WESTLAKES AMATEUR RADIO CLUB BROADCAST NEWS FOR 5TH AUGUST 2012.

Welcome to this week's local news broadcast. This is VK2ATZ, The callsign of Westlakes Amateur Radio Club located at Teralba, Lake Macquarie. Your reader this morning is Barrie. There may be a simulcast being transmitted this morning on 3.565 MHz courtesy of Warren VK2UWP Callbacks follow at the conclusion of this news.Then at 9.30am is a relay of the Australia-wide amateur radio news from VK1WIA. It was meeting time again at the club for our August monthly meeting and some of the items discussed were - Emergency exits for radio room and library, on going for costings etc, Lighthouse weekend away ( NORAH HEAD LIGHTHOUSE )in a fortnights time. Richard vk2rko will be bringing his antennas down and the club will bring down the transceivers,ATU's and power supply and laptop computer for logging the contacts that we make. It should be a good weekend away. Garry VK2DBI will be looking after the running of the Rickety Kate so please support him as all money raised will go to help pay our lease that we have with Lake Macquarie Council. Next weekend, the RD Contest will be held and radio operators are required as this is a 24 hrs contest. Please note the new time that the contest will start 1300 hrs Saturday until 1300 hrs Sunday. Can you spare an hour or so to help log the contacts or operate a radio, please contact Barrie VK2ABD and register your name. After the meeting the meat tray raffle took place and last weeks meat tray winner Garry VK2DBI was at the club to draw out of the ticket tumbler this weeks winner. This weeks lucky winner was Alec VK2ZM. Congratulations Alec enjoy your meat tray. After the drawing of the meat tray, Diane VK2FDNE with the excellent help of Penny and Leigh VK2KAL laid out on the table a fantastic spread of nibblies which was enjoyed by all. There were a number of birthdays being celebrated this month and we wish them all a happy birthday and yes the cake was very nice. The September monthly meeting will be held on the 8th September and NOT on the 1st Saturday as normally held. Both President and Vice President will be away so please take note of the next meeting date. At the club yesterday there was a hive of activity. Some members were showing off their new project( broadcast receiver) and one member had quiet an impressive unit. This project for members who have missed what the project is, it is a broadcast receiver with most of the components been able to be purchased from our store. A prize for the best looking and working unit will get a prize donated by Geoff ( VK2GL). So come on, come to the club and get your bits for the receiver and have some fun. Last Thursday Les VK2RJ was at the club house to show a number of members how to use and operate WINDOWS 7. About 15 people were there and came away with much more knowledge on how to use this operating system. It has been suggested that Les run another class on a Saturday so that other members that could not be there last Thurday can come along and learn more about WINDOWS 7. Please register your name with the club secretary or see Les at the club. Are you a Amateur Radio operator living in the Hunter? Why not join our club and take part in future events. Please contact our club secretary Barrie at our postal address. New members most welcome. Reminder of our Field Day which will be held on the 16th of September. This is a Sunday. All the usual stall holders will be there as well as Andrews Communications. Westlakes famous jelly bean guessing competition, BBQ and raffles will be there. This is your club so if you have anything which you would like to donate ( no TVs, VCRs or computer monitors). Ring the club for further details. Stall holders as well as boot sales are most welcome. VK5DGR to receive ARRL Technical Innovation Award. The ARRL Board has awarded the 2012 ARRL Technical Innovation Award to David Rowe VK5DGR for his work on the amateur radio Codec2 low bit rate speech codec. The ARRL Board minutes for July 20-21 say: 32. On motion of Mr. Norris, seconded by Dr. Weaver, the following was ADOPTED with applause: Whereas David Rowe, VK5DGR, has been a major leader and the primary technical author of an open-source CODEC2 protocol, designed to address the impediment to the development of amateur digital-voice posed by closed sources protocols; and Whereas the open-source nature of this work is a major step forward in the development of digital voice communications; Therefore, the ARRL Board of Directors awards the 2012 ARRL Technical Innovation Award to David Rowe, VK5DGR. On hearing of his award David Rowe VK5DGR said: When I first became interested in Ham Radio as a 12 year old in the late 70's my grandfather bought me the 