Category Archives: Meetings

How to Home Brew a 20-6m HexBeam for HF – Next AREG Meeting

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenter’s Group will be held on Friday September 20th. The presentation tonight will be given by Theo VK5IR who will take us through what he has learned as he has set to home brewing his 20-6m HexBeam antenna. The HexBeam antenna design is well known to many in AREG but Theo is the first in the club to home brew one. This could kick off a whole new round of antenna construction experimentation at the club!

AREG meets at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham. Doors open at 7.15pm with the meeting starting at 7.45pm sharp. Visitors are most welcome!

AREG Annual General Meeting – Friday August 16th 7.45pm

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The Amateur Radio Experimenters Group Inc will hold it’s Annual General Meeting on Friday August 16th, at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham, starting at 7.45pm.

The AGM will recap the year that was for AREG with the presentation of the reports by the committee. All positions will then be declared vacant, and the election of the office bearers and committee will be held.

After the AGM, refreshments will be served and there will be ample opportunity to socialise and talk about the exciting year ahead!

Visitors are always welcome! We hope to see you there!

Next AREG Meeting: RF Transformers – Theory into Practice – July 19th

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group will be held on Friday July 19th. Doors open at 7.15pm with the presentations starting from 7.45pm.

AREG is very pleased to announce that our guest speaker for the evening is Neil Abraham VK5KA.

Neil has a lifetime’s experience designing RF transformers (among many other things) for a prominent  commercial HF radio manufacturer here in South Australia. In this presentation, Neil will open a window into the world of RF transformers and impedance matching, showing how they can be used in your every day amateur radio station experiments.

Neil says the following about his presentation:

  • I am not going to cover every thing there is to know about RF transformers.
  • I hope to give you enough info so you can design and make your own transformers.
  • I am going to limit this to transformers that are used  to help match HF antennas and feed lines.

If ever you have experimented or had a desire to experiment with designing your own antennas, invariably at some point you will face the issue of how to match that antenna to your transmitter. This presentation will be a great introduction to this most useful aspect of the radio art-form.

Visitors are most welcome! Following Neil’s talk, there will be a short business meeting, followed by tea, coffee and cake and a chance to talk about your own antenna matching challenges with Neil. We hope to see you at the club!

Where do we meet?

AREG meetings at the Fulham Community Centre (formerly known as the Reedbeds Community Centre), on Phelps Court in Fulham.

 

Next AREG Meeting: Club Remote SDR Project – HOWTO Night

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AREG has long been seeking a location to establish a remote SDR receive site as a way of allowing members to escape the ever increasing levels of RF interference one sees in suburbia. Finally, the beginnings of this project are taking shape, with a trial system now in place at a location ~100km north of Adelaide.

This meeting will introduce the KiwiSDR system, and show people what was installed , as well as how to use it. We will also show the next steps with the antenna system and talk about ways of using the SDR system in your every day activities. We will also talk about the wider worldwide SDR network and how you can find your way around it.

(It should be noted that the system itself is being restricted to members only at this time due to the temporary nature of the trial site and internet feed).

The meeting will be held on Friday June 21st at the Fulham Community Centre, 1 Phelps Court, Fulham. The doors will open at 7.15pm with the meeting to start promptly at 7.45pm The presentation will commence immediately after a short business meeting.

Members and non members alike are both welcome at club meetings. If you would like to know more, why not come along and introduce yourself!

Next Meeting: Friday 10th May – Member Lightning Talks

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenter’s Group will be held (yet again) one week early on Friday May 10th. This time it is a result of the Federal Election which has cancelled our hall booking for our normal night of May 17th. The doors will open at 7.15pm with the business meeting commencing at 7.45pm. The presentations for the evening will begin by 8.00pm. The event will be followed by coffee and cake!

AREG Lightning Talks

Photo by Mark VK5QI of Lightning over Adelaide 24th October 2014

This months meeting is a return to one of our favourite formats, the member lightning talk. While the talks are not about “lightning”, members are invited to give a lightning fast 5 minute introductory presentation on their latest experiment or project. Our time keeper Mark will keep things moving ensuring a lively and diverse range of topics can be covered over the 30-40 minutes of the presentations.

