Category Archives: Club Activities

Club Activities or Events

RPM200 Community Event – 2015 Planning Begins

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The AREG committee members have already begun the planning work for our club’s participation in the Marathon Canoe Club of SA’s RPM200 paddling event which will again be held over the June long weekend.

As always, the event will require AREG to cover the River Murray with communications from Berri to Morgan. Like we did last year, we are partnering with the Riverland Radio Club in order to achieve this for the 3 days.

Final details of the course for this year are expected shortly from the MCC. Lock 4 has reopened for this year but we are unsure about Lock 3. Once those details are known we will lock down the checkpoint requirements, prepare the operator registration forms and start planning the rosters.

Accommodation this year has been booked at the Kingston Caravan park, so the home base will be a little closer to the start of Day 1 and 2. Details of the accommodation and catering planning will be circulated at future club meetings leading up to the event.

Members are also advised that several working bees will also required between now and the event. One will focus on refreshing the VHF commercial network equipment, one will involve a field trip to the Riverland to replace the feeder at VK5RLD for the commercial repeater and one will most likely focus on assembling the APRS equipment we are looking to operate as part of this years event.

As always we look forward to the eager support from our members in this endeavor. If last year is anything to go by it should again be a load of fun for all involved!

John Moyle Field Day 2015 – Joint Club Effort

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Our keen “contest master” Andrew VK5AKH is again marshaling the troops for a tilt at the 2015 John Moyle Field Day contest. We have been planning the JMMFD effort for some time with lots of discussions happening over the summer months over a few beers, at at various portable operations and AREG and EARC club meetings.  With each year, our plans have seen incremental improvements being made with experiences learnt and the station has expanded into a top class contest station.

Last year the VK5LZ team was off DSC_5082
operating microwave at other locations while VK5ARG took up the mantle of participating on HF in the contest (as microwave is not everyone’s cup of tea). Several  HF minded EARC operators as a result teamed up with members of AREG to operate under the VK5ARG club call-sign at Parra Wirra conservation park with much success.It was so much of a success that the guys who operated at Parra Wirra last year want to come back and do it again!

So, this year, It has been agreed by both EARC and AREG, with the support of the WIA, to put in a combined team effort from Para Wirra. As it is a multi club effort we have united the teams under the state WIA call-sign, VK5WIA. The use of the WIA call sign also gives us a good opportunity to invite some hams from other clubs along who approached Andy after his contesting talk at the AHARS symposium. This will give new-comers an introduction to the art of contesting and HF portable operation (be it on an extreme level).

If you wish to participate, here are the details:

When: 21st-22nd March
Where: Para Wirra Recreation Park
Registration: Operators and Visitors Please fill in this form..

There is a Google group at the end of the form that you can join to be kept abreast of all of the preparatory developments for the contest over the next few weeks too! Details are available at the end of the registration form.

Project Horus Launch 9th November 2014

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On Sunday the 9th of November the AREG members assisted Project Horus and Launchbox with a double balloon launch from Mt Barker.

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Filling 2kg Balloon with 5.5m^3 of Helium

These two Balloon launches contained nine High School science experiments along with an experimental satellite payload from the University of South Australia.  They also carried the usual Project Horus cutdown and telemetry payloads to ensure recovery.

Thankfully the first payload was recovered from near Harogate and was relatively intact, after a freefall from 33kms sans chute.

The second payload made a miraculous landing into a farmers field just outside of Palmer, thanks to Andy VK5AKH for sharing the footage.

More specific details about the flights, altitudes and flight paths can be found on the Project Horus website.

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Telemetry & Cutdown ready to go

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First Balloon Train ready for Launch !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A big thanks has to go to our volunteer ground crew Gary VK5FGRY, Dennis VK5FDEN and his wife Irene, for cooking us a brilliant breakfast.  They also put up and took down the Marquee and made sure the oval was nice and clean while we’d all taken off to go and chase the Balloons…  Gary also made sure we had plenty of photos of the event, so it stands to reason why we’ve no photo of him to put on the blog (*grin*).

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Breakfast of Legends !

I’m confident that everyone enjoyed the day and can’t wait for the next adventure in the coming months !

73 Matt, VK5ZM

Oceania DX Contest

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Members of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group (AREG) will be activating the club call VK5ARG this weekend (4-5th October) for the Oceania DX SSB Contest. We will be operating from Younghusband, approx. 80km east of Adelaide, SA.

AREG will be entering the contest as a MULTI-ONE team, and the main operators will be Matt VK5ZM, Mark VK5QI, Josh VK5JO and Theo VK5MTM. We will mainly be focusing on the 20m band, but hope to work a few VKs on 40m also.

Hope to hear you on the bands!

VK5 Conservation/National Parks Award 1 year Anniversary

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The weekend of the 5th and 6th of April was the one year anniversary of the VK5 Parks award, which encourages portable operation from South Australia’s National & Conservation parks. ‘Activators’ operate portable from within parks, while ‘Hunters’ make contacts with activators. Awards are available for both activators and hunters, and also for making park-to-park contacts.

