The next meeting of AREG will be held on Friday June 19th and will feature an introduction to the world of Meshtastic and Meshcore LoraWAN networking.
We will take you through what the networks are made of, what you can do with them and how to get involved.
This will occur down at our Clubrooms, at the Fulham Community Centre, off Phelps Court in Fulham. The meeting will start at 7.30pm with the doors open at 7.00pm.
Visitors are most welcome! We would love to meet you.
Are you one of the hundreds of people who have decided now is the time to start your journey into the world of Amateur Radio? We have many newcomers gaining their qualifications every month. Many of those, once they have their licence, take a step back and then ask themselves the question – now where to start gettng my own station on air?
At our May general meeting, we will have a panel of presenters take you through the process of working out where to begin, what to consider and how to get on the air from your own station.
We will introduce you to the various components you need to consider when getting on air on either the HF or VHF/UHF bands as well as highlight some activities where you can come along and find out more before taking the financial plunge yourself!
The meeting will be held at the Fulham Community Centre, on Phelps Court, Fulham, on Friday May 15th. Doors open at 7.00pm with the presentation starting at 7.30pm.
Visitors are most welcome!
Modern amateur radio is changing rapidly, and Software Defined Radio (SDR) is at the centre of that change. Many amateurs already own an SDR — or use one indirectly — but few have had the chance to understand how it actually works or why it feels so different from traditional radios.
This upcoming lecture will provide a plain‑language introduction to SDR, aimed specifically at amateur radio operators, not engineers or programmers.
Rather than focusing on mathematics or theory, the talk will explain SDR concepts using familiar radio ideas: receivers, mixers, filters, IF stages, and transmitters — and show how these functions are now being done in software instead of hardware.
Topics will include:
The lecture will also touch on GNU Radio, the most widely used SDR software framework, explaining what it does and why it has become so important — without requiring any programming knowledge.
Whether you are:
…this session is designed to demystify SDR and connect it back to the radio principles amateurs already know.
No prior SDR experience is required — just an interest in radio.
So when are where is this event? AREG meets at the Fulham Community Centre, off Phelps Court, in Fulham, Adelaide. Doors open at 7.00pm, Friday 17th April.
This month the meeting will begin with a short Special General Meeting to address a minor change to the group’s constitution, followed by the presentation which will likely start around 7.45pm.
For our regional members, the meeting will, as usual, also be interactively streamed via Zoom. If you are a regional amateur and are interested in finding out a little more about AREG, guest passes are available to our Zoom meetings on request. Please contact our secretary – via vk5arg@areg.org.au
Rob AI6VN takes us behind the scenes of how the WSPRDaemon project works and how it is contributing to the HamSci community.
On the 20th of February 2026, AREG was introduced to the world of Amateur Radio microwave experimentation on the 241 GHz band by David VK5KK and Iain VK5ZD. Here is their story!
Firstly, AREG wishes to advise that we will not be holding our normal March Friday night meeting on the 20th of March, as our meeting venue is not available this month due to it being used as a polling booth for this year’s state election. Instead, AREG is pleased to announce that we have a special guest presenter, Rob Robinett AI6VN, who will join us online from California via Zoom at a special meeting time of Saturday March 7th at 10AM Australian Central Summer Time.
Rob Robinett, AI6VN, will present an in-depth overview of WSPRDaemon, a low-cost, wideband software-defined radio (SDR) system designed for continuous monitoring of the MF and HF spectrum. WSPRDaemon uses the 16 bit / 128 Msps RX-888 SDR receiver to digitize the entire 0-64 MHz spectrum which enables the simultaneous recording and reporting of 51 signals: all 11 of the WWV, WWVH and CHU time signals, all 18 of the 2200m – 6 meter WSPR bands, and all 22 of the FT4 and FT8 bands.
When the RX-888 is clocked by a GPS-Disciplined Oscillator, WSPRDaemon records WWV with sub-microhertz accuracy while WSPR ‘spots’ are reported with 0.01 Hz accuracy. That accuracy results in Doppler shift measurements like those shown in the above spectrogram, and from which radio scientists are gaining insights into previously poorly understood ionospheric dynamics, Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs), and space-weather-driven propagation effects.
The system operates continuously 24/7 and automatically uploads WWV/CHU recordings to HamSCI servers where they are archived and made available for scientific research and collaborative analysis.
The presentation will cover system architecture, SDR hardware considerations, time and frequency accuracy requirements, software processing chains, and examples of real-world data products, including observations captured during geomagnetic storm events. Rob will also discuss how WSPRDaemon integrates into the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station (PSWS) framework and how amateur radio operators can deploy stations that contribute meaningful, research-grade data.
This talk will be of particular interest to members involved in SDR, weak-signal modes, propagation research, frequency metrology, and advanced amateur experimentation.
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!