!

Next AREG Meeting – “Wide area 160 m interference – Investigations and Rectification” by Arthur VK5AI

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The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 21st of February at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham.

In this presentation, Arthur, VK5AI, will detail the investigation to determine the source of 160m band (1.8 MHz) interference that was being experienced across the eastern suburbs of Adelaide and the subsequent actions to resolve the issue.

Doors open at 7.00pm and the presentations kick off at 7.30. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you’ve never come along to one of our meetings, we’d love to see you there, all guests are welcome. For our remote members, the meeting will be broadcast via Zoom!

After the talks we’ll all be given an opportunity to have an eyeball QSO among ourselves whilst enjoying a tea or coffee and a biscuit.

73, Mark VK5QI