Andy VK5AKH and Mark VK5QI decided to give the AREG club callsign (VK5ARG) a workout by activating as many parks as possible in a single day. They set off Sunday morning at 7:30AM, and by 8PM had activated 20 parks. Emphasis was placed on fast activations, with about 5 contacts made per park.

The parks activated were:

  1. Morialta Conservation Park
  2. Black Hill Conservation Park
  3. Montacute Conservation Park
  4. Giles Conservation Park
  5. Horsnell Gully Conservation Park
  6. Ferguson Conservation Park
  7. Clealand Conservation Park
  8. Mount George Conservation Park
  9. Kenneth Stirling Conservation Park
  10. Mylor Conservation Park
  11. Mark Oliphant Conservation Park
  12. “The Knoll” Conservation Park
  13. Belair National Park
  14. Marino Conservation Park
  15. Hallett Cove Conservation Park
  16. Onkaparinga River Conservation Park
  17. Moana Sands Conservation Park
  18. Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park
  19. Kyeema Conservation Park
  20. Mount Magnificent Conservation Park

Some pictures from the day are shown below:

John Moyle Memorial Field Day 2014 – VK5ARG

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This year for the John Moyle Memorial field day 10 members from the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group (AREG) and 3 Members from the Elizabeth Amateur Radio Club (EARC) decided to combine efforts under the AREG club call-sign VK5ARG.
The Para-Wirra recreation pack, 30km north-east of Adelaide, was chosen for its low noise floor and relatively close location to the city. Theo, VK5MTM has produced a video showing the events of the weekend:

A great weekend was had by all, and we totalled 927 contacts across the HF bands.Thank you to those who attended, lent us gear and to all those stations we worked. Please submit your log and we hope to see you next year.

Project Horus Balloon Launch on WIA Field Day

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The Project Horus high altitude balloon group, based in Adelaide, is planning it’s 23rd balloon launch this Sunday 15th April, launching shortly after the WIA Broadcast between 10-11am.

This will be an amateur radio oriented balloon launch, with three payloads of interest to amateurs, intended to coincide with the WIA field day.

The group will fly the FM cross band voice repeater again. The repeater will operate with a 70cm uplink and a 2m downlink.

New frequencies will be used and they are;

  • Uplink: 438.900 MHz FM + CTCSS Tone of 123Hz
  • Downlink: 144.650 MHz FM (2m experimental segment) + CTCSS tone of 123Hz.

Based on previous flights, it should be possible to access the repeater from up to 800km away at apogee, with about 30-50W. A beam will help overcome the inevitable FM capture effect problems. The downlink is easily audible on any reasonable omni directional antenna, although if you are under the balloon’s flight path you may see 20dB fades or more.

The Amateur Radio Experimenter’s Group will be running net control on the voice repeater as VK5ARG from launch control in the Adelaide Hills.  On decent it is expected that the recovery teams will need to use the cross band repeater periodically, so we ask that people please observe the directions of the net control station.

An APRS tracker will also fly on this flight under the callsign VK5ARG-11 on the national 145.175 MHz frequency.   It will be possible to track the balloon progress via http://aprs.fi , make sure you check out the new horizon ring prediction service on this flight. Telemetry format packets are now also broadcast on APRS.

The ever reliable primary 300 baud RTTY telemetry beacon will also fly – at this stage it will be on 434.075 MHz (note update) (+/- 5kHz thermal drift). This signal is used as part of the group’s “distributed listener” telemetry network where any amateur receiving the data can upload what they are hearing over the internet.

The data, which is sent to the http://spacenear.us/tracker website, contributes to the landing zone predictions used by the chase teams. The chase-tracker teams have 3G Internet data in their vehicles and are actively using and looking at that data, so it is one way amateurs can have a behind the scenes involvement in the flight’s success. NOTE: this beacon only runs 25mW and can be heard at the radio horizon, so why not give it a go!

If you would like more information about the software setup required to participate in the RTTY telemetry recovery take a look at the Project Horus tracking page here http://projecthorus.org

Confirmation that the flight is a “go” can only be given on the Sunday morning (15th). Please keep an ear out on VK5RSB 439.900 or VK5RMB 146.875MHz.

Flying high altitude balloons is subject to the weather, stratospheric wind conditions and have various constraints on where we are permitted to fly, so the potential for the mission to be cancelled exists up until the very last minute before launch. We will endeavour to update various amateur forums and DX Clusters once it is in the air. Flight time should be around 2 & 3/4 Hrs.

If you would like to find out more about Project Horus, please visit our website at  http://www.projecthorus.org/ or for some short films of our past activities, the Vimeo channel at  http://vimeo.com.  This information can also be found in the text edition of the WIA News at  http://www.wia.org.au