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VK7AX > NEWS 03.08.08 08:01l 590 Lines 20167 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: VK7 Regional News Broadcast for 3 August 2008
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From: VK7AX@VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
To : NEWS@WW
VK7 REGIONAL NEWS BROADCAST
FOR SUNDAY 3RD AUGUST 2008
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WORLD RECORD SET
New 13 cm World EME Record
Last Sunday morning Rex VK7MO assisted by Eric VK7TAS as the dish
driver were successful in breaking the 13 cm, 2300 MHz, Earth Moon
Earth World distance record twice. The existing World Record is held
by Charlie VK3NX and Peter G3LTF at 16970 km.
Eric's job was to keep the 2.3 metre dish antenna, directed at the
moon to less than half a degree. A sked had been set up with Howard,
G4CCH, and shortly after the moon cleared the trees at Howard's QTH
weak digital signals were copied at 25 dB below the noise.
At 13 cm or 2300 MHz frequency drift is a major issue and Howard's
signals were difficult to copy due to drift of 60 to 80 Hz each
transmission. Never-the-less after a few missed decodes a QSO was
completed for a new 13 cm EME World record of 17385 km.
As the moon cleared the trees in England signals improved to the
point that they were audible and a CW QSO was also completed. Peter,
G3LTF, at 17491 km then called on CW and the World record was
extended a second time in less than half an hour by a further 106 km.
(Rex, VK7MO)
A hearty congratulation to Rex, Eric, Howard and Peter.
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VK7 EVENTS CALENDAR
And a quick reminder of the events and broadcasts across VK7:
REAST – August 6 – Amateur Radio Digital Style Presentation – Queen's
Domain Clubrooms 8pm
http://reast.asn.au/events.php#ARDigitalStyle
WICEN South – August 7 & 8 - Southern Endurance Riders - Safety
Checkpoints at Orford.
http://tas.wicen.org.au/
NTARC – August 13 - Tranquillity Gardens, West Tamar Highway -
special guest speaker will be Professor Nigel Forteath.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ntarc/
August 16 & 17 – Remembrance Day Contest and International
Lighthouse/Lightship Weekend.
http://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/rdcontest/
http://www.illw.net/
WICEN South – August 30 – AGM at Brookfield Winery, Margate – 9am pre
meeting coffee with breakfast to follow the meeting.
http://tas.wicen.org.au/
ALARA – September 13&14 – National ALARA Meet in Ulverstone Tasmania.
http://au.geocities.com/vk7luv_susan/index.html
VK7 HAMFEST – December 6th – Central Highlands of Tasmania Hamfest –
Miena – starts 10am.
http://www.qsl.net/charct/
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VK7 STATIONS OPERATING IN THE ILLW
The International Lighthouse/Lightship Weekend came into being from
the Scottish Northern Lighthouses award weekend Over the past 10
years it has grown to over 380 lighthouses in some 51 countries
around the world participating in the event.
The event is always held on the 3rd full weekend in August starting
at 0001 UTC on Saturday and finishing at 2359 UTC on Sunday. It also
now coincides on the Sunday with the International Lighthouse Day
which is an event organised by the International Association of
Lighthouse Keepers whereby as many world lighthouses will be open to
the public for the day.
The event is NOT a contest, each station's operators decide how they
will operate their station regards modes and bands.
The ILLW website contains a wealth of information and well worth a
look, the address can be found on the email and internet editions of
this broadcast.
http://www.illw.net/
Currently there are three VK7 stations registered:
1). WICEN South operating VK7WCN from the Cape Bruny lighthouse
(AU0005);
http://tas.wicen.org.au/
2). Winston VK7EM operating from Mersey Bluff, Devonport (AU0040);
and,
3). Wayne VK7FWAY operating from Table Cape, Wynyard (AU0039).
These stations will also be operating in the RD Contest which runs
the same weekend.
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NORTH WEST NEWS
North West Tasmania Amateur Radio Interest Group
http://www2.vk7ax.id.au/nwtarig/
A proposal from last weekend's meeting of NWTARIG was a suggestion of
forming a Radio Experimenters and Social Group within NWTARIG.
The suggestion came from Vernon VK7TVF who was eager to get some more
active experimentation and activity amongst members of the Club.
Along with this activity, some social outings and activities would be
great such as occasional family BBQ's, Social Dinners and Coffee
meetings etc.
If members have any suggestions, ideas or merely like to be included
in such a group, please advise Vernon VK7TVF in the first instance.
ernon can be contacted as follows:
Vernon French VK7TVF
300 Takone Road, Takone. 7325.
Tel. 6438 4204
Email: vernon.irene(AT)clearmail.com.au
Alternatively contact NWTARIG and your messages and information will
be forwarded to Vernon.
