WESTLAKES BROADCAST NEWS FOR THE 14TH JULY 2013.

Last weeks lucky meat tray Herb (VK2ZVF) reached into the ticket tumbler and drew this weeks lucky winner. It was Diane"s duty to read out the call sign on the winning ticket. The meat tray winner was Greg VK2CW - enjoy the meat tray Greg and see you next week. In the library yesterday afternoon Marcel ( VK2FMDB) gave a very interesting talk on programming of the AT Tiny 85 chip. The AT Tiny 85 chip is used for menu processing and an example that was demonstrated was a beacon. A small group of members attended the lecture. The program is written in C language. These little programming chips are available on the web and Marcel said he bought 10 for $20.00 delivered to his door step. Marcel then showed everyone how the program is entered and what the different symbols meant. This chip has unlimited uses. Thanks Marcel for a great lecture. Diane and Michael would like to advise all members that visit the club that he only supplies a limited amount of fresh mince meat and salad for hamburgers. They ask that in the future anyone who wants a hamburger could you please pre book one with your name. That way no one misses out and this also stops wastage. Please contact Richard VK2FRKO via his his email address or contact Diane VK2FDNE at worley51@tpg.com.au Just a reminder that the canteen will only be serving pies and sausage rolls and as next Saturday as this is meeting day and a feast will be held afterwards. While speaking of meetings next Saturday commencing at 13:30 hrs will be the clubs General meeting. Everyone is invited and remember this is your club so come along and have your say. Not forgetting our club Field Day which will be held on the 15th September ( this is a Sunday ) and the club is looking for donations of equipment for the auction table. Remember no TVs, computer monitors, VCRs. Why not come and have your stall. If you are interested please contact Barrie VK2ABD to book your spot and remember to bring your own table for your goods. The famous Westlakes BBQ will be cooking steak and sausages and serving fresh salad for sandwiches. The guessing competition for the number of jelly beans in the jar will once again be there as a fund raising venture. Andrews Communications WILL NOT BE HERE THIS YEAR AND THIS IS DUE TO OTHER COMMITTMENTS. Richard VK2FRKO is looking for a circuit diagram for a WAGNER 829 MR. This is a MARINE HF TRANSCEIVER. You may have one in your garage collecting dust. Either as spare parts or in working order. Please contact Richard if you can help. A MESSAGE TO ALL AMATEUR RADIO OPERATORS. Richard- VK2FRKO would like to know if there are any amateur radio operators who would like to have lunch at a central point to most of us. There are many amateur operators from various clubs,areas and districts and this is one way that we can get together and meet and greet others that we just talk to on air. Possible venues could be the Cardiff RSL or Club Macquarie. It could be that we all meet at a Park for a BBQ and perhaps play a bit of radio or it could be a radio free day. If anyone is interested please contact me direct via my email address which is vk2frko@tpg.com.au So think about this and let him know please. NEWS FROM AROUND VK. W.I.A. NEWS. At its first meeting this past week, the new Board of the WIA for 2013-2104 re-elected the outgoing executive that steered the Institute since October last year, since the untimely death of Michael Owen VK3KI. Remaining in their former roles are Phil Wait VK2ASD as President, Chris Platt VK5CP as Vice-President, John Longayroux VK3PZ as Treasurer, and David Williams VK3RU as Secretary. For the first time, the Board got together via an online application known as "Go To Meeting". Investigated and set up by Treasurer, John Longayroux VK3PZ, it proved a great success, with directors joining the online meeting from locations scattered across the country. The system offers significant cost-savings. The four newly-elected directors were welcomed by President Phil Wait VK2ASD, being Roger Harrison VK2ZRH, Ewan McCleod VK4ERM, Fred Swainston VK3DAC and Robert Broomhead VK3DN. High on the Board’s agenda for discussion at its first meeting were the Foundation Licence Review, which is ongoing and with many issues to consider, the Institute’s next steps in progressing the WIA submission to the ACMA concerning retention of spectrum at 2300 MHz, and progress with the High Power trial, which is under way. Crane depletes microwaves. Optus mobile services were cut for almost four days recently because of a construction work crane at the Rockhampton Hospital blocking the microwave path on the Capricorn Coast in Queensland. Customers in the Yeppoon, Emu Park, Great Keppel Island, Capricorn Resort and Byfield areas suffered intermittent mobile coverage. Optus restored coverage by installing additional fibre connections between Rockhampton and Yeppoon. The crane had blocked the line-of-sight between two towers, and due to occupational health and safety reasons the wind mitigation function of it could not be changed. SPECIAL STATION. VK0JJJ at Mawson Station, Antarctica. Craig Hayhow VK0JJJ at Mawson Station, Antarctica. QSL via VK3ZAZ. Event date: Sunday, February 10, 2013 Event end: Friday, January 31, 2014 WORLD NEWS: FCC reviewing HF CB Radio. