Next Meeting: August 19th – HF Digital Modes for Beginners

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The next general meeting of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group will be held on Friday August 19th. Doors open 7.45pm with the meeting starting at 8.00pm.

The topic for the evening will be “Introducing Digital Modes on HF – how to get started – from a beginner who just has”. I will be taking you through what can be achieved on a fairly modest HF station using digital modes, including what software you can use, what hardware you need and what some of the more “exotic” modes are that you can play with on HF digital, including:

Feld-Hell-decode

Feld Hellschreiber Signals on 20m

  • RTTY
  • PSK31/63/125
  • MFSK16
  • Olivia
  • Contestia
  • Hellschrieber
  • JT65/JT9 and WSJT
  • SSTV
MFSK16-VK2YQA-with-images-2

MFSK16 from VK2YQA/4 on 20m

I will also discuss calling techniques, frequencies and contesting on HF as well as logging on rig integration.

I don’t profess to be an expert on these modes either – this is all relatively new (apart from RTTY) to me too (despite being licensed since the 1980s) as until March this year I had never had my own HF station. Having said that, even with a modest 100W station I have managed to work 62 countries using a variety of these modes, even in the relatively poor conditions on HF that we have seen over the last 6 months.

sstv-MMSSTV Program

MMSSTV Software

VK4LHD on 14230kHz SSTV
VK3OHM on 7171kHz SSTV
VK3OHM on 7171kHz SSTV

SSTV Pictures on 40 and 20m.

After the presentation there will be a light supper followed by the monthly business meeting.

VK2YQA/4 MFSK16 Picture from QLD on 30m

VK2YQA/4 MFSK16 Picture from QLD on 30m

Oceania DX Contest 2016: Planning Meeting FRIDAY 29th July

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OceaniaDXContest-in-CenturyGothic-horiz-930

AREG is again planning on participating as a Multi-Multi portable station in this year’s OCDX contest. Planning for the station has been quietly underway for some time, however now that we are only a couple of months out, it is time to get serious!

To move things along, an AREG OCDX planning meeting will be held at the Clubrooms, Reedbeds Community Hall, Fulham starting at 6pm on Friday 29th July (tomorrow). The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to come along and contribute to the station construction or operation. A group collection to fund Pizza and the room hire will be conducted at the start of the night.

Contest Countdown!

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High Altitude Balloon Launch WEDNESDAY 27th July with Willunga High School

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Andy VK5AKH and Mark VK5QI preping the balloon

Willunga High School undertook a high altitude (well, not so high this time…) balloon launch Wednesday the 27th July, with some tracking support provided by AREG’s Project Horus flight team.

Willunga Balloon Prediction July 2016

WHS Balloon Flightpath Prediction

This flight was organised mostly (gas + balloon + payload + CASA) by a science teacher from the high school, with assistance from myself (telemetry + recovery). The launch being mid-week certainly doesn’t make it easy from our side, so at the moment the tracking crew consists of myself, Gary, and the Adelaide division of IBM Ozlabs (Joel Stanley and Andrew Jeffery).

The flight carryed a GoPro plus the usual tracking & cutdown payloads, beneath a 300g balloon. We expected a burst altitude of around 20km, with a predicted landing zone to the east of Swan Reach:

This was a fairly long distance flight for the predicted altitude, but the predicted flight path holds the promise of some pretty good video of the Adelaide area (assuming the ‘partly cloudy’ prediction happens). The VK5QI chase crew was on the road to Swan Reach roughly 30-45 min prior to the launch time, to get in position to both cutdown (if required) and recover.

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During the Chase and recovery

Update: The Flight was a Success!

The flight has been a success and the payload was recovered (albeit a little further away than planned, about 10-15km south of Waikerie). Here was the actual track route from the chase:

Flight Path

Flight Path

The AREG crew helped with filling the balloon as well at the School. Here are their ground crew efforts

The following gives you an idea of some of the frames collected by the camera for the school!

And the following is the recovery action

Thanks to Gary VK5FGRY, Mark VK5QI and Andy VK5AKH for the photos!

VK5ZM’s Hilux Rebuild

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For those that listen on VK5RSB regularly they would have overheard that Matt VK5ZM has been rebuilding the engine in his Old Toyota Hilux.

Well Matthew has finally put a blog post together over on rfhead.net so interested Amateurs can find out why Matthew’s not been on drive time this past week.

With luck he’ll be out and about over the weekend driving about the place, keep an ear out on VK5RSB.

Welcome to the AREG Committee for 2016/17

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The Amateur Radio Experimenters Group held it’s Annual General Meeting last night, Friday July 15th. At the meeting, all positions were declared vacant and Chris VK5CP presided over the process of selecting a new committee for the forthcoming year.

Nominations were received and in the absence of any competition, the following people were elected to the committee for 2016/17″

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Welcome to the new members on the committee in Kim and Theo!

VK5RWN Internet connectivity re-established.

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wncdstar_logoFollowing up from the previous report that VK5RWN D-STAR system was off line due to site mains power failure.

Well the power came back on last night, 13 July 2016, but the internet connectivity did not?

A site visit this morning, 14 July 2016, identified that the POE power supply had died.

This is one of those little Blue QSKJ inverter modules that lifted the 12 volts to 16 volts to feed the router switch and the Ubiquiti WiFi unit up the tower. The faulty unit was replaced with a loan unit.

With the POE PS restored, connectivity was re-established and all is now good. Confirmed that the VK5RWN D-STAR system was fully operational and reporting to the respective D-STAR reporting sites.

Feedback on VK5RWN’s performance and operation may be sent to AREG, vk5arg@wia.org.au or the D-STAR Systems Administrator, Ben VK5BB, vk5bb@wia.org.au