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VK7AX > NEWS 20.09.09 09:47l 446 Lines 23233 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: VK7 Regional News Broadcast for 20 September 2009
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From: VK7AX@VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
To : NEWS@WW
VK7 REGIONAL NEWS BROADCAST
FOR SUNDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER 2009
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VK7 EVENTS CALENDAR
A summary of the events across VK7 over the coming months:
REAST - September 23, 30 – ATV experimenter's nights – Queen's Domain Clubrooms – around 7:30pm.
http://reast.asn.au/events.php#ATVnights
CCARC – September 26 – Meeting at the Penguin lions Club rooms starts 1:30pm.
http://www.my-x15.net/ccarc
NWATVG – October 3rd - General Meeting of the Club at the Ulverstone Lions Club Facility – Show Grounds, West Ulverstone – start time is 2pm.
http://www2.vk7ax.id.au/atvgroup
NTARC – October 14 – Talk about Meteorology with Brendan McMahon – Tranquillity Gardens Dinner Meeting – 6:30pm
JOTA – October 16-18th
http://www.scout.org/jota/
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Northern News
Northern Tasmanian Amateur Radio Club
The big news this week is that NTARC has now received our incorporation certificate… so the long wait is over and all the work that Bill VK7MX has put into this has come to fruition. I'm sure all members will join me in offering our thanks and appreciation to Bill for all his efforts in this area.
Our next meeting will be a ripper. We have arranged for a dinner meeting at Tranquillity Gardens on Wednesday the 14th of October starting at 6.30pm. Our guest speaker is Brendan McMahon from the Bureau of Meteorology, talking about all things weather related. The dinner cost is going to be $20 per person, and will include soup and main course meal. If you're still hungry after that, you can try your luck in the raffle to win a basket of goodies from Lollidale, so make sure you have a little bit of change to enter the raffle too.
Mark VK7KMA is looking for the kit assembly instructions for a sound level meter as detailed in the Jaycar book Short Circuits volume 2. If you have this kit, or the book that details the kit and can help, get in contact with Jason VK7ZJA who will pass on the information to a very appreciative Mark.
Thanks from
(Jason VK7ZJA, NTARC Secretary)
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NORTH WEST News
North West Tasmania Amateur Television Group
http://www2.vk7ax.id.au/atvgroup
Barry VK7FR's progress
Here is a brief update on Barry VK7FR who suffered a minor stroke 2 weeks ago.
He is making good progress and is at present undergoing rehabilitation, and is improving each day. Interested members and friends can visit Barry in the North West Regional Hospital and he appreciates the amateurs who have visited him during the last few days.
It is expected Barry will return home soon after some recuperation and that it won't be long when we will once again hear Barry's mellow and cultured voice on our airwaves.
Get well soon Barry.
Next Club General Meeting
The next General Meeting of the Club is scheduled for Saturday 3rd. October at the Ulverstone Lions Club Facility located at the Show Grounds, West Ulverstone.
Start time for the meeting is around 2.00 PM and members please note this is an important meeting and the last chance to discuss, as a group, the final arrangements for the forthcoming JOTA activity during the weekend of 16/17/18th. October.
Guest speaker for the meeting will be Tony VK7AX discussing all the facets of Amateur Television, both past and present.
As usual all persons welcome.
The Club met with Senior Scouting Officials on Monday 14 th. September to discuss formulation and planning for the forthcoming JOTA/JOTI weekend.
At this stage it is planned to hold Camps at Burnie Scout Hall, Paton Park, Ulverstone and Camp Boomerang Port Sorell.
More info later on planned activities.
73's until next time.
(Tony VK7AX, News Officer NWT-ATV Group)
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Cradle Coast Amateur Radio Club (CCARC)
CCARC News
http://www.my-x15.net/ccarc
All members are notified there will be a general meeting of the Cradle Coast Amateur Radio Club at 1:30pm on next Saturday, the 26th of September at the Penguin Lions club rooms 19 Ironcliffe road, Penguin.
The meeting is open to all members and non members alike.