73's until next time...
(Tony VK7AX, President, NWTARIG)
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NORTHERN NEWS
Northern Tasmanian Amateur Radio Club News
http://www.wia.org.au/clubs/vk7/NorthernTasmaniaAmateurRadioClub/
If you missed out on the personalised coffee mugs, printed with your
name, callsign and a fantastic amateur radio themed background, don't
despair. Another order is being taken right now… if you'd like to
see one, get yourself down to the Hunga Munga café to see a sample.
If you like what you see, leave your name and $20 with David, and
once there's enough numbers to make up the next order, you too could
be drinking your coffee, tea or other beverage of choice in real ham
radio style.
The August meeting for NTARC will be another dinner meeting at
Tranquillity Gardens, West Tamar Highway, just north of the Tamar
Island reserve. The special guest speaker will be Professor Nigel
Forteath. The evening promises to be a fascinating one. If you
would like to attend, let Al VK7AN know as soon as possible as we
need to get some attendance numbers together for the night. $20 will
get you a choice of two soups, plus either a vegetarian or normal
lasagne, and a choice of two desserts.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ntarc/
Thanks from Jason VK7ZJA
NTARC Secretary
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SOUTHERN NEWS
Radio and Electronics Association of Southern Tasmania
Bill on the Mend
Bill Gwynne VK7KBG is in the Royal Hobart Hospital and has been
through his surgery a couple of days ago and is recovering well.
He is OK with visitors dropping in.
(Ray VK7VKV)
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REAST August Presentation
This Wednesday night the August 6th at 8pm will be a fascinating
presentation and demonstration of the system that Danny VK7HDM
maintains. It includes many of the amateur radio packet and
networking applications like TNOS, Xrouter, DXSpider and of course
packet BBS' and packet radio.
Dxspider is a Dx spotter system that people can log into and share DX
information, TNOS is a tcpip over radio and internet and it allows
AX25, Telnet, FTP, WWW, Converse, SMTP and POP3 connections using the
ampr.org addresses. Xrouter is along the same lines but has a nice
chat server you can use and the packet BBS store and forward mail
system.
There will be a discussion about how to connect from the internet and
how to connect via the AX25 RF side, what you can do on my wormhole
gateway system to and from the Internet and where it can take you.
See you there.
http://reast.asn.au/events.php#ARDigitalStyle
(73, Danny, VK7HDM)
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Saturday Afternoon at the Clubrooms
Looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon?
Got a spare couple of hours up your sleeve and would like to have a
chat?
Frank VK7FINF and Tony VK7FTCL along with several others are meeting
at the clubrooms on the domain each Saturday afternoon. It's a very
informal meeting where over a cuppa the guys and gals talk about
anything and everything comms and technology related, from the latest
wiz bang radio that has been advertised to an old relic of a camera
that someone has dug out of the cupboard as well as everything else
in between.
We all know its great fun to play with your new toy in the shack, but
why not bring it along and have a good old chat and a cuppa, as well
as a brag about your new toy.
We kick off around 1pm and generally head for home by 4pm. For more
info contact toneman(AT)bigpond.com , we would love to see you and your
toys there!
Cheers and 73 from
(Tony VK7FTCL)
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ATV Experimenters Night
Last week's ATV night saw another great roll-up of people including
Warren one of our recently successful Foundation licensees eagerly
awaiting confirmation from the ACMA of their new licence.
Richard VK7RO brought along three very interesting items for show and
tell. The first was planometer to measure area on a map or drawing.
This device intrigued many who looked at it. The second item was a
capacitively switched PIC controlled morse keyer which used an
interesting method using the PIC in/out pins, high resistance and the
capacitance of your hand to switch the keyer.
The third device was a SoftRock 40 software defined radio kit that
Richard built up and he described the features and given its
simplicity and performance, it will certainly be the way of the
future. The website address can be found on the email and internet
editions of this broadcast and include a receiver and transmitter kit.
http://www.amqrp.org/kits/softrock40/
The ATV night consisted of three videos of the Tacoma Narrows bridge
collapse, a description of toilet facilities on the International
Space Station given by one of the Astronauts which was hilarious and
Episode 12 of AmateurLogic.TV which included a host of different
segments.
And a reminder that the ATV nights are on a Wednesday night and get
underway around 7:30pm and ATV goes out on 444.25MHz – just below SBS
on the UHF TV Band.
