posted 15 Jan 2012 20:00 by Onno Benschop
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updated 15 Jan 2012 20:53
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Western Australia marks 50th Anniversary of Perth as the ‘City of Light’
On February 20 this year, Western Australia will celebrate the 50 th anniversary of John Glenn's orbit of the earth. The Hills Amateur Radio Group will be one of many organisations coming together to celebrate this major event by helping young people make an amateur radio contact with the International Space Station though the ARISS programme.
What would YOU ask an astronaut? A competition has been launched by the Western Australian Museum and the State Records Office of Western Australia to find primary and secondary school students enrolled in Western Australia who'd like to talk to an astronaut in space, click on the image to get started.
Image uses graphic elements copyright of NASA. |
posted 11 Jan 2012 17:44 by Richard Grocott
I am pleased to announce the Morse tutor is back in it's correct timeslot.
0630 to 0830 and 1830 to 2030 local daily.
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posted 22 Dec 2011 17:57 by Richard Grocott
Just in from the WIA
ACMA to permit higher power for Advanced licensees on trial basis
The ACMA has advised the WIA that it intends to accede to the WIA’s request that advanced licensees may apply for a variation of their licence to permit higher power from a fixed location on a trial basis from 1 March 2012. Want to know more ?
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posted 22 Oct 2011 03:09 by Onno Benschop
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updated 22 Oct 2011 03:10
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HARG is going to host a quiz night in the new year and we'd like you and your family and friends to come. To ensure that we keep our activities in the spirit of Amateur Radio, we need to have a bank of questions relating to all things radio, not to mention, general knowledge and other questions. So we're putting up a form for you to enter your questions (and answers!) into so we can ask them.
If you know of other Amateurs who'd like to contribute, please feel free to forward a link to this page to them for their contribution.
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posted 25 Aug 2011 19:18 by Onno Benschop
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updated 25 Aug 2011 19:34
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Last weekend, Saturday 20 and Sunday 21st of August, as part of the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend, HARG members activated the North Mole Lighthouse in Fremantle. Marty VK6FDX offered his van as a portable shack and set-up a table and chairs with a vertical mounted to the roof-rack.
Over the two days we had visits from more than half of HARG's members who either participated in the action on-air or sat basking in the sun, enjoying the atmosphere. There was much interest from members from the general public. During the times VK6AHR/portable was active contacts were made with 132 stations across the globe including Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France and Italy. We also spoke with lighthouses throughout Australia, some in the UK, Scotland, North America and one into Portugal.
The main operators were Martin VK6ZMS, Marty VK6FDX and Onno VK6FLAB. |
posted 25 Aug 2011 18:24 by Onno Benschop
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updated 28 Aug 2011 04:46
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On
the weekend of the 16th and 17th of July several amateurs from the
Hills Amateur Radio Group (affectionately known as HARG) got together to
hold the inaugural VK6 Portable Field Day on the shores of the Harvey
Estuary, 20km south of Mandurah in Western Australia. Finding an excuse
to camp with a radio was never going to be a problem, figuring out a
date and what to bring proved to be much more challenging.Having
overcome the date selection, wedged in between several other events
with fingers crossed for the weather because it takes a special kind of
fool to camp in the middle of the winter – we managed to create an event
worthy of the name – although, strictly speaking we only set up one
radio and some antennas. It was loads of fun and we have a mind to make
this a regular affair.Figuring
out what to bring turned out to involve bringing everything bar the
kitchen sink – mind you there was a caravan from one amateur, so
strictly speaking we did also bring that. Food wasn't a problem, bring
what you need – so everyone brought more than they needed and we had
more than enough to go around – twice.As
an aside, the weather coming up to the weekend was deteriorating
rapidly, to the point that you had to slow down on the freeway to avoid
having an accident. Turns out, that's as bad as it got. We had high
humidity, but no rain during the day (some overnight) and while it could
have been a wet and muddy affair, it was bracing, but not unpleasant.On
the equipment side there was spare wire, coax on rolls, soldering
irons, verniers, pliers, connectors, crimpers and the like. The only
thing I forgot was the little patch lead that goes between the
front-panel of a Yaesu 857D and the radio – all I had was the 5m
separation cable which appears to suffer from HF injection at some
frequencies.From
a technical perspective, I have a Yaesu 857D transceiver connected to a
dual-band Diamond SG-7200 antenna for 2m/70cm and an SGC SG-237 antenna
tuner connected to a 12.49m piece of “random wire”, which is wound
around my 12m Spiderbeam squid-pole. There are 16 radials, also 12.49m
long which complete the antenna. We used this as our main set during the
weekend.As
I said, as an event we had a blast. We were far enough from Perth to be
out of reasonable range of the local repeater, VK6RAP, so we “invented”
a way to stick my dual-band antenna on the top of the squid-pole –
suffice to say that it looked like a dogs breakfast and by the time the
aerial was in the air, the whip was horizontally polarised if you get my
drift. For those not graphically inclined, the weight of the Diamond
SG-7200 on the top of a 12m Spiderbeam causes the tip to bend to the
point where it's horizontal.Dropping
the whip down several segments improved things a little, but HF was
