WESTLAKES BROADCAST FOR SUNDAY 30TH DECEMBER 2012

CONDITION OF ENTRY TO WESTLAKES CLUB HOUSE: Westlakes club members and visitors: It is very important that everyone signs the members/visitors book which is in the hallway adjacent the main doorway. This has come about due to requirements made by our Insurance provider. It also helps the club in any insurance claim that a person has made against the club. Lets start off with the meat tray winner. Les VK2RJ was summoned to dig deep into the ticket tumbler and select a winning ticket. Another regular winner this time - Alex VK2ZM. It was smiles all around from Alex. Congratulations Alex no more meat trays for you this year and enjoy the meat tray. The activity room busy again with Norm assisting Richard finish off his 40 QRP before the end of the year. On went the soldering iron and a few components changed and finally a sound came from the speaker. It was Dave VK2RD calling from the radio room calling CQ. Yes, the radio was spot on frequency. With limited test gear, a frequency meter and a multimeter Norm VK2KNC pressed on and tuned the set up with some help from Herb VK2ZVF. Then it was off to the radio room to do some further testing and repairs. Finally the microphone produced a sound. This is VK2CW testing. Yep the microphone went dead. What did you do Greg? After some modifying to the microphone we had voices on the other end. A big thank you to Norm, who can say that he built 2 kits. Richard has tested the radio at home and made 2 contacts- one to John VK2PBC in Tea Gardens and another to Peter VK2GFE at Stuartsville. A 5/9 signal was received by Peter and John. The set just needs a few more adjustments and then watch out guys the QRP contest will commence. Just to top it off Richard made a contact with UT3XX Roman who gave me a 5/1 - 5/2. Roman also had a homebrew set but was running 2 KW into a 2 element quad. Michael was busy in the canteen cooking up hamburgers- what else would Ham operators eat. They were absolutely delicious Michael. Job well done. Higher power trial. The WIA lobbied the ACMA earlier this year for a high power trial up to one-kilowatt with 230 holders of the Advance Licences having paid the fee to take part. The 18-month trial began in March 2012 and is due to end next August, allows the ACMA and the WIA to evaluate any impacts before considering a long term arrangement. It confines the use of higher power to approved notice of licence variation applicants on the 80m band including the DX window, 7000 to 7100 kHz, and the entire 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m bands. Some radio amateurs located in defined areas were excluded at the time as they were being used on a trial basis by other sensitive radio communication technologies. The ACMA has previously balked at suggestions that higher power be permitted on the grounds of the interference potential. However a lifting from 500w to 1,000w for radio amateurs in New Zealand saw the matter being revisited by the ACMA. Successful applicants may be required by the ACMA to demonstrate compliance with the relevant exposure to radiation standard, and this is expected to happen in February. Just a reminder that club membership fees are now due. Please send your payments either to the club P O Box c/- of the secretary or bring them to the club in person on Saturdays. Not a member of Westlakes A.R.C. now is the time to join. Our next club meeting will be in February on the 2nd 2013 commencing at 1:30 pm. Everyone welcome. The clubs next public activity will be Australia Day at Spears Point Park on the 26th January 2013. Everyone is welcome - just bring your chairs with you and anything that you want to eat. Be there around 0845am. Activation of Mawson in Antarctica. Leaving soon on board the ice breaker Aurora Australis for the Australian Antarctic Territory station at Mawson is Craig Hayhow VK6JJJ, who will become VK0JJJ. He lands on February the 10th, planning to soon after install the 6m beacon VK0RTM and test the propagation on that band. The main HF rig is a FlexRadio Flex-5000A coupled to an amplifier and feeding a terminated sloping triangle antenna. On 6m it will be at 400 watts from Mawson thanks to a power amplifier from Steve Gregory VK3ZAZ, who is also the QSL manager, and radiated by a 5-element yagi. The amateur satellites on 2m and 70cm are to be accessed using a crossed duo-bander. During the next 12 months Craig VK0JJJ is in Antarctica to work and amateur radio is his leisure time activity. New MF band. Following the World Radio Conference in 2012, the frequency band 472 kHz to 479 kHz (630 Metres) will formally be available to radio amateurs in many countries from January 1, 2013. The latest announcement comes from the Australian Communications and Media Authority that Advanced Licence holders generally get access to the band on a secondary basis. As a result of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) at WRC12, the radiated power by amateur service stations is 1w pX EIRP, however due to their distance from some countries administrations including Australian, can use up to 5w pX EIRP with a maximum bandwidth of 2.1 kHz. Although available on a secondary basis to radio amateurs in all ITU regions, as a compromise many countries are not going to allow any amateur service access to the band. Within Australia there are exclusion zones at the Exmouth and Timor regions, where amateur radio use is not permitted due to the existence of aeronautical non-directional beacons used for local navigation at airports. The ITU case included that ground wave propagation in the under-used spectrum results in reliable communication over medium and large ranges, and is not dependent upon the ionosphere. It makes an ideal spot for radio amateurs to study anomalous propagation. The new medium frequency allocation takes formal effect in Australia on January 1, 2013, although several countries have already allocated it domestically. As a prelude to a secondary allocation at WRC12, Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, United Kingdom plus parts of Europe, the USA and some others allowed temporary use or experimental operations on nearby frequencies. WRC12 also re-allocated the original 500 kHz frequency, at the bottom edge of the AM broadcasting band which used previously as an international CW distress frequency, back to exclusive maritime mobile use for new navigation systems. Asia-Pacific gets Chinese GPS alternative. China has launched its own satellite called BeiDou (Big Dipper constellation in Chinese) to challenge the predominate Global Position System (GPS) that comes from the USA. The nation has come a long way since its first satellite was launched in 2000 and three years later was trialled for traffic control, weather forecasting and disaster relief work. The new system is to give initially an alternative to the Asia Pacific region which includes Australia, and the multi-million dollar project will service a global audience with its navigation, positioning, timing and other services by 2020. BeiDou does have some teething problems and currently less accurate, with GPS having 30 satellites orbiting earth compared to BeiDou with 15 at a moment and more after 2014. It was a challenger to GPS amid Chinese fears of a withdrawal of the valuable guidance and positioning system, particularly for its military during a conflict. This was China’s latest venture into space, hoping to build its own space station and land on the moon by the end of the decade. The GPS highly used worldwide and time will tell whether the Chinese home-grown product can gain much of the market outside its own country.