Author Archives: Matthew

High Altitude Balloon Launch – 26th Jan 2016

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(c) 2016 International Space UniversityThe Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program (SHSSP) is jointly organised by the International Space University (ISU) and the University of South Australia. It is a unique, five week live-in experience focusing on an international, intercultural and interdisciplinary (3 “I”s) educational philosophy for which the ISU is renowned.

The SHSSP have asked the AREG who have considerable experience with high altitude ballooning in Australia to assist with their participant Stratospheric Balloon Project, culminating in a high altitude balloon launch on Australia Day, the 26th of January 2016.

The balloon launch will take place, weather conditions favourable, from the Mt. Barker High School in the Adelaide Hills, just east of Adelaide.

The launch is expected to be released between 09:30 to 09:45 am local CDST January 26th, or 23:00 to 23:15 UTC January 25th .

The balloon is expected to carry two payloads, one supplied by the SHSSP participants as part of their course project and the usual AREG/Horus telemetry payloads. Telemetry will the normal RTTY mode on 434.450 MHz USB.

Please keep your eyes on the AREG website for more details closer to the date.

Matthew, VK5ZM

UPDATE: 23rd January – Balloon will ID as AX5ARG-1!

As the launch is occurring on Australia day, and Radio Amateurs across Australia can also use the AX prefix on that day in their callsigns, AREG has determined that the callsign that the balloon RTTY telemetry beacon will use for this flight is AX5ARG-1.

To commemorate the special callsign, stations who provide evidence of receiving the telemetry beacon via the habhub tracking database (through the use of dl-fldigi) will be eligible for the special QSL card. We hope this will encourage more people to attempt to receive the balloon and relay the telemetry to the Internet during this flight!

 

20th November Meeting: VHF/UHF Contesting

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VHF/UHF Spring Field Day - VK5ZM 2015

VHF/UHF Spring Field Day – VK5ZM 2015

Have you thought about trying any of the VHF/UHF field days?  Do you still have fond memories of being a “Z-call” when the lowest frequency you could operate on was 29MHz FM?

Well a few of our members thought it would be fun to head out and participate in the Spring VHF/UHF Field Day on the 14th and 15th of November.  For some of our members it had been more than 17 years since they had done one of these events.  This was also a welcome break from the usual HF contesting our members have been doing lately.

So this month we’ve asked these enthusiastic members to put together a short series of 10 minute presentations about what they did, how it went and was it still fun to be a “Z-Call” again.

So if you’d like to hear more about what it takes to participate in a VHF/UHF field day then come along and I’m sure there will be something there for everyone.  It should be a good night out and if the enthusiasm of our members who participated this year is any indication, this could be infectious.

The meeting club rooms will be open at 7:45pm with the presentations starting at 8pm.   This will also be the last formal presentation/meeting for the AREG in 2015.

As well as the formal presentation there will be ample time to meet with AREG members and talk about any and all things Amateur Radio. Visitors are most welcome, so please come along all and say hello! If you need help finding the hall, call on the VK5RSB 439.900 repeater (91.5Hz CTCSS).

Coffee, tea, cake and 2m LFA designs will be supplied as a light supper.

73, Matthew VK5ZM

AREG General Business Meeting: August 21st + Guest Speakers !

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters group will be held on Friday 21st August. The venue as always will be the Reedbeds Community Hall, 19 Fitch Rd, Fulham SA 5024.

This month there will be two guest speakers giving short presentations interrupted by a short business meeting.  Doors open 7:45pm, first talk starts at 8pm sharp !

Everything 6m!

The first speaker will be Ben VK5BB P1020591who will give a 10 minute  talk on the Amateur 6m band and what it has to offer in the summer time months.  With summertime on the horizon (finally) it’s a good time to dust off the low band VHF 6m gear and get it ready for the upcoming summer months !!!

This will be followed by a short general business meeting.

FreeDV – getting it working!

The second  short technical presentation will be by David VK5DGR on the practical aspects of  alignment, use and getting a FreeDV signal to air.  With the AREG FreeDV QSO Party (click) just around the corner, now is perhaps a good time to get that SM1000 or PC Interface at the ready !   As is typical with all of David’s talks it certainly should be a good time to sit back and watch or hear Digital HF Voice first hand.

