December Meeting – An introduction to FDM 3D Printing by Bob VK5FO

Update: The talk was recorded and is available below!

The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 20th of December 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 by Bob VK5FO, giving us an introduction to Fused Deposition Modelling (filament-based) 3D printing. Bob will cover some of the entry-level printers available, different filament types, and how to get started using designs you can find online.

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.

We won’t be holding a general business meeting this month – instead there’ll be time after the presentation for a catch-up before we break for the holiday season.

We’ll be back in January with a lightning talks session, on all of our holiday amateur radio projects!

73, Mark VK5QI

Next Project Horus Launch – Horus 63 – 1st December 2024 – Cross-band Repeater – Mt Barker Launch!

AREG’s High-Altitude Ballooning sub-group, Project Horus, is planning their next launch for Sunday the 1st of December, with a planned launch time of 10 AM ACDST. If we have to scrub due to poor weather, the backup launch date will be the 8th of December.

UPDATE 27th Nov: This launch is currently planned to be performed from the Mt Barker High School Oval with the launch team arriving on site from around 9:15 AM. Note that access to the oval is via Stephenson street, and parking near the oval is extremely limited. 

TRACKING LINKS

This flight will feature a new cross-band repeater payload, enabling amateur radio operators around the state to communicate via the balloon! Along with this will be a newly built Wenet Imagery payload, using a PiCam v3 in autofocus mode.

  • FM Crossband Repeater: 145.075 MHz Input (91.5 Hz CTCSS), 438.975 MHz output.
  • Wenet Imagery on 443.5 MHz.
  • Primary Horus Binary telemetry on 434.200 MHz
  • Backup Horus Binary payload, on 434.210 MHz
  • TheThingsNetwork tracking payload, using the AU915 band-plan.

During the flight, all the payloads can be tracked lived on the SondeHub-Amateur tracker here!

FM Cross-band Repeater Payload

This is the first test flight of a new experimental FM cross band voice repeater based around a Yaesu FT-530 handheld transceiver.The balloon repeater should be heard on:

  • INPUT: 145.075MHz with 91.5Hz CTCSS
  • OUTPUT: 438.975MHz  – 0.5W into 1/2-wave omni

Please note that this repeater is experimental, and may have performance issues or even fail completely during the flight!

To transmit to the balloon at the maximum range of 800km (once the balloon reaches 100,000ft ++) you should only need approximately 10-20W and an 2-4dB gain antenna.

Receiving the balloon at 400km range in a handheld environment should be achievable, but to hear the repeater at the maximum range of 800km you should expect to need a 10dB gain Yagi for a 0.4uV capable receiver and 2dB feeder loss

This setup is much the same as the LEO satellites but without the doppler shift.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CAN HEAR IT BEFORE YOU TRANSMIT!

This repeater will be operated as a controlled net, with the net control callsign VK5ARG – please listen out for net control before calling!

We will be offering QSL cards to stations that make a contact with net control during the flight, so get your stations setup and give it a go!

Primary Telemetry – Horus Binary 434.200 MHz – HORUS-V2

Reprogrammed RS41The primary tracking telemetry will be transmitted on 434.200 MHz using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode. Amateurs in the Adelaide and Central SA region are also encouraged to get involved with the flight through receiving and uploading flight telemetry from our 70cm band tracking beacons. Every piece of telemetry data is valuable to the flight tracking and recovery teams so if you can help join the distributed receiver network to collect that data you will be making an important contribution to the project!

If you try receiving the telemetry from this flight, you’ll need a SSB-capable 70cm receiver (or a SDR), and the Horus-GUI telemetry decoder software. A brief guide on setting this up is available here: https://github.com/projecthorus/horusdemodlib/wiki/1.1-Horus-GUI-Reception-Guide-(Windows-Linux-OSX)

Listeners that already have Horus-GUI installed are encouraged to update to the latest version, which is available at this link.

Note that you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.199 MHz for the 4FSK signal to be centred in your receiver passband and hence be decodable.

Backup Telemetry – Horus Binary 434.210 MHz – VK5ARG

A backup tracking payload will be transmitting on 434.210 MHz using the Horus Binary 4FSK data mode, and can be received in the same way as the primary tracking payload, with information above. For this payload you will need to use a USB ‘dial’ frequency of 434.209 MHz.