If you are a non amateur or a short wave listener living in the North West, or West coast of Tasmania, and would like to become a licenced amateur radio operator, then come along to the meeting and find out about this interesting hobby.
If you cannot make the meeting but would like to find out more about the hobby then contact the learning facilitator, Keith Winkler VK7KW, or any of the committee members.
Full contact details are available on our website which can be easily found by a "Yahoo" or "Google" search of CCARC TASMANIA
So don't forget, the meeting time is next Saturday the 26th of September from 1:30pm.
See you there.
(David Cleland, VK7DC, CCARC Secretary)
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Southern News
WICEN Tasmania (South) Inc
VK7RBI – VK7RHT/RAD Extension
VK7RBI is now in operation, located on the western side of South Bruny Island and linked via an intermediate station to VK7RHT. The system relies mainly on propagation over water, rather than the usual (and expensive) hill tops.
It is a cross band repeater system, so for practical user purposes, it's a simplex link into the R2 RAD / R5 RHT system.
Cover is much of the Huon/D'Entrecasteaux area, including Cygnet, Cradoc, South Bruny and the Huon Highway from Franklin down to Cockle Creek. Though not continuous, coverage is significantly better than available from R5 alone.
Equipment has been provided by WICEN Tasmania (South) and other costs are being met by a small group of interested Amateurs. Also, appreciation goes to the hosts, who have provided the sites free of charge, and to REAST who have added a link frequency to the VK7RHT licence.
Great care has been taken to avoid interference to (or from) the R2/R5 system. CTCSS is used throughout and there is a three minute time out. The nature of the equipment means this cannot be overridden so, unfortunately, RBI is not available for the full Sunday broadcast.
VK7RBI will automatically carry any radio traffic present on R2/R5, up till when the 3 minute limit is reached. It will then re-set on a break in incoming transmission
The link can be remotely changed away from R2/R5 for WICEN purposes and this will occur for short periods, usually of less than an hour. Also, one of the system components is packaged as a `grab and go' unit, to be available for WICEN use, though this is expected to occur only on rare occasions. The system is mains power dependent, for the time being at least.
To use the link, work simplex on 147.300MHz. A tone of 114.8 is required to access. There is an intermediate link, so a half second or so linking delay needs to be taken into account. It's suggested that radios be programmed with RBI as channel 3, sitting handily between R2 RAD and R5 RHT.
Enjoy!
(Roger Nichols VK7ARN, Secretary – WICEN Tasmania (South) Inc.)
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Greetings from Hasting UK
During the week our intrepid 10m guru - Graham VK7ZGK sent through his greetings from his home town of Hastings. Graham reports that they are having a great time with brilliant weather - 25 to 27 deg. He spent 2 weeks in London - seen all the sights, saw stage play Thriller at Leicester Sq and been to loads of pubs…doesn't sound a bit like Graham….HIHI.
Cheers and beers for now and send regards to everyone there.
(Graham, VK7ZGK)
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Radio and Electronics Association of Southern Tasmania
REAST ATV Experimenters Night
We had a great roll-up last Wednesday night and it was great to see Ron VK7RM along to help.
We started with a show and tell on the latest editions of the VK – CW Operators QRP Club magazine called Low Key and the latest edition of the Australian Star and Telescope magazine.
The AST magazine has a great article on taking time lapse digital images through your telescope and then using your graphics package to combine these into a composite shot. There was also an excellent article with recent brilliant pictures of the moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter.
Justin VK7TW then showed the new Chroma-Key screen that will be employed in the new studio. It is in fact and IKEA lusy green blanket! This blanket is a dense green unique colour and the blanket has mounting holes around the circumference of the blanket which assists in the hanging of the blanket on the wall behind the studio desk. The chroma-key allows the matching of an image or video to the green colour and create rear projections – much like the weather shot you see after the news…HIHI.
We then went into our second segment which was three episodes of Labrats.tv. The first was a great guided tour through the PC Museum in Toronto Canada and featured such marvels as the Sinclair ZX80, Tandy TRS80 and of course the Commodore 20 & 64! – Remember them?
