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VK7AX > NEWS 10.08.08 02:38l 584 Lines 21481 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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From: VK7AX@VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
To : NEWS@WW
VK7 REGIONAL NEWS BROADCAST
FOR SUNDAY 10TH AUGUST 2008
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UNIQUE MUSEUM NOW OPEN
Grote Reber Museum
For those UTAS Alumi who received their Alumni magazine this week
they would have been greeted by a wonderful picture of the legacy of
the late Grote Reber.
It is a picture of the Mount Pleasant Radio Astronomy Dish at
Cambridge in the South of VK7.
Few people realise that Grote was the first to use parabolic dishes
for radio astronomy and of course Grote was a radio amateur who gave
talks to Southern Branch a few times.
The article inside the magazine outlines that new Grote Reber Museum
that has just opened and it is located in the grounds of the Mt
Pleasant observatory. The following is the short article that appears
in the magazine.
The original Bothwell radio shack used by the late radio astronomer
Grote Reber is featured in a new museum celebrating his life and
achievements.
At the UTAS Mt Pleasant Observatory in Cambridge, astronomy students
and scholars will be able to experience first-hand the environment in
which Dr Reber controlled a 1.5 kilometre wide radio telescope grid
he built near his Bothwell home, along with his original radio
equipment and telescopes.
The museum, established by the School of Maths and Physics with help
from the Launceston Planetarium at the Queen Victoria Museum, was
recently opened by Dr Ken Kellermann, a world renowned radio
astronomer from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
Charlottesville, Virginia.
Dr Reber moved from the United States to Tasmania in the late 1950s.
He is regarded as the father of radio astronomy and he was the first
person to build a "big dish" antenna for the purpose of mapping the
sky at radio frequencies.
The School of Maths and Physics' Karen Bradford, who established the
museum, said Dr Reber relocated to Tasmania because of its unique
location at high magnetic latitude in the southern hemisphere. He
discovered many discrete radio sources, and he mapped the band of
bright radio emission from our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
"Dr Reber's accomplishments in radio astronomy, electrical powered
transport and in the carbon dating of Aboriginal settlements are
remarkable," she said.
"He spent 40 years studying low frequency emissions with telescopes
he built himself, both alone and with the UTAS School of Physics."
She said the museum includes exhibits of Dr Reber's telescopes, his
life's work and his many other interests. A unique feature is Reber's
original radio shack, the control building for the radio telescope
array at Bothwell, which is installed at the museum with Reber's
original radio equipment in place.
"There is also a virtual-reality theatre, provided by the Swinburne
University of Technology, which will screen movies and demonstrations
in 3D for school groups and other interested community groups."
Grote Reber died of cancer at the age of 90 on December 20, 2002.
The Museum is open by appointment only and the contact details can be
found on the email and internet editions of this broadcast.
http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/physics/facilitiesdetails.asp?
lFacilityId=56
Free event but bookings essential. Contact Karen Bradford on 03 6226
2439 or email Karen.Bradford(AT)utas.edu.au
National Science Week is running tours of the Museum and Radio
Astronomy facility on August 26th and details can also be found at
the web link on the email and internet editions.
http://www.scienceweek.info.au/Lists/ApprovedScienceWeekEvents/DispFor
m.aspx?
ID=170&Source=http://www.scienceweek.info.au/Pages/EventsMap.aspx?
state=tas
(Sourced form the UTAS Alumni News September 2008, Issue 34)
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VK7 EVENTS CALENDAR
And a quick reminder of the events and broadcasts across VK7:
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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RD WEEKEND - VK7 BROADCASTS
The RD weekend is the one weekend that the VK7 Broadcast Officer and
Rebroadcasters get to have a rest and play radios…HIHI.
So, next weekend there will not be a WIA or VK7 Regional News
Broadcast.
The opening address of the RD weekend will be heard on repeaters
around VK7 from 1745 or 5:45pm or 0745UTC on Saturday night with the
start of the RD contest from 1800 or 6:00pm or 0800UTC and it runs
for 24 hours till 0759UTC.
http://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/rdcontest/
I hope to make a contact with you next weekend in the RD Contest and
remember, you have to be in it to win it.
Come on VK7 last year we came second as a state, we have to keep up
the tradition!!
And also look out for those International Lighthouse and Lightship
Weekend stations who will be operating around VK7 -
Winston VK7EM operating from Mersey Bluff, Devonport (AU0040);
Wayne VK7FWAY operating from Table Cape, Wynyard (AU0039); and,
WICEN South operating VK7WCN from the Cape Bruny lighthouse (AU0005);
http://tas.wicen.org.au/
http://www.illw.net/
(73, Justin, VK7TW, VK7 News and Broadcast Coordinator)
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NORTH WEST NEWS
North West Tasmania Amateur Radio Interest Group
http://www2.vk7ax.id.au/nwtarig/
A proposal from the last meeting of NWTARIG was the suggestion of
forming a Radio Experimenters and Social Group within the Club .
