Category Archives: Club Activities

Club Activities or Events

May Meeting – Steve VK5SFA – Adventures in building a Remote Station

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The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 17th of May at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentation kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!

This month’s presentation will be from Steve Adler, VK5SFA:

I will be giving a presentation on my adventures in establishing a remote LF, MF, HF, VHF & UHF remote site.
This project has been 18 months in the making, and I would like to share with you all the way I failed my way to success!
The presentation will run for 2 hours, as there are many facets to discuss.
During the presentation, I will be talking about site establishment, antenna systems, remote control, setting up secure reliable internet, all the equipment required, and my latest addition, a steerable LF, MF and HF receiving antenna array which will blow you away!
Please trust me when I tell you that this is the one presentation you will not want to miss, as you will never see anything like it again!
For security reasons, there will be no YouTube or recording of the presentation, and I will be only presenting it once.
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

Save the date: AREG’s Adelaide Amateur Radio & Electronics Sale – Saturday October 26th

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AREG are happy to announce that Saturday October 26th will see the return of the AREG Amateur Radio & Electronics Sale! It will again be held at the DogsSA Training Facility in Kilburn as a car boot sale format. We will be inviting all of the SA Radio Clubs to participate as well as a number of commercial vendors!

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

Saturday

October 26th

2024

We hope to see you there!

Next Fox-Hunt – Friday 3rd May

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AREGs next car-based fox hunt will be held this coming Friday the 3rd of May. We arrive at the start location around 6pm, and depart at 6:30 PM. Don’t forget to bring your torch, it’ll be dark!

Due to construction works around the Adelaide Aquatic Centre, the start location has been moved to 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!

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!

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

73

Mark VK5QI

April Meeting – Amateur Radio Direction Finding 101

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The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 19th of April at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentation kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!

Building on the success of AREG’s fox-hunt antenna group build, this month Mark VK5QI will be talking on Fox-hunting for beginners. No, we’re not talking about small furry animals, we’re talking about the sport of Amateur Radio Direction Finding. The talk will explain the equipment you need to get started, and some basic techniques that will help you find that first fox transmitter! There’ll be plenty of live demos showing various hunting equipment in action.

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 should also be streamed live on Hayden VK7HH’s HamRadioDX YouTube channel.

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

AREG Autumn Daytime Fox Hunt & BYO Picnic – Sunday April 14 @ 11am

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The next AREG hosted fox hunt is planned to be a daytime family “hand held, on foot” style hunt and BYO picnic event, held in Drage Reserve, Felixtow, just 6km north east of the city centre (near the Klemzig O-Bahn bus interchange). Members and visitors are welcome to join us in the park from 11.00am, on Sunday the 14th of April, 2024. This event is open to anyone who would like to join in.

NOTE – There will not be a car-based hunt on the 1st Friday in April – We will be running the on-foot hunt instead.

AREG members recently participated in a club group build event which saw around 50 fox hunt yagis made, so we’re keen to get out and give them a try!

For those who dont have any equipment, take a look at (this design) by NT1K! It is very simple and quick to put together! Add a variable attenuator and a receiver and you are away!

If you don’t have any gear but want to give it a try, AREG will have at least one or two loan sets of gear available, based on the very popular VK3YNG sniffer receivers, or we can arrange to buddy you up with one of the club members who do have equipment so you can get a first taste of fox hunting ARDF style.

If you’re not into fox hunting, but would still like to gather with all of us from AREG, we are also promoting this event as the AREG Autumn BYO Picnic for 2024. Just bring your own rugs, chairs, and food and drinks.

AREG has picked this location as it has lots of amenities for all of the family. There are public BBQs, a kids playground and public toilets in the area as well as ample parking in the Drage Reserve car park. The check-in point will be marked with AREG Flags and will be located on the south side of the river Torrens near the Riverside Park western BBQ area (west of the play ground closest to the Drage Reserve Car Park).

This will be a family freindly event with people of all ages welcome to join in, however children must be kept under the supervision of an accompanying adult at all times.

We will also endeavor to have someone monitor the VK5RSB 70cm repeater on 439.900 (91.5Hz CTCSS access tone) to help guide anyone in who is having problems finding us.

For those who want to be prepared and setup their receivers ahead of time, the fox frequencies will be:

Transmitter NumberFrequency (MHz)
1145.300
2145.700
3144.250
4144.500
5144.750
6145.000
7144.390
8439.400

 

We look forward to seeing you there!

March Meeting – Hermes Lite SDRs by Scott VK2JAX

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Update: This presentation was recorded and is available on Youtube.

The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 15th of March at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentation kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!

This month’s presentation will be from Scott VK2JAX, on the Hermes Lite SDR, an open-source and open-hardware direct conversion transceiver.

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

Next Fox-Hunt – Friday 1st March

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AREGs next car-based fox hunt will be held this coming Friday the 1st of March. We arrive at the start location around 6pm, and depart at 6:30 PM.

Due to construction works around the Adelaide Aquatic Centre, the start location has been moved to 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 transmitters may be hidden within.

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!

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!

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

73

Mark VK5QI

February Meeting – Club Member Lightning Talks!

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The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 16th of February at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentation kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!

This month will see a return of the “Members Lightning Talks” format where members from the floor are invited to step up and give a short 5 minute talk about something that they have been doing or experimenting with.

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