The other episodes we showed where about the recently release Mac OS – Snow Leopard and the other episode was a look at how Truecrypt open source encryption works.
Whilst these episodes were playing we started the creation of the new ATV studio with the moving of the shelves in the garage to the final location in preparation for the building of the new wall.
Thanks a million to all those who came along and helped with the moving task.
We will be building the wall and slowly getting the new studio up and going over the next few weeks. Next week is a practical night where we take a look at inductors again and how to tell what type of ferrite you are looking at using a GDO and other techniques to tell if it can be used on the frequency you are looking for.
There will also be some more episodes of Labrats going out on ATV.
It should be another great night of ATV and experimentation.
So, we get underway around 7:30pm in the Queen's Domain clubrooms ATV studio, see you there.
http://reast.asn.au/events.php#ATVnights
(73, Justin, VK7TW)
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International Year of Astronomy
Royal Society of Tasmania – Lecture Series
RST lectures cover a variety of fields of knowledge, mainly about or relevant to Tasmania, and are directed towards the layperson.
The next one happens on Tuesday the 6th of October from 8 to 10pm in the Royal Society Room (enter off Davey Street) in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. This lecture is titled "Why do we need Cosmology" by Professor John Dickie who is the Chair of Physics at the University of Tasmania.
John Dickey holds Masters and PhD degrees in Astrophysics and Astronomy from Cornell University. The lecture will cover the following ……
The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their study of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation using the COBE spacecraft.
The CMB radiation was the topic of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics as well; in that year the winners were Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for discovering it in the early 1960's. There may well be more prizes on the way based on the CMB, because it is continuing to reveal more and more about the big bang and the properties of the very early universe.
Most recently the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe has returned vastly more information than COBE about the variations in brightness of the CMB, meanwhile observations from the ground are also telling us a lot about the big bang and its outcome.
In this talk Professor Dickey will discuss the role that cosmology plays in our daily lives, the basic facts about the big bang that everyone should know, the advances made by the Nobel Laureates and others working on space-based and ground- based observations of the early universe, and finally the questions that we have not yet been able to answer about the beginning of space and time.
http://rst.org.au/
(Thanks to Warren VK7FEET for passing on this information)
Also a reminder of the next Institute of Physics public lecture which will be on Thursday 8th October at 8.00 pm in the Physics Theatre 1 - Prof David Jamieson from University of Melbourne will be giving a public lecture on Galileo's invention of the astronomical telescope and his remarkable discoveries: moons, stars and a new planet.
And if that's not enough on Tuesday 20th October at 8.00 pm in Physics Theatre 1 - Dr Charley Lineweaver from the Australian National University will be giving a public lecture entitled Is There More Than One Universe?.
IYA - http://www.astronomy2009.org.au/
http://www.phys.utas.edu.au/physics/AIP_TasBranch/Program/Program.htm
(Sourced from the AST Mailing List)
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Space News
South African Amateur Radio Payload Reaches Orbit
After several delays, South Africa's SumbandilaSat satellite finally blasted to orbit aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 16. The main payload is a multi-spectral imager, but the satellite also carries an Amateur Radio component consisting of a 2 meter/70 cm FM repeater.
After SumbandilaSat is fully commissioned, the repeater will be activated with an uplink at 145.880 MHz and a downlink at 435.350 MHz; there will also be a voice beacon at 435.300 MHz. The transponder mode will be controlled by a CTCSS tone on the uplink frequency. The CTCSS tone frequencies have yet to be announced.
SumbandilaSat was sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology and was built at SunSpace in cooperation with the Stellenbosch University.
In addition to the SA-AMSAT amateur module, the satellite carries Stellenbosch University's radiation experiment and software defined radio (SDR) project, an experiment from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and a VLF radio module from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
(Sourced from the ARRL Space Bulletin)
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Technology News
Electrical Circuit Runs Entirely Off Power In Trees
The Science Daily website on Sept 9th reported about research undertaken by the University of Washington in relation to powering devices from the energy flowing around trees.