This of course will bearegmap interspersed with coffee, cake and opportunities for technical chats around the kitchen bench.  Should be a good night to get out of the house and come and play radio.

Look forward to seeing you there

73, Matthew VK5ZM

VK5RSB 23cm is back !

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repeater tower clipartThe VK5RSB 23cm repeater is now back online.

After a couple of hectic weeks Colin VK5ACE has made the necessary repairs to the 23cm repeater and put it back on the hill.

If any users observe the repeater doing something odd please contact us on the email addresses (here).

Many thanks to Colin for all the hard work getting this service back on the air again.

73, Matthew VK5ZM

AREG AGM – New Executive 2015

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AGM

The AREG held it’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Friday the 17th of July. This was followed by a talk from Chris VK5CP about RTTY Contesting and a general members meeting.

As a result of the AGM there is a new executive and committee, with a few familiar faces.

This year Scott VK5TST moves into the position of club Secretary, with Mark stepping down back to the committee. We thank Mark for this hard work over the past three years in this role.   Grant VK5GR has stepped up from the committee to take on the role of club treasurer, welcome Grant to the exec team.  Ben VK5BB and Andy VK5AKH will carry on as committee members.   We’d also like to welcome Josh VK5JO who has volunteered to join the committee team.  I was more than happy to continue on as president.

So the AREG executive team for 2015/2016 can be found here (click)

Thanks again for your support and we look forward to planning a new technical talk and activities program for our members pleasure.

73, Matt VK5ZM

VI5ANZAC Wednesday 29th April Results

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K3 on black_760I had the pleasure of activating the VI5ANZAC special event call sign as a single operator station on Wednesday the 29th of April from my home QTH in Highbury South Australia.

I managed to get home from work at a decent hour, get the family commitments out of the way and then sit down at the Radio and call CQ.  I started on 40m at 20:00 ACST using my trust Elecraft K3 plus borrowed KPA500 running 200W and a resonant mono-band dipole.  I worked a number of local and interstate stations from VK2, VK3, VK4 and VK5.  I fell out of the chair when I heard a Japanese station in there calling.  The noise and QRM on 40m wasn’t brilliant making communications difficult at times.

I switched to 20m at 21:00 ACST and continued beaming East using 250W.   Again I worked a number of local and interstate stations from VK2, VK3, VK4, VK5 and VK6 and now the DX stations started with stations from Canada, the USA, Finland and Japan being logged.   Propagation into Europe short path late in the evening didn’t eventuate on 17m, 15m or 10m which was unfortunate.

In total I logged 44 QSO’s on two bands over a three and a half our period, not a bad night for some fun an excitement.  Here’s the breakdown of the stations worked;

[table “” not found /]

All logs have been submitted to the WIA for EQSL processing.  Thanks to everyone that made last night a lot of fun activating a VI5 callsign from home.

73, Matthew VK5ZM

Website back up !

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LcK75XpcaThe AREG website is back up after a short outage over the weekend.

In recent weeks there have been numerous security updates and advisories released for Apache Web Servers.  These had been backing up for a while and were batched process in one large go Friday afternoon.  Unfortunately one of the updates broke the website and it wasn’t picked up before the club meeting.

Our apologies for the website being down, there should be a flurry of activity as a result of the Club Meeting Friday night, stay tuned !

73, Matthew VK5ZM

VK5RSB 6m Repeater – Down Again

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VK5RSB 6m_2The VK5RSB 6m repeater is once again off the air.  We suspect that the temporary antenna has failed, most likely taking the power amplifier with it again.

The AREG is currently looking to buy a new commercially made co-linear 6m antenna, we have received quotes to replace the antenna for A$500.

The AREG would welcome any donations to the antenna replacement by regular users/contributors.  There’s a donate button on the front page of our website, simply place “VK5RSB 6m” in the relevant field when prompted to let us know what the donation is for.

Those users that have already donated we offer our thanks !   Without your support this repeater would be off air for a much longer period.