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.
Vernon 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.
New Additional Nightly Broadcasts.
Two relatively new Amateur Radio Podcasts are being trialed in the
North West on the 2M. Repeater VK7RNW.
They are Known as the Resonant Frequency Podcast which originates in
TEXAS USA. The second is known as the ICQ Podcast originating from
the UK.
Trial transmission of both these broadcasts are initially being
trialed in the North West only. If acceptable by local listeners,
they will be offered to other Relay stations, being transmitted on
alternate Saturdays at 8.00 PM.
Check Spectrum Tasmania's home page for details of all broadcasts.
http://www2.vk7ax.id.au/spectrum
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/
To kick off the week, NTARC would like to welcome Kevin Warrick to
the amateur bands. Having recently passed his Foundation licence
exam and being allocated the callsign VK7FKAW, we're sure Kevin and
father Bryn VK7FBAW will have many enjoyable and entertaining years
of amateur radio operations in the future.
NTARC's meeting is on this Wednesday at Tranquility Gardens, so don't
forget... if you'd like to come, we are accepting last minute
placements. $20 will get you a choice of two soups, plus either a
vegetarian or normal lasagne, and a choice of two desserts. If
you've not already done so, please let Al VK7AN know as soon as
possible if you do plan to come along.
Lastly we hear of strange reports of power brown-outs and strange
electrical discharges in the night sky in the vicinity of the Turners
Marsh area. Rumour has it that a local ham has taken delivery of a
shiny new Icom HF transceiver and has wasted no time to making its
presence felt on the bands. Enjoy the new toy John.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ntarc/
Thanks from Jason VK7ZJA
NTARC Secretary
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SOUTHERN NEWS
VK7RTC Mt Nelson
As you may have heard on the broadcast a few weeks ago, VK7RTC has
had a major upgrade thanks to Brian VK7RR. I would encourage all
amateurs that have the capabilities of 70cm to use this excellent
piece of equipment provided through the many years of hard work from
Brian and to help "save" our 70cm band. Many commercial operators
would jump at the chance for access to the 70cm band.
For those that missed the repeater details, it's located on top Mt.
Nelson on 438.600MHz Output with 433.600MHz as the input. A 141.3hz
tone is required also for access.
(73's Hayden VK7HAY)
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Radio and Electronics Association of Southern Tasmania
Education and Training
Congratulation to our newest Foundation Licensees who have made it to
the airwaves.
So far heard on repeater two has been Brett VK7FMMM and Warren
VK7FEET. The other licence that has appeared on the ACMA database is
Shane VK7FOOT. There is a definite feet fetish theme going on here…
HIHI.
For those who have not made the connection, Brett VK7FMMM is the
morning breakfast radio announcer with Heart 107.3 FM.
http://brettmarley.freeservers.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_107.3
Brett has been a professional voice over announcer for 23 years and
does a range of voice over work the TV and radio industry.
Stay tuned for some professional voice over material on our ATV and
regional news broadcasts….HIHI.
(Justin, VK7TW, Learning Facilitator)
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REAST August Presentation
Last Wednesday night saw a great presentation by Danny on the packet
radio systems that he runs from his home QTH. This is a comprehensive
and complex system combining packet radio (AX-25) and internet
technology and providing services that include TNOS, Xrouter,
DXSpider, packet BBS', Netrom nodes, ROSE nodes, Telnet, AXIP, AXUPD,
WWW, FTP, Chat, Converse, SMTP/POP3 Mail services and off course
packet radio!
And if that's not enough all these systems are linked together and
hav dual ampr.org and standard Internet IP addresses with some tricky
routing and access control that makes the system all compliant and
secure for Amateur Radio operators.
Danny described that Dxspider is a Dx spotter system that people can
log into and share DX information and even talked about the Kenwood
TS2000 transceiver having a DXSpider compatible TNC built in that can
listen on 2m for DXspider traffic and auto tune the radio when it
hears a particular activity. Very impressive!!
Scott VK7HSE then demonstrated the TinyTrack4 packet modem that he
has been helping the developer to debug as a beta tester. Scott
described it's capabilities and how it can be used for many packet
based applications including APRS.
The presentation was videoed and will be played at Wednesday night's
ATV night for those who missed it. There will also be the
presentation notes made available on the REAST website.
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
This week sees the start of the ATV nights again with a great program
planned. We hope our new shotgun microphone will improve our audio
quality and we will be taking a look at Justin's new picoammeter that
he has just put the finishing touches to and yes that measures 10-12
amps!!
