CCARC NEWS 15-33
THE PERIODIC NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTRAL COAST AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
ISSUE No 15-33 16th October 2015
In this Issue:
- Upcoming Meetings
- Education Day
- Powerpole Distribution Box
- Ham radio links Scouts around the world
- Digital Modes Development in New Zealand
- University of Melbourne & satellites
- Broke & fixed
- Reminders
1. Upcoming Meetings
Saturday 17th October 2015, commencing at 1310 hours will be the CCARC Business Meeting.
2. Education Day
Chris VK2YY, CCARC Education officer, intends to hold licence training and assesments on 24th October at the CCARC club rooms.
This is dependent upon the number of people interested in getting or upgrading their qualifications, so if you’ve thought about, but haven’t done anything about it, now’s the time!
If you know someone who’s interested in getting their license, let them know
This training is done on an “on demand” basis – no demand, no training – no training, no hobby!
Contact Chris, email: vk2yychris at gmail dot com mob: 0428 239 413
3. Powerpole Distribution Box
From Rod VK2LAX: I’m definitely going to buy one, so it might be a chance to get a project going.
Who would be interested?
This project is a DC distribution box using Anderson Powerpoles, the now almost universal method of connecting 12v equipment.
The features of the box are as follows:
1. One input connector, may be replaced by a direct cable input.
2. 6 outputs.
3. Each output is fused with a standard blade fuse.
4. Each fuse has a LED indicator under it to indicate a fuse failed condition.
5. Indicator LED to indicate power present and correct polarity. Green = Power availabe at correct polarity. Red = Power available but incorrect polarity.
6. Designed to fin inside standard UB5 jiffy box (approx 80x50x30mm).
7. All components mounted on double sided PCB with double thickness tracks (2oz copper) and all plated through holes. PCB is also RoHS compliant.
Source: Waverly ARS
4. Ham radio links Scouts around the world
St.Joseph News-Press and Fox 26 KNPN report on the upcoming Jamboree On The Air which takes place October 17-18
William Coverdell WD0BC, assistant merit badge counselor and member at-large for the local Scouts, said the Jamboree is an annual event that uses ham radio to link members from around the world.
About 1.3 million Scouts from around the world will participate in the event through on-air activities. “Basically, they’ll get on amateur radio and talk around the world via ham radio where they use voice or also use CW, which is Morse code,” Mr. Coverdell said.
Watch the TV News video and read the full story at
http://www.newspressnow.com/news/local_news/article_073d7128-c33d-5a48-b61b-2c3e9e158a36.html
Worldwide registration and station list
http://jotajoti.info/
Jota-Joti Summary
http://www.world-jotajoti.info/summary/
Source: Southgate ARC News
5. Digital Modes Development in New Zealand
The NZART have submitted a paper by Murray Greenman ZL1BPU to the IARU Region 3 Conference which takes place Oct. 12-16
This paper reports on current digital mode practice, and on the development of new digital modes and techniques in New Zealand over the last three years. Digital radio techniques offer new levels of performance in Amateur Radio, and provide solutions to significant technical challenges. One of these has been the provision of reliable text communication under NVIS propagation conditions, until now a serious barrier to effective emergency communication in remote locations.
Recent developments have seen the line between transceiver hardware and computer software blurred by the entry of significant digital signal processing. This combination of new technology provides an attractive way of recruiting new people (with a computer interest) to the hobby, and retaining the attention of technically capable amateurs, through interesting new projects.
In the last decade the trend in digital mode development has been towards more complex modulation, accompanied by ever more complex error correction coding, in attempts to solve the technical problems. However, one local team has reversed this trend, and has achieved high performance with very simple but carefully chosen techniques, with attendant advantages of simplicity of use and slick operation.
Read the paper at
http://www.iaru-r3.org/16r3c/docs/043%20Digital%20Modes.docx
Other papers for the conference are at
http://iaru-r3.org/16th-triennial-conference-of-the-iaru-r3-documents/
16th IARU R3 Conference
http://www.iarur3conf2015.org/
Source: Southgate ARC News
6. University of Melbourne & satellites
Australis OSCAR-5 built by University of Melbourne student engineers was launched in January 1970 – a project that began 50 years ago and has not been repeated since by any other Australian university. That is set to change.
OSCAR-5 was put into low earth orbit sending telemetry on both 2-metre and 10-metre bands, and received by more than 200 listeners in 27 countries. It was the subject of a lot of pride, talk, and hope for the future. Now we hear about the recently formed University of Melbourne Space Program.
It is developing Australia’s second student-built satellite, of the CubeSat design. Future missions may even put a satellite in orbit around the Moon and other planets.
Source: AR Victoria News
BROKE & FIXED
The Kariong antennas have been damaged and are being repaired.
REMINDERS
This section lists important announcements and possibly items from previous CCARC NEWS editions that are still current and may need your input:
Anyone reading this on the website who is not yet a member of the CCARC, please consider joining by emailing ccarc at ccarc dot org dot au for full details.
For submissions to this newsletter from CCARC club members please email the editor news-editor at ccarc dot org dot au
For what’s coming up in the next few months at the CCARC, please check the club calendar, accessible from the header on any page on the website.
Dave VK2DLS … News & Publicity Officer …