If you have an antenna pointed somewhere toward the Domain why not
try tuning down the low end of the UHF TV band in a fortnight's time
and give us a call on what you are seeing and hearing.
http://reast.asn.au/events.php#ATVnights
(Justin, VK7TW)
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RF BEACON NEWS
1296MHz Mt Dural Back on Deck
Mark Blackmore VK2XOF lets us know that the 23cm beacon on
1296.420MHz has returned to VK2WI at the Dural QTH.
Power is now 20W and the signal is generated from a cavity oscillator
locked to a 0.1ppm oven. It has been running for a couple of weeks
now so I would appreciate any signal reports.
Work is progressing (slowly) on the 2m and 70cm beacons so they are
not forgotten.
Also the 80m Morse training service has been upgraded to a 35W class
E transmitter locked to a crystal oven on 3.699KHz.
https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/vk-vhf
(Mark Blackmore VK2XOF via the VK-VHF Mailing List)
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OPTICAL BEACON NEWS
Experimental Infrared Beacon Installed In San Diego
KD0IF and N6IZW have installed an experimental weatherproofed
infrared LED beacon atop a building in San Diego. Modulation is
currently a 450 Hz tone for propagation testing. The beacon is on a
timer and is turned on from 9:00-10:00 PM every evening.
The invisible lightwaves (940 nanometers) are pointed east toward
N6IZW's residence about 7.5 miles away and non-line-of-sight
("NLOS"). Despite the NLOS condition, N6IZW has already received the
beacon "with the signal varying from maybe 5-20 dB above the noise in
a 1Hz BW depending on atmospheric moisture and pollution."
For more information, Kerry Banke, N6IZW, may be reached at kbanke
(at) sbcglobal.net.
(Sourced from CG Communicator)
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DX NEWS
Invitation to the Asia Pacific DX Convention 2008
Dear Fellow DX-er/Contester,
You are cordially invited to the Asia Pacific DX Convention on
November 7 through 9, 2008.
Please take a look at the website to see some photos and presentation
videos from the first APDXC which was held in 2005. The many DX-ers
from all over the world who attended enjoyed it very much.
In addition to the usual presentations of recent DX-peditions,
technical sessions, etc., this convention offers something special.
Since it's being held in the country from which most of the modern
amateur radio equipment comes from, you'll have the opportunity to
tour the Icom factory, participate in a Q&A session with Icom
engineers, tour the electronics district, and more.
We would appreciate your introducing this convention to your
DX/contest club members.
Please see our website for more details and the URL can be found on
the email and internet editions of this broadcast.
http://www.apdxc.org/
For convention updates, please visit the website and send an e-mail
to subscribe to the APDXC newsletter.
We look forward to welcoming you at the APDXC in Osaka, Japan.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vkcc/
(APDXC Committee / JA3USA via Mirek VK6DXI and the VKCC mailing list)
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SATELLITE NEWS
Cal Poly Requesting Beacon Capture Help
Jason Anderson, KI6GIV, at California Polytechnic State University is
requesting amateur radio operators worldwide to assist with capturing
the telemetry of the Cal Poly CP4 satellite.
Jason wrote, "We have seen some unpredictable behaviour on our
satellite, CP4. Since we only have contact with the satellite once
every 12 hours, it would be extremely helpful if we could get some
global support with collecting beacons to get a more complete picture
of the satellite's health."
Please send any collected data (audio or decoded binary) via email
to: jander06(AT)calpoly.edu
Satellite Link Information
------------------------------
Frequency: 437.325Mz
Modulation: FSK (but uses LSB cheat to make AFSK)
Radio Mode: LSB (necessary for LSB cheat)
Baud Rate: 1200
Beacon rate: 1 beacon/minute (maybe change to 5 minutes if satellite
changes mode)
http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/ans
(Sourced from Jason, KI6GIV and the AMSAT News Service)
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SPACE NEWS
Duck! Plasma bullets are zinging past Earth.
That's the conclusion of researchers studying data from NASA's five
THEMIS spacecraft. The gigantic bullets, they say, are launched by
explosions 1/3rd of the way to the Moon and when they hit Earth—wow.
The impacts spark colourful outbursts of Northern Lights
called "substorms" in the Northern Hemisphere.
The following is a summary of a story from the SCIENCE(AT)NASA mailing
list by Dr. Tony Phillips.
"We have discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance," declares
UCLA physicist Vassilis Angelopoulos, principal investigator of the
THEMIS mission.
The THEMIS fleet was launched in February 2007 to unravel the mystery
of substorms, which have long puzzled observers with their
unpredictable eruptions of light and color.
