Category Archives: Meetings

16th October General Meeting: Show and Tell night

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group will be held on Friday October 16th, starting at 7.30pm. Doors open from 7.15pm at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham.

This meeting will be a little different in format. We will first open with a standard business meeting. Following that, members are encouraged to bring along something radio related that they have been tinkering with since the COVID-19 lock downs began to show what you have been up to this past 6 months.

Tables will be set up around the hall, and rather than having to stand up and give a presentation, you can instead sit on your table and discuss what you have been working on with anyone who wonders by. (Hopefully this will encourage a few less confident speakers to still bring along what they have been working on). It may be a project, an antenna, a new radio or in fact anything at all provided it has some link to Amateur Radio!

The aim – to share your fun projects, or to present your problems in a way that others can come along and admire your handiwork or give you a hand or a helpful suggestion.

We will (hopefully) be able to have a roving Zoom terminal as well so that the remote members can also join in. Stay tuned for details of that one!

At the very least, it will give us all a chance to have more face to face discussion time given the complete lack of that over the past 6 months. Visitors are welcome to attend the hall, but will be required to sign in with their contact details in line with the COVID-19 Marshall requirements.

We hope to see you all there!

AREG Sept. General Meeting: Single Operator 2 Radios Contesting (SO2R) – Back at the Hall!

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The AREG committe is pleased to announce that the first face to face AREG meeting since the COVID-19 outbreak started in March will be  held this coming Friday, September 18th 2020! We will be returning to the hall, at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham at 7.30pm.
We will be following all of the government COVIDsafe guidelines including sign in sheets, COVID marshalls, special handling for food and beverages and will be observing social distancing. Members and visitors are most welcome to join us. You are required to bring your own cup if you wish a coffee or tea and will be responsible for taking it home and cleaning it yourself afterwards.
For those members still not willing to go out in public, we will also continue to Zoomcast our meetings online for members. This is intended to be a permanent fixture of our club into the future, especially given we currently have members in 4 states.

Single Operator 2 Radio (SO2R) Contesting

I’m sure that many AREG members will be familiar with contests and operating a single transceiver QRO station a in a pile up. But what happens if you introduce a second QRO station on the same desk, where your attention is now split across two transceivers and two bands are open at once ?
Welcome to the world of single operator two radio stations or SO2R for short.
Over the past two years some AREG members have been experimenting with SO2R at contests with mixed results.   Come along Friday to hear about what is an SO2R station, why they are fraught with danger for new operators and what steps have AREG members taken to reduce the chances of damaging equipment in the heat of battle, especially our prized AREG contesting filters.

QSL Bureau News

AREG Members are also advised that QSL cards will be available for collection on this evening. If there are non WIA members who would like to collect cards, please email vk5qslbureau@areg.org.au with your request and we will see if you have cards waiting that you can also collect in person.

Conclusion

We look forward to finally being able to meet in person again. It is not going to quite be as it was before, but it is a long way from where we have come! See you all on Friday Night!

AREG AGM 2020 – Tomorrow night August 21st 2020

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Folks, as a final reminder for members, the AREG Annual General Meeting, as notified on the members mailing list in June, will be held tomorrow night, Friday August 21st starting at 7.30pm.

While we had hoped to be ready to meet in person, given current conditions the committee has recommended we delay a little longer before re-opening the club rooms. As a result, the AGM will be held on-line via Zoom.

Members are also reminded that it is a members lightning talk night – so if you have a lockdown project you wish to share, put your hand up and give us a 5 minute run down on what you have been up to these past few months.

See all our members online tomorrow night!

July AREG Meeting: HF Pedestrian Mobile with Peter VK3YE

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AREG is pleased to announce that our next guest speaker will be Peter VK3YE who will talk about operating on HF Pedestrian Mobile!

The date: Friday July 17th – 7.30pm ACST

For members, the meeting will again be held via Zoom streaming on the internet. We will again bring a visitors live stream  via YouTube as well. (YouTube Link Here).

AREG June Meeting: 21cm Amateur Radio Astronomy

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenter’s Group will be held on Friday June 19th at 7.30pm ACST (1000 UTC). It will be held online due to the COVID-19 large gathering restrictions, which are still in force here in VK5.

AREG Members will be able to participate via Zoom while visitors will be able to watch the stream via Hayden VK7HH’s Ham Radio DX YouTube channel.

21cm Radio Astronomy
by Phil Lock and Bill Cowley

This month, we have as our guest speakers Phil Lock and Bill Cowley, talking about amateur radio astronomy.

Cheaper electronics has created great possibilities for amateur Radio Astronomy.   This talk will describe a local project to receive and map the distribution of 21cm signals from neutral Hydrogen in our galaxy.   We briefly describe the history of  21cm RA and why it’s still of great interest to astronomers.  We outline some challenges over the last few years in assembling a 2m dish with custom feed, electronics and signal processing, then show recent results from our project.

The image above shows recent signals (May 17th) recorded over a 24 hour period for dish elevation of 53 degrees. The signal changes as the antenna points to different parts of the Milky Way.

The AREG committee is also looking to the future and is hoping as the situation continues to improve that we may be able to return to meeting in person by August (our AGM).