WESTLAKES NEWS FOR NOVEMBER 10TH 2013

Yesterday at the club was our 3rd car boot sale. There were about 8 or 9 sellers all up and a lot of bargains were on show. The Westlakes Committee would like to thank all those who attended to make this another successful event. Greg VK2CW was walking around selling tickets in the meat tray raffle. Penny was at the club to draw this weeks lucky meat tray winner. The winner this week was Alex VK2ZM. Congratulations Alex. Enjoy the meat tray. Penny and Michael were busy in the kitchen cooking and giving away free sausage sandwiches. Thanks Penny and Michael for a job well done. Michael VK2CCW had his new back pack for his FT 817. This I think is model 6 and it is almost complete. He may be taking orders when he gets it right. CHRISTMAS PARTY: The clubs annual Christmas party for this year will be held on Saturday the 14th December. Please note the date in your Diary. Geoff VK2GL and Penny Smith have been seen in deep conversation and a little bird tells me that they are organising one of the events for the day. Come along and bring the Family or even a friend. The club will be supplying the soft drinks, BBQ and Salads and you supply your nibbles and whatever you wish to drink. There may well be one or two other surprises for you entertainment. Be there... Saturday 14th December. That’s only four weeks away! C.C.A.R.C. Have you marked your calendar for the CENTRAL COAST A.R.C. BIG DAY OUT. The Wyong Field day will be held on February 23rd 2014! Clean your shack or shed out and turn the ‘Gunna use it one day’ items into cash with a Flea Market stall. Call books 2014. To those members who have ordered call books! They should here at the club next weekend so see Greg in the library next Saturday. WESTLAKES 40 METER NET: Our new net is up and running with a reasonable daily attendance. Last Monday was the first airing and we had about 8 stations call in. Wednesday was much the same but Friday did not fare well at all. Conditions on 40 metres were bad to say the least. Dave VK2RD took control with only 4 stations being heard. We were informed that there were 2 other stations trying to call in but were not audible at control. Thanks to Ron VK3MRH who has called in every day to help us establish the net. Ron is the net controller for the Albury Wodonga net held on 40 metres (7.055 10:30 am) EVERY DAY. Thanks Ron for the support and promotion within your groups net. So... EVERY Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 0:930 hrs local on 7.150 Mhz our net will run, with Barrie VK2ABD as net control and Dave VK2RD as Backup. Please call in and have a chat. Nothing formal, discuss the weather or whatever or just let your mates know you are still around and ok. Look forward to hearing you on 7.150. NEW ANTENNA DESIGNS: New AOWA Yagis. Derek G4CQM continues with his AOWA yagi development project releasing new designs that raise the bar even higher. Derek says that he is more than ever convinced that the perfect 50-Ohm yagi does exist and these new designs are getting really close to that goal!. If you are a keen 2M DXer you can see the new designs here... http://g4cqm.www.idnet.com/NEW%20DESIGNS/index.html SDR TRANSCEIVERS UPDATE: Standard for an SDR to External Programs Interface. Recently I've had the pleasure of collaborating with Jonathan Naylor, G4KLX on adding functionality for the CCW SDR-4+ receiver and the Sentry SDR transceiver to his SDR program, UWSDR. During the email discussions and software testing I raised the possibility of using a TCP/IP connection to transfer the PTT information between a data mode program and a SDR program. Jonathan then suggested the use of UDP/IP and also suggested that the audio connection between the two programs could also go over UDP/IP. After a lot of thought he has come up with a proposed standard that would allow authors of SDR and data mode programs to add a simple to use audio and PTT interface. I've posted his document "A Standard for an SDR to External Programs Interface" on the CCW website: http://www.crosscountrywireless.net/A%20Standard%20for%20an%20SDR%20to%20External%20Programs%20Interface.pdf We want to contact as many software authors as we can to give them information on the standard so that it can be implemented on as many ham radio programs as possible. I've also suggested the CCW forum as a possible area for authors to discuss the standard: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/cross_country_wireless/ Regards, Chris, G4HYG Well that's all the news we have this week. do we have any late news items? Do you have a news item that you would like read out on a future broadcast? Then 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 6:00 pm. To make contact at other times, try dialling (02) 49 581588 where an answering service operates. Visitors are always welcome at the club. We have plenty of tea, coffee, long-life milk, a good Canteen and an interesting selection of biscuits.