affected, so we ended up just using the contraption for about an hour
while we participated in “F-troop” which runs from 8:00 to about 8:30
every Saturday on VK6RAP. In order to actually get to the repeater
required more power (I suspect because our antenna was on a strange
angle) which one of the advanced licensees confirmed by trial and error,
balancing transmit power and battery drain. Since
I have an F-call, I cannot transmit with more than 10 Watts. However,
as a second operator of a licensee with more privileges I can use their
power settings, so for the duration I became a second operator, weird
call sign, with a stroke 2 in it – much hilarity for newcomers who
didn't recognise my voice and wondered why I knew everyone. A credit to
Miles, VK6MAB who hosted F-troop on this day - we could really only
participate from the side-lines.One
of our amateurs brought out his hand-built Slim-Jim antenna which
needed some tweaking. Pulling out an antenna analyser revealed that it
was tuned to 153MHz, so with a little help from a soldering iron we
tweaked it to tune to 146MHz, making contacting the repeater actually
possible from the location without the gaffer-tape antenna special we
built previously (and with only 10 Watts).On
the HF front we participated in the Southern Cross DX net and the 7.130
DX net as well. We talked to some amateurs across the bands. Mostly we
spent a lot of time around the campfire eating and talking. While we
were talking and generally having a great time we did notice lots of HF
noise, which was rather strange since we’d selected our camp location
based on past visits when it was extremely quiet.Turns
out that generators are not the noisiest things around; by far the
noisiest contraptions invented by man are inverters. It's like sitting
at a radio with headphones on and having someone stick a knitting needle
in your ear for several hours – not enough pressure to draw blood, just
enough to give you a splitting headache. So we had a little chat with
our fellow campers and educated them on the benefits of HF silence –
turns out most campers were more than happy to turn off their stuff,
since in many cases they didn't even realise it was on!We
took the opportunity to trial some other things as well. Tying the
Spiderbeam to a tree-stump works, though you do get dizzy tying the
rope. We used a marquee to set-up our “shack” and learned that it's a
good idea to make sure all the bits – like walls – are in the bag before
you bring it. Hooking up an external speaker to your camp radio makes
the interaction much more sociable, since everyone can hear what's going
on, rather than just the person on the radio. Making a packing list for
your go-kit is a great idea, since it will help prevent missing little
cables you might need.We
had a visit from some locals and one who kindly supplied lots of
fire-wood (thanks Norm - you’re the best!) which made the experience all
the more pleasurable, and being an hour from Perth, we had some
day-trippers come by to sample the freshly made damper.Amateurs
on site included: John VK6FJON, Chrissie VK6XCJ, Allan VK6AN, Alan
VK6PWD, Marty VK6FDX, Simon VK6FBMW and myself, Onno VK6FLAB. Jason, a
potential amateur also came for a visit.For
our next camp out we'll see what other experiments we can come up with.
We'll advertise the event around the traps and if you're available,
feel free to join in – we're all just looking for an excuse to play with
our kit.Onno
VK6FLAB is a recent F-call, hosts F-troop on VK6RAP every Saturday at
8:00am - you can find callbacks on the HARG website at harg.org.au. You
may have heard his segment on the VK6 or WIA news, “What use is an
F-call?”. He recently was elected President of the Hills Amateur Radio
Group.
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posted 2 Jul 2011 19:47 by Richard Grocott
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updated 25 Aug 2011 19:55 by Domain Administrator
]
HARG will be activating the North Mole Light House in Fremantle again this year for the 2011 ILLW. The event runs from August 20-21, we will be set up from 10am WST. Please call past and say hello.
From Martin VK6ZMS
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posted 14 Jun 2011 18:11 by Onno Benschop
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updated 25 Aug 2011 19:57 by Domain Administrator
]
We're moving to a new home - moving from 145.525 MHz simplex to the Tick-Hill repeater, VK6RTH, on 146.800 MHz FM - with an input frequency of 146.200 MHz.
While we had great contacts on our first ever net, it seems that we might be able to accommodate more friends if we use a repeater, given that line of sight isn't a given, even with two amateurs in the same suburb :)
I'll be looking for input on documents on how to set your radio to use a repeater and will add that to the F-troop section of the site.
Onno, vk6flab
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posted 11 Jun 2011 20:28 by Richard Grocott
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updated 25 Aug 2011 19:54 by Domain Administrator
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No not the old TV series (American version of Dad's army ??), but a Nett for the F-call licensees, also some times called "Foundies". This Nett sprang into life on Sunday 12 June 2011 courtesy of a HARG member Onno VK6FLAB.
By all accounts it has been a successful start, giving "F" calls an opportunity to get on the radio and be heard. Onno will be running this net after the WIA News broadcast every Sunday. Initially on 145.525 Mhz, possibly moving to one of the repeaters.
Well done Onno! HARG gets in the news again.
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posted 20 May 2011 17:57 by Richard Grocott
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updated 25 Aug 2011 19:54 by Domain Administrator
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Craig VK6VCK and Paul VK6LOT will be up at Coral bay over the next 2 weeks
Fishing and DXing .
They will be operating on 40m around 7093 KHz morning and afternoon and 80m around 3620 KHz
in the evening plus a bit of Maritime mobile on 20m-15m-10m during the day.
Give them a call and share their fishing tales.
Extracted from an e-mail from Paul VK6LOT |
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