We will be playing the presentation that Danny VK7HDM gave last
Wednesday night so, for those who missed it, tune in on Wednesday
night and we 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 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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SPACE NEWS
Countdown To The Perseids
Spaceweather.com on August 5th reports about the countdown to the
Annual Perseids meteor showers on Tuesday, August 12th. The best time
to look is during the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday morning when
forecasters expect 50 to 100 meteors per hour. Get away from city
lights if you can; plan a camping trip! The darker the sky, the more
meteors you will see.
The source of the Perseids is Comet Swift-Tuttle, which has littered
the August portion of Earth's orbit with space dust. The dusty zone
is broad and Earth is already in its outskirts. As a result, even
before the peak on August 12th, you may see some "early Perseids"
streaking across the night sky.
Photos of these early arrivals will be featured in the days ahead on
http://Spaceweather.com as part of our full coverage of the Perseid
meteor shower.
The meteor scatter weak signal operators who "operate the rocks" will
be hanging out for this one…HIHI.
http://spaceweather.com
(Sourced from the Spaceweather.com website)
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GENERAL NEWS
Drowning out the cosmos
The keremeosreview.com website on July 28th ran an interesting story
that highlights the interference potential of modern day living. The
author was Ken Tapping who is an astronomer with the National
Research Council's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada's
British Columbia Province.
In the late 1930's Grote Reber, a radio amateur in Wheaton, Illinois,
built the first purpose-built radio telescope: a nine metre dish with
a state of the art radio receiver. He used it to make the first radio
map of the sky. It is a rather sad truth that if we went to Reber's
old house, and tried to duplicate his work, we would fail, due to
radio interference. It is ironic that while radio astronomy benefits
from new radio technologies, it also suffers from the rising level of
interference produced by devices to which those technologies have
given birth. The 26m radio telescope at our observatory could detect
a cell phone if it were on Mars. The fact that most cell phones are a
lot closer than that and yet we manage to continue observing is a
monument to a lot of effort, and a very careful choice of site.
By international treaty, administered by the United Nations, Canada
and other nations work together to ensure the different radio
services can coexist. The first step in making radio astronomy
possible starts here, in Geneva. By international agreement, bands of
frequencies have been set aside for radio astronomy, where manmade
transmissions are either strongly restricted or forbidden. No
transmitters, cell phones or other radio devices using radio
transmitters are allowed to interfere with radio astronomical
observations taking place in bands allocated for radio astronomy.
The next step in making radio astronomy possible is to use terrain to
screen out interference. We put radio observatories in largely
uninhabited valleys or basins surrounded by mountains. Our
observatory has been a potent facility for observing the cosmos for
about 50 years because of the effectiveness of "terrain shielding".
The other factor is careful attention to the licensing of local radio
transmitters. Now, over the last decade, things have become a lot
more complicated.
It used to be that we had few devices in our homes that made radio
interference. Then came the microwave oven, which uses a radio
transmitter to cook food. In most cases these are well screened, but
when that screening starts to fail or becomes defective, the device
can turn into a several-hundred watt transmitter. More recently came
wireless computer networks. These use low-power radio transmitters to
connect computer networks without cables. How about garage door
openers, cordless phones and so on? In addition there are devices
that do not have radio transmitters in them, but make interference
anyway. These include computers and other digital devices, and would
you believe it, some types of energy-saving light bulbs!
As our homes and ways of life become more electronic and more based
upon radio communications, keeping radio astronomy viable gets more
challenging, and more based upon co-operation between municipalities,
developers, homeowners and radio observatories. It will be a shame if
the radio signature of a distant cosmic event, possibly the birth of
the universe, which has been on its way to us for millions of years,
gets drowned out by a garage door opener.
http://www.bclocalnews.com/okanagan_similkameen/keremeosreview/lifesty
les/26087099.html
(Ken Tapping in the keremeosreview.com website – British Columbia
Canada)
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WEB & EMAIL EDITION EXTRA BITS!!
International Dark Sky Association
http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do
Scary Night Satellite Images of Global Light Pollution
http://www.lightpollution.it/worldatlas/pages/fig1.htm
FreeDNS
http://freedns.afraid.org/
Comms from Space Inspires Young Minds
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/ariss.html
Ham radio ambassador: Nothing amateur about this form of communication
http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/lifestyles/local/article/ham_radio_am
bassador_nothing_amateur_about_this_form_of_communication/25421/
Garmin GPS Comparison Chart
http://www.ja-gps.com.au/gpscomparison.html
1950's Italian Police Motorbikes Hold Anniversary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt2CteoUzQc
Weird Al – Ebay Song – Hilarious (Thanks Roger VK7ARN)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYokLWfqbaU
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 that there is no broadcast next week as
it is the Remembrance Day Contest.
The opening address gets under way at 1745 or 5:45pm Saturday 16th
August on repeaters around VK7 with the Contest starting at 1800 or
6pm.
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.
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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