Wenet Imagery – 443.500 MHz

Imagery on this flight will be transmitted via the Wenet downlink system, which uses 115kbit/s Frequency-Shift-Keying to send HD snapshots. Reception of the Wenet imagery requires a Linux computer, a RTLSDR, and a 70cm antenna with some gain (a 5-element Yagi is usually enough).

This payload will be experimenting with a PiCam v, which we previously flew with only partial success on Horus 59. This time around many software updates have been written, hopefully allowing the PiCam v3’s autofocus to work on a balloon launch. This flight aims to test out these software changes, and gather data to help improve performance on future launches.

Wenet imagery from Horus 62

A guide on how to get set up to receive the Wenet signal is available here: https://github.com/projecthorus/wenet/wiki/Wenet-RX-Instructions-(Linux-using-Docker)

Please note the transmit frequency of 443.5 MHz, which may require listeners to re-configure their Wenet setup. 

Note: Stations that are already ready to receive Wenet are advised to update to the latest testing version for this flight. See here for instructions: https://gist.github.com/darksidelemm/cdc36a90ca96b87d148fdd7d68d5d5fe

During the flight, the live imagery will be available at this link: http://ssdv.habhub.org/

TheThingsNetwork Payload – 915 MHz LIPD Band

This flight will also fly a LoRaWAN payload built by Liam VK5ALG, relaying positions via TheThingsNetwork (TTN), a global Internet-of-Things network with hundreds of receiver gateways across Australia. You can find out more about how TheThingsNetwork works here.

The aim of this payload is to test a new antenna, and try and beat our previous range records on the 915 MHz band.

November Meeting – The new M17 digital voice mode!

This talk was recorded, and is available here: 

The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 15th of November 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 by Tony VK3JED, giving us an introduction to the M17 digital voice mode. Tony will discuss the history of this mode, how it differs from other existing digital voice modes, and how you can get on air using this mode. Tony will also demonstrate the first commercial radio with M17 included, the CS7000!

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

October Meeting – Working rare DX (and VK9CV!) with FT8 – Grant VK5GR

The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 18th of October at the Fulham Community Centre – Phelps Court, Fulham, with doors opening at 7:00 PM, and the presentations kicking off at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome!

WSJT-X 2.7.0 RC-5: Revolutionizing DXpeditions with SuperFox Mode - Unicom RadioVK9CV – Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Grant will discuss what the different multi-stream FT8 systems are, and provide some tips on how to work out which mode a DX station is using. He will also introduce the new Superfox mode and explain what makes it tick.

Grant is also operating on the upcoming Cocos Island VK9CV DXpedition, and will give us a brief on what they will be doing on the island, and how to best find them on the bands, including some tips for alerting the VK9CV team when 6m opens to Cocos Island.

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

VK5RWN DMR Connectivity Failure – under investigation

The VK5RWN DMR repeater has developed a fault and has lost connectivity with the Internet. A site visit this evening confirmed that the repeater unit was no longer getting access to the site router. We appear to have had an ethernet port failure but are still trying to prove where the problem lies.

Meanwhile VK5RWN DMR is still on the air, but is only operating in local mode until we can restore the internet connectivity. Apologies for this break in transmission and we will attempt to restore service as soon as we can.

 

September Meeting – Adam VK2YK/VK5GA – “The GreenGube (IO-117) Experience!”

Adam’s presentation was recorded and is available here:

The next AREG meeting will be held on Friday the 20th of September 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!

Adam’s portable setup for working IO-117 and other satellites

This month’s presentation will be from Adam VK5GA/VK2YK on operating the GreenCube (IO-117) Medium-Earth-Orbit amateur satellite!

Adam will give a run down on his journey and experience so far with IO-117 (Greencube) Digipeater satellite, including info on his setup and issues encountered along the way. He will provide a brief update on health of the satellite at the moment.

If you’ve never come along to one of our meetings, we’d love to see you there, all guests are welcome at the hall. For our remote members, the meeting will be broadcast via Zoom, and will be recorded for upload after the evening.

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