AREG AGM 2020 – New Committee

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Friday the 21st of August saw members gather for our first virtual Annual General Meeting . Over 35 members attended online via the Zoom platform. After all of the reports were presented and accepted, all positions were declared vacant and nominations were called.

The results are as follows:

  • President – Matthew VK5ZM
  • Secretary – Mark VK5QI
  • Treasurer – Grant VK5GR
  • Committee
    • Kim VK5FJ
    • Theo VK5IR
    • Steve VK5SFA
    • Jeff VK5AC
    • Darin VK5IX
VK5ZM
VK5ZM
VK5QI
VK5QI
VK5GR
VK5GR

We would like to welcome back our committee for 2020/21! Thanks team for agreeing to continue to lead our radio club.

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).

AREG Projects: Remote HF receive site development gathers pace!

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Several years ago, AREG first attempted to establish a remote HF receive site. The aim was to help members who were finding it tough to retain access to HF from home due to growing urban interference levels. The early attempt failed due to problems obtaining affordable internet access at the original site. However, the project didnt die, and the core team kept exploring options.

Then, over the last 12 months, the group finally found a willing land owner coupled with a helpful and supportive Internet provider (thanks to Beam Internet in the Barossa Valley). This has allowed the project to change gears.

Work has been gathering pace and a number of test receivers are now available for members to experiment with. As the site capability grows, AREG hopes to open up at least some channels to the general public as well.

Currently the group has a 4 channel KiwiSDR operational as well as several Airspy HF+ SDR receivers on 80/40/20m. For now, these are only accessible by AREG members. In time, as capability expands, there are plans to open some of the systems to the general community as well.

This phase of the project has been a team effort from multiple members across AREG. Special thanks to Steve VK5SFA, Mark VK5QI, Peter VK5KX, Kim VK5FJ and Jeff VK5AC who have lead much of the installation and construction to date, along with contributions of hardware and time from several others.

AREG is also considering other future developments for the site. These include:

  • a lightning detector receiver as part of the lightningmaps.org network
  • a multi-band HF APRS Receive gateway
  • A Reverse Beacon Network CW and RTTY node for 160-10m
  • A PSKReporter FT8 spotting node (160-10m)
  • A WSPRNet WSPR spotting node (160-10m)

If you would like to access the SDR services today, consider becoming become a member of AREG! The service is accessible now for group members.