Author Archives: Grant

AREG February Meeting: Operating on 241 GHz

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At our next general meeting, AREG is pleased to present a talk/demo by David VK5KK and Iain VK5ZD who will discuss their experiments on the 241 GHz microwave amateur band. This band is really the final fronteir in microwave amateur radio experimentation, given this is the highest frequency band allocated to the Amateur Service. David and Iain will take you through the gear they developed and also their efforts to set a VK distance record on this band.

To hear and see more, come along to the next general meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group, which will be held on Friday 20th February, starting at 7.30pm. AREG meets at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham. Doors open at 7.00pm. We hope to see you there!

AREG Adelaide Foxhunt Events: Saturday Jan 31st at 2pm

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UPDATE: The next AREG foxhunt event will now be held on Saturday January 31st starting at 2.00pm. The date change is due to the weather forecast predicting 40+ deg Celcius on the original date of Saturday 24th.

Fox hunting, or Amateur Radio Direction Finding as it is more properly known, is an event where radio amateurs gather together to track down the location of a hidden transmitter using radio direction finding techniques. Foxhunts can take several forms, including on foot and from a vehicle over a wider area.

For this event, we will cater for both kinds of activity – with a 5 transmitter foot based hunt firstly held around the wetlands in the Adelaide South Parklands, followed by a three stage vehicle hunt across metropolitan Adelaide.

The event is open to everyone. For those without vehicle based equipment, you can still come and try some on foot hunting around the Adelaide South Park Lands before the multi-leg metropolitan hunt gets underway (we will have some equipment available to borrow for this part of the event).

While the activity is running, we will be listening and liaising on the linked repeater system via either the CBD 438.025 MHz or Summertown 439.900 MHz repeaters. It is intended to wrap up hunting activities by ~5.30pm and then pick somewhere close to the final fox locations to gather for dinner.

For more information email vk5arg@areg.org.au.

River Paddling Marathon 200 – 2026 members planning workshop – Friday January 16th

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To all members who participate with AREG in the yearly River Paddling Marathon 200 event held each June long weekend, please be advised that we are holding a planning workshop to kick off 2026 this coming Friday, January 16th, starting from 7.30pm at the club rooms located at Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham.

Canoe’s ready to start the 100km version of the Marathon

This workshop is open to AREG members who have participated in the past, or who are interested in taking part in 2026. This will be an interactive discussion session where we will be reviewing what happened in past years, and where we will discuss ways of improving the event and how AREG executes the communications requirements that go with it.

AREG November Meeting – SA Repeater Network and the VK5RSB Repeater Rebuild

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group will be held this coming Friday, November 21st . The presentation this month is by Dean VK5HQ who will take people through the work that the AREG Repeater sub-group has undertaken at Summertown to rebuild it and prepare it to become the SA Repeater network hub repeater. He will also take you though the rest of the linked repeater network sites to give you an understanding of the reach and operation of the central SA network.The meeting was held at the Fulham Community Centre.

A copy of the presentation is available here

 

 

 

 

SA Repeater Network News Update – October 19th

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Substantial progress has been made in reconnecting all of the repeaters in the SA Repeater Network back together. As of October 19th, the Adelaide (Summertown) hub has been reconnected to most of the network. There are a few more sites still to come, however, which should be relinked in the next couple of weeks (VK5RSA Adelaide CBD, VK5RLH Lochiel/Central North) and VK5RVH (Victor Harbor).

One of the key changes is that we have now elected to make 439.900 the Adelaide network access repeater rather than 147.175. This was due to the amount of traffic being carried on 147.175 that was local to Adelaide. As a result, the AREG IRLP node is temporarily off air while we rebuild it to operate on 2m 147.175. 147.175 MHz will now remain a stand alone repeater.

For those missing the WIA broadcast on the old Crafers repeater (147.000), also note that AREG is currently providing a temporary WIA Broadcast service at 9.00am Sunday via the 147.175 MHz repeater. This will revert to 147.000 once AHARS restores that repeater to service.

 

VK5 Central Repeater Network – News Update 29th August

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VK5RAD gets a temporary lifeline – relocation to be completed by Sept 30th

Work has been progressing on getting the link equipment installed into AREG’s site at Summertown (VK5RSB) to take over the network hub duties from VK5RAD 70cm, however we are currently a little behind schedule. Fortunately, after negotiations with the site owner at Crafers, the 439.925 70cm repeater has been granted a 1 month service extension before it must be removed from site. The same extension has been also granted to the AHARS for the 147.000 2m repeater.

For now, the repeater network connectivity will continue as usual, until we start re-directing links to the new hub mid September. We will let everyone know when each link is going to be relocated and when to start using 147.175 TX / 147.775 RX to access the link network.

 

 

VK5RWN DMR Connectivity Failure – under investigation

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The VK5RWN DMR repeater has developed a fault and has lost connectivity with the Internet. A site visit this evening confirmed that the repeater unit was no longer getting access to the site router. We appear to have had an ethernet port failure but are still trying to prove where the problem lies.

Meanwhile VK5RWN DMR is still on the air, but is only operating in local mode until we can restore the internet connectivity. Apologies for this break in transmission and we will attempt to restore service as soon as we can.