A study last year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants generate a voltage of up to 200 millivolts when one electrode is placed in a plant and the other in the surrounding soil. Those researchers have since started a company developing forest sensors that exploit this new power source.
The UW team sought to further academic research in the field of tree power by building circuits to run off that energy. They successfully ran a circuit solely off tree power for the first time.
Co-author Carlton Himes, a UW undergraduate student, spent last summer exploring likely sites. Hooking nails to trees and connecting a voltmeter, he found that bigleaf maples, common on the UW campus, generate a steady voltage of up to a few hundred millivolts. This voltage is then put through another circuit to boost this up to a usable 1.1 volts which is enough to run low-power sensors. The equipment powers down to save energy and an in-built "heart-beat" clock that runs from 1 nanowatt, keeps the system awake for short periods.
The team has proven that this is not a dissimilar metal – battery effect and it will never generate large amounts of power but it can be used to power sensors and gauge the tree's health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090908151330.htm
(Sourced from the Science Daily website)
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Space News
That Beer Budget (almost to) Space Camera.
Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world's biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.
The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.
Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn't find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape was US$148.
Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to compensate for the prevailing winds, which could have otherwise taken the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wyoming's balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.
http://weather.uwyo.edu/polar/balloon_traj.html
Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the centre of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone's external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the Canon Hacker's Development Kit open-source firmware,
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/09/add-features-to/
which adds many features to Canon's cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.
The picture that is available at the weblink on the email and internet editions of this broadcast
http://space.1337arts.com/
was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. It's short of the widely-accepted Kßrmßn line, which is at 100km (62 miles) up, but it's in the stratosphere, and it's still impressive. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.
What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.
The project website has few details on how the balloon was put together — but the students say they will be posting the step-by-step instructions soon.
The instructions are available for free!
http://space.1337arts.com/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/
(Sourced from the WIRED.Com website)
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Humour to Finish
Remember - Ides of September
For those DX'ers pining for the sunspots here's a little poem from Roger VK2ZRH:
Spring's warming, rising, hopeful light
Has set cold winter's cloak to flight
The naked Sun steals ever south
To kick our doldrums in the mouth
And mark the equinox for those that see
So the vigilant get to score some TEP !
Then the winds that blow in the thermosphere
Flow east and west and within their shear
Compress each and every tardy metallic ion
Into thin, broad sheets that reflect so fine
Our RF signals from far and further
To restore our restless Es DX fervour !
Posted as reminder.
(73, Roger Harrison VK2ZRH)
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Web & Email Edition Extra Bits!!
LIDAR Research at the Antarctic Division
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=36840
Redshift – that expanding universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
Need info and pic of that Rig you are chasing??
http://www.rigpix.com/
Hubble Images for your desktop (Thanks to Roger VK7ARN)
http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/a/
Oh dear – the things that happened in the past!
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/british-pm-says-sorry-for-computer-pioneers-castration-20090914-fn9g.html
AR Contesting Online
http://www.contesting.com/
Cestrian Scout Group – Active JOTA Station
www.gb2cos.org.uk
Thomson 263H Bird Strike In Manchester Airport
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpSuPDWswNs
Winlink grant – Oregon - ARRL
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2009/09/10/11061/?nc=1
TrueCrypt – Open Source Encryption Tool
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Edgar Alan Poe's 200th Birthday (Thanks to AMSAT News Service)
www.nevermore2009.com
www.poebicentennial.com
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
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VK7 Regional News Group Email Addresses
Post message: vk7regionalnews(AT)yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: vk7regionalnews-subscribe(AT)yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: vk7regionalnews-unsubscribe(AT)yahoogroups.com
List owner: vk7regionalnews-owner(AT)yahoogroups.com
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: VK7IR
160m: VK7DM
80m: VK7TW
40m: VK7RO
20m: VK7IL
10m: VK7TED
UHF CB: VK7ZCR
HF CB: VK7TED
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
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- NEWS POSTING TO PACKET -
Courtesy Tony VK7AX VK7AX(AT)VK7AX.#ULV.TAS.AUS.OC
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