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is have a close look at the 27MHz CB band. A particularly focus is to look at CB radio that is supposed to be a short range service, while some are using it over long distances during ionosphere propagation (skip) openings. The FCC is considering a ban on directional antennas in order to bring it back to the intended short range only communications. While power amplifiers are illegal to use and even sell in the US for use on 27MHz, this latest development appears to herald a tougher stance on CB Radio. CB Radio now exists in various forms in a number of countries but appears to have begun in the United States in 1945. In later decades in the US it had both commercial and hobbyist users. In the 1970s it gained popularity following due to a number of movies such as Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Convoy (1978), and television shows like The Dukes of Hazzard. In 1973 there was an oil crisis being experienced in the US that hit the trucking industry hard with government imposed restrictions. As a result few new CB radio were being sold. Stockpiles of CB radios languished in warehouses in Hong Kong and Japan and needed to find new markets. Could this happen in AUSTRALIA. Morse code gets another turn off. The Indian army has dropped Morse code considering it to be an obsolete communications means in this electronic era. The Signal Corps had until recently included it as a compulsorily subject, but now modern means including the internet are only taught. Once a predominate means of passing messages by the army during conflicts and disasters, it no longer uses that means of signalling. Still keeping it alive are radio amateurs around the world that use Morse code or CW mode on the bands. Now a pill for passwords. Phone company Motorola is about to offer a swallowable device that has a multitude of passwords that we use each day to restart or open devices. Powered by stomach acid it sends details to code readers. It comes from ‘America's smartest engineer’, Regina Dugan, who unveiled to pill at the recent at the All Things Digital conference in California. The pill has a tiny chip powered from the acids in your stomach. She was the first female director of the US government's spy technology agency - Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency - before joining Google's Motorola Mobility Division. The password pill will give people more power over their online activities. Regina has a sticker with an antenna and sensors broadcasting security details. The experimental technology needs US Food and Drug Administration approval for medical use, and efforts led by Motorola seek to make it more widely available by just touching a password protected device. SMALLEST TRANSMITTER. Murata Manufacturing has developed what it says is the world's smallest transmitter module (PAD) integrating a 3G power amplifier, coupler and duplexer. The company says it has achieved this by integrating the previously separate power amplifier, duplexer and coupler into one unit. Designed for mobile phones and smartphones, Murata says the devices have been created to address the growing number of frequency bands supporting 3G networks – with the more complicated circuit board layouts making it more difficult to achieve compact design. The modules support gain switching, for energy conservation and four types have been developed to support each single band – B1, B2, B5 and B8. Each module incorporates enhanced battery usage efficiency with power amplifier efficiency conversion. 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 from around 11:00 am. 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, a good Canteen and an interesting selection of biscuits.

BROADCAST NEWS FOR SUNDAY 2ND JUNE 2013.

The father of Warren Payne VK2UWP passed away at approximately 9am on the morning of Wednesday 29th May 2013. He passed away peacefully in Coffs Harbour surrounded by his family. He will be sadly missed. May he Rest in Peace" From the Committee and Members of Westlakes Amateur Radio Club please accept our condolences Warren. SILENT KEYS: Gwen Tilson ( VK3DYL ). Sadly I must inform you that our long time friend and Life Member of the Eastern and Mountain District Radio Club in Melbourne (EMDRC) Gwen Tilson VK3DYL passed during the week in the Ballarat Hospital. As many will know, Gwen was an avid DXer and her callsign appeared near the top of the DXCC Honour Roll. Over the years she also achieved many meritorious Awards which for a long time were displayed on the walls and in the stairwell leading to her downstairs shack. For many years Gwen was the QSL distribution officer for EMDRC and my earliest llections of her are with the large box of QSL cards she regularly brought to club meetings. As an active member of ALARA she personally sponsored many overseas YLs and regularly attended the international gatherings. As a consequence she was very widely travelled and was well known to amateurs around the world. On behalf of the Club I have extended our condolences to David VK3UR and his family. Regards, Max VK3WT Also the passing of Club member Noel Cherry VK2BCA who passed away last Tuesday. Noel was a long time member of our club. In the library was the clubs monthly meeting and some 25 members took time out to be at the club and have their say. Some issues on club security were dealt with including keys to the premises and replacement of some of the cameras. Some bills had to be paid been Lands Dept for rent of the area of land where the 160 meter tower is. The ride on lawn mower is been repaired by Herb VK2ZVF, Michael spoke on problems with the internet and looks as though the ADSL modem has died. Does anyone have a ADSL modem come router laying around that they can donate to the club, if so please contact Barrie VK2ABD. Last weeks meat tray winner was not at the club, nor was her Dad Greg VK2CW. In the absence of VK2CW Michael VK2ZEN was asked to reach into the ticket tumbler and select this weeks lucky meat tray winner. This weeks lucky meat tray winner was Allan VK2JED. Congratulations Al enjoy the meat tray. There will be no meat tray next weekend as quiet a number of members will be away for the long weekend so it is up to you wether you go to the club or not. Next Sunday there will be no BROADCAST due to most readers being away. Are you a shortwave listener? The club is once again going to conduct Foundation Licence training and conduct examinations so now is the chance to get that licence and talk to the world. Please contact Geoff VK2GL or leave a message on the club answering machine. We only check the answering machine on Saturdays. AS an addendum for those who might be new to the Amateur Fraternity and have not heard of Gwen in recent years, Gwen was one of very few Australian Amateur operators who had actually spoken with King Hussein of Jordan JY1 on the radio and in fact, had a personally signed photograph of him which adorned her shack wall. Gwen travelled quite widely and an insight into her amateur radio travels can be found at the following website: http://www.qsl.net/vk3dyl/._,_.