Members who would like to make a presentation should announce it on the club mailing list beforehand so we can plan the program order accordingly, although “drop ins” on the night will also be welcome. Projector slides if you want to show something should be sent to Grant, VK5GR on email prior to the event.

Afterwards, members of the audience will have the opportunity to get up close and personal with the presenters and talk to them in more detail about their projects and experiments. In this way we hope to promote sharing of what experiments the members are undertaking at this very moment.

Visitors are always welcome!

AREG is very happy to welcome visitors to our club meetings, so come along and find out what the membership of AREG is experimenting with!

The club meets at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham.

We hope to see you there!

AREG April Meeting THIS FRIDAY – Introducing FreeDV!

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Thanks to Easter this year, the AREG meeting is being held 1 week early on Friday April 12th, starting at 7.45pm. Doors open at 7.15pm.

This months presentation is by David VK5DGR, who will introduce FreeDV, talking about it’s capabilities and development as well as how you can try it yourself.

David will also discuss the latest developments in FreeDV and will hopefully give us a sneak peak of what is coming just around the corner.

We will also discuss the up-coming FreeDV QSO Party, the rules and what you need to do to be able to take part! The FreeDV QSO party is being held over the weekend of April 27th and 28th.

At the club business meeting we will also be discussing a working bee to recover the original attempted remote SDR site over the Easter/Anzac day break as well as the pending River Paddling Marathon 200 community event which is supported by AREG each year over the June long weekend.

So why dont you come along and find out what we are up to today in the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group Inc. The clubrooms are located at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham.

We hope to see you there!

Next AREG Meeting March 8th (early) – 6m Moonbounce

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The moon at moon set (4am) with our 6m EME antenna – Photo by Scott VK5TST

Several weeks ago, members of AREG headed out into the country side to try an experiment that many had wanted to do for many years – bounce a signal off the moon. With the help of Peter VK5PJ who has the necessary high power permits, we were able to achieve just that!

The team involved will take people through the events of that weekend and share what we learned about EME procedures, RadHaz management, JT65A and what it takes to send a radio signal over a half a million km journey to the moon and back.

Meeting Date and Time

NOTE This month’s AREG meeting is occurring one week early on the 2nd Friday of the month, so as to avoid clashing with the John Moyle Memorial Field Day Contest the following weekend. The hall will open at 7.15pm and the meeting will commence at 7.45pm sharp with a short AREG business meeting. The guest presenters will start by ~8pm. The presentation will be followed by coffee and cake and an opportunity to discuss EME with those who were there.

AREG meets at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham (formerly known as the Reedbeds Community Centre).

Visitors are most welcome!

Getting Started on 630m (476kHz) – 7.45pm February 15th

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The next meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group will be held on Friday 15th of February. This month we have Andrew VK5CV as guest presenter who will introduce the world of the 630m band on 476kHz. Andrew has been an active experimenter on this band for some time in Adelaide and is a fountain of knowledge on how to put a signal on air on this band, even from a suburban block.

www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/mf/mf.html

Example of an MF transmitter setup

Meeting Location and NEW TIME!

The meeting will be held at the Fulham Community Centre, Phelps Court, Fulham. From this month, AREG meetings will be starting earlier and will have some format changes. The hall will now open at 7.15pm and the meeting will start at 7.45pm on the dot. The restructured and shortened business meeting will be first with the guest presenter starting by 8.15pm.

After the formal part of the meeting, refreshments will be available (tea, coffee and cake) and you will have the chance to discuss what you have heard with the presenters each month! We hope this new format is a positive development for those attending AREG meetings!

Visitors are most welcome!

Advanced Notice – March & April Meetings – New Dates!

The Amateur Radio Experimenters Group also wishes to advice that we have changed the dates for our March and April meetings.

  • The March meeting will now be held on the 8th of March (2nd Friday) so as to avoid clashes with the team setting up for the John Moyle Field Day. The topic for this meeting should be confirmed shortly.
  • The April meeting will now be held on the 12th of April (again the 2nd Friday) so as to avoid clashing with Easter Good Friday. This meeting will hear from David VK5DGR on his work to develop FreeDV2020 – a new high quality audio version of his FreeDV HF digital voice transmission mode that uses roughly the same bandwidth as FreeDV 1600

Stay tuned for other special events that are also planned in the coming months! More information will be published on these as they are confirmed!