The spacecraft wouldn't merely observe substorms from afar; they
would actually plunge into the tempest using onboard sensors to
measure particles and fields. The discovery came on what began as a
quiet day, Feb 26, 2008. Arctic skies were dark and Earth's magnetic
field was still. High above the planet, the five THEMIS satellites
had just arranged themselves in a line down the middle of Earth's
magnetotail—a million kilometer long tail of magnetism pulled into
space by the action of the solar wind.
That's when the explosion occurred.
A little more than midway up the THEMIS line, magnetic fields
erupted, "releasing about 1015 Joules of energy," says
Angelopoulos. "For comparison, that's about as much energy as a
magnitude 5 earthquake."
Although the explosion happened inside Earth's magnetic field, it was
actually a release of energy from the sun. When the solar wind
stretches Earth's magnetic field, it stores energy there, in much the
same way energy is stored in a rubber band when you stretch it
between thumb and forefinger. Bend your forefinger and—crack!—the
rubber band snaps back on your thumb. Something similar happened
inside the magnetotail on Feb. 26, 2008.
The blast launched two "plasma bullets," gigantic clouds of protons
and electrons, one toward Earth and one away from Earth. The Earth-
directed cloud crashed into the planet below, sparking vivid auroras
observed by some 20 THEMIS ground stations in Canada and Alaska. The
opposite cloud shot harmlessly into space.
"We had bulls-eyes on our solar panels," says THEMIS project
scientist David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. No
damage was done to the satellites. Plasma bullets are vast, gossamer
structures less dense than the gentlest wisp of Earth's upper
atmosphere. They whoosh past, allowing THEMIS instruments to sample
the cloud's internal particles and fields without truly buffeting the
satellite.
"For the first time, THEMIS has shown us the whole process in action—
from magnetic reconnection to aurora borealis," says Sibeck. "We are
finally solving the puzzle of substorms."
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/24jul_plasmabullets.htm?
list1098418
(Sourced from the Science(AT)NASA website)
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WEB & EMAIL EDITION EXTRA BITS!!
Free RF Simulator Software
http://www.practicalrf.com/$Newsletter/e-
letters/February2006/RFSim99.htm
Courtesy of CG Communicator - fun geography challenge - see how well
you know the locations of the major European cities. Every time you
play, the cities change:
http://www.lufthansa-usa.com/useugame2007/html/play.html
American QRP Club Kits:
http://www.amqrp.org/kits/
NA5N's Guide to Oscilloscopes
http://www.amqrp.org/reference/na5n_Oscilloscopes.pdf
The Joys of QRP
http://www.njqrp.org/whyqrp/whyqrp.htm
World ATV Google Map
http://home.columbus.rr.com/cbeener/GMapATVQ.html
Ham Documentary Video on WRTC 2006 -- Brazil
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YH9RxMEIoV4
Do you have some interesting amateur related sites you have some
across in the last week – send them in to justingc(AT)ozemail.com.au
VK7 Virtual BPL Tours Update
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdcY0Eetvsw - Mt Nelson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gsxpya3CnQ - North Hobart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7DfdxjRkpU - RU ready for BPL?
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If you are interested in becoming an amateur radio operator or
upgrading your licence then we suggest you contact your local club
for details and/or take a look at what the Radio and Electronics
School has to offer. They have a range of courses that can be
delivered through a variety of methods.
They can be found at: www.radioelectronicschool.com
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Finally today, a reminder to those people rostered for next week's
broadcasts:
Newsreader: VK7TW
160m: VK7DM
80m: VK7ZK
40m: VK7RO
20m: VK7PP
10m: VK7ZGK
UHF CB: VK7ZCR
HF CB: VK7FTAZ
Thanks to all people and organisations who assisted with this
broadcast.
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THAT CONCLUDES OUR VK7 REGIONAL NEWS BROADCAST FOR THIS WEEK.
YOU HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO OR JUST MISSED VK7WI. NEXT WEEK THE
NATIONAL WIA NEWS CAN BE HEARD AT 0900 FOLLOWED BY THE VK7 REGIONAL
NEWS AT 0930 HOURS.
DETAILS TO SEND NEWS FOR THIS BROADCAST CAN BE FOUND AT REAST.ASN.AU
AND THE DEADLINE FOR ITEMS IS 21:00 ON FRIDAY PRIOR TO THE SUNDAY OF
THE BROADCAST.
------------------------------------
VK7 Regional Broadcast & News Coordinator
Justin Giles-Clark, VK7TW
------------------------------------
**************************************************
- NEWS POSTING TO PACKET -
Courtesy Tony VK7AX VK7AX(AT)VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
**************************************************
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