1979 ARRL handbook. Quite an honor to one day be contributing back to this fine hobby that was my start in a communications and electronics career. That version of the handbook even had a chapter on "Narrow Band Voice Modulation" - an esoteric analog technique to compress speech by removing chunks of audio bandwidth. Who would have thought that 30 years later I 'd be contributing in the same area....... Record year for the ILLW With less than two weeks to go, the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend has already exceeded last year's total of 470 registrations in its 15th year and is headed for a new record. The 48 hour fun event has steadily grown from the 158 in its first year and most of those early registrations continue to be involved. In the United Kingdom there are 60, and half of those can be found in England. There are plenty throughout Europe including Germany on 52 and The Netherlands 25. North, Central and South America have more than 80 stations registered with Argentina, Canada, Chile, Curacao, Honduras, Mexico,Panama and Puerto Rico plus 55 in the USA. Nearly 70 been received from Australia and New Zealand, South Africa has 15 and no matter where you are there will be plenty to work. Most issue special QSL cards. The mainstream media continues to run the story. The Clare Herald reports that the Loop Head Lighthouse in County Clare will be on air courtesy the Limerick Radio Club EI0LHL. It will join others to participate in promoting public awareness of lighthouses and lightships and their need for preservation and restoration. On leaving the Club yesterday, 1 member in his car was heard tooting his horn 3 times before reversing his car. Greg VK2CW was seen laughing his head off. Good on you Richard. WORLD NEWS: Ultra-low power 2.4GHz transceiver platform draws less than 10mW. August 03, 2012 // Julien Happich reports. The IcyTRX developed by CSEM is a new transceiver platform that consumes less than 10mW and is well suited to ultra-low power RF applications such as Bluetooth low energy, WirelessHART, and IEEE802.15.4. The IcyTRX platform has been designed with the goal of reducing power consumption well beyond the state of the art, as well as allowing the use of small coin cell batteries, thus extending battery life and miniaturization far beyond that obtainable today. In addition to a market-leading power consumption of less than 8mA at 1.2V, IcyTRX offers a highly integrated design avoiding external matching components. With a footprint under 2mm2, the chip supports a variable data rate of up to 2MBits/s. Designed in a standard digital 90nm CMOS process, the IC is available as a silicon-proven IP and under license for integration into RF SoCs. In the world's worst blackout in recent times power was cut to 700 million people in India. Jayu Bhide VU2JAU reports that the North-East grid failed due to a fault in the plant and 20 states were affected by the power failure. Work to restore the power was in progress. National Coordinator for Disaster Communication in India, Jayu VU2JAU said that New Delhi had its power cut for 12 hours yesterday. He said in the evening power was restored to some parts of Delhi and the surrounding areas. The work to restore was still in progress. "Hams in and around the affected areas were ready for the emergency communication required during power cuts," said Jayu VU2JAU. They provided emergency communications during the outage, all voice repeaters were in order and did not fail despite the heavy duty back-up power needed. He said, "Hams will still be on their toes until completepower is restored." Further reports on the crisis are expected later. Luckily, said Jayu VU2JAU, "Everything went well and no major casualty was reported". Up to 20 of India's 28 states were plunged into darkness as suppliers failed to meet the growing demand caused by air-conditioning units, flat-screen TVs and other gadgets. Hundreds of trains failed, traffic lights were out, surgical operations cancelled, and underground miners were trapped when their lifts broke down. The blackout raised concern about India's infrastructure. Well that's all the news I have this week. Do you have a news items that you would like read out on a broadcast? Contact Richard VK2FRKO on email address vk2frko@tpg.com.au or give the item to Richard at the club. Now to wind up. Westlakes Amateur Radio Club Inc. is located in York Street, TERALBA - and is open on Saturday Afternoons from around 12 noon. Also on a Tuesday evening from around 6pm. To make contact at other times, try dialling (02) 49 581588 where an answering service operates. Visitors are alway welcome at the club. We have plenty of tea, coffee, long-life milk, and an interesting selection of biscuits.