___ A "RADIO pirate" has infiltrated the police radio network and masqueraded as a police unit, exposing vulnerabilities in the communications system and putting lives at risk. One Sunshine Coast district police job was mistakenly assigned over the police radio channel to a civilian, who volunteered. The result was a delay in response time to the job. While police insist nobody was harmed, radio technology experts warn the breach is simple to do - with fears it could jeopardise safety or be used by criminals. Police radio communication outside of Brisbane is not digitally encrypted, enabling anyone with the equipment or software to listen in. But Sunshine Coast district police grew concerned when a member of the public began participating on the airwaves - going as far as answering and accepting calls for assistance. They mounted an investigation with the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and a fortnight ago issued a 24-year-old Mooloolah man with a notice to appear in court for unlawfully possessing radio communication devices. He will front Maroochydore Magistrates Court on June 11. Sunshine Coast District CIB Officer in Charge, Detective Senior Sergeant Daren Edwards, said the radio transmissions were a serious matter. Radio design engineer Jos Hahn, from Syncro Australia, warned people had turned to the internet to source cheap two-way radio equipment. "Just one quick look at (the internet) will tell you how easy it is find a radio doing police frequencies," he said. The activity room was busy with Marcel VK2FMDB showing Norm VK2KNC the next project. Richard VK2FRKO, Geoff VK2GL were there to see the device working. This device can be used as beacon as well as other projects. A copy of the circuit will appear in an edition of club magazine soon. Oxley Region Amateur Radio Field Day. This field day will be on the weekend of Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th of JUNE with the main day been on the Sunday. So why not pack your bags and go to Port MacQuarie. The venue is the Tacking Point Surf Lifesaving Club in Mathew Flinders Drive. Write this date in your diary. Not forgetting our club Field Day which will be held on the 15th September ( this is a Sunday ) and the club is looking for donations of equipment for the auction table. Remember no TVs, computer monitors, VCRs. Why not come and have your stall. If you are interested please contact Barrie VK2ABD to book your spot and remember to bring your own table for your goods. The famous Westlakes BBQ will be cooking steak and sausages and fresh salad for sandwiches. The guessing competition for the number of jelly beans in the jar will once again be there as a fund raising venture and Andrews Communications will once again be there. So start saving your money. What’s a Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming. The GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode. The GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24 GFLOPs of general purpose compute and features a bunch of texture filtering and DMA infrastructure. That is, graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance. Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics. You have to boot from SD but a USB HD can “take over” after the initial boot. You cannot boot without an SD card.Debian as our default distribution. It’s straightforward to replace the root partition on the SD card with another ARM Linux distro if you want to use something else (there are several available on our downloads page). The OS is stored on the SD card. WORLD NEWS: The mouse turns 40. Just imagine a personal computer without a mouse? That may happen in a few years time but more about that later. The first public demonstration of a mouse was by the Standford Research Institute in San Francisco California on 9 December 1968. At an event attended by 1,000 computer professionals the mouse made its debut, shown off by Douglas Engelbart and his team of fellow researchers. It looked like a real mouse in shape and its attached ‘tail’ cord resulted in it gaining its name. Four years later Bill English developed the 'ball mouse' replacing the external wheels on the original mouse with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. It hit the market place with the Zerox Alto computer in 1981. In more recent years wireless technology has turned the ubiquitous mouse into a more sensitive and capable tool. However there are now predictions that within five years the mouse will be obsolete, being replaced by the new and emerging touch screen and facial recognition technology. A radio for all frequencies From Great Scott Gadgets, Michael Ossmann is developing a HackRF, a software-defined radio that lets you survey in frequency between 100MHz to 6 GHz. The range includes broadcasts, amateur radio, through to previously out of bounds channels. In showing the device recently at ToorCon in San Diego, California, he described the device as very much a work in progress. While other SDR devices exist, the HackRF is around the size of a USB hand-drive with its low price aimed at consumers. HackRF is designed to meet the needs of wireless communication security professionals, researchers and hobbyists. ARE YOU A MORSE CODE FANATIC: Titanic Morse key replica. A replica of the Morse code key used on the Titanic is going to be produced by well-known Kent Morse Keys. This will be the most accurate copy that can possibly be made. The new anniversary replica will be available soon from Kent Engineers of Germany. Would you like to be the first to know when the Titanic replica will be available and receive a pre-launch discount? Then add your email address and name by visiting the webpage www.kent-engineers.com/titanicinfo.htm 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 from around 11:00 am. 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, a good Canteen and an interesting selection of biscuits.