About VK3CAE..
Thanks
for having a look at these pages, hopefully you'll
find something that interests you. The home QTH is at Riddells
Creek in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria..
My wife and I both originally came from Bendigo in Central Victoria, we then
lived in Melbourne's SE for well over a decade and after having our three
children we decided to move into a larger home in handy country location. Riddells Creek is about 40 minutes drive NW of Melbourne
and around an hours drive to Bendigo or Ballarat, the town is a popular stop off for weekend
travellers visiting nearby Mt Macedon.
My Interests
include Amateur Radio, Electronics, Computers, Music (playing Guitar) and just
about anything with a motor in it. Motorcycles have always been of interest, I
had 12 of them over a 15 year period and not all of them survived, luckily I
did. Nowadays I ride an old (and rare) 1981Suzuki
GS-650Gx Katana, she (number 13)
needs some work but that's an ongoing thing... I work at the RMIT University in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The old photo below is of yours
truly tuning a 1.5 KW RF Magnetron sputter unit located in one of the schools
research areas.
I grew up in the Central Victorian
city of Bendigo and when I wasn't riding bikes with my mates, I could be
found mucking around with old radios and reading about electronics. Then in the
mid 1970's while listening to the Short Wave bands I noticed an increase in
activity on the 11 Metre Band (27MHz). This was the CB radio boom time and it
wasn't long before I began using one myself, a pastime which soon lead me into
Amateur Radio with my original novice call being VK3PYH. I held the
"limited combined" call of VK3JEG for about 20 years but decided to
change it recently as a mark of rekindling the interest (and to save ongoing
confusion with another amateur who has a very similar sounding call).
During the
1980's, I was an active member of the Midland
Amateur Radio Club (MARC), my time
with this club was quite enjoyable, I'm still a
financial member of the MARC. After a move to Melbourne in late 1989, my contact with the Bendigo based club and its members has become somewhat limited to
on air QSO's and the annual Hamfests.
In 1990 I became interested in the Moorabbin and
District Radio Club, the MDRC was then and still is quite an active club...
Over the past
30 years I've accumulated a collection of various components, test
equipment and radio gear, most of it comes from the 60's 70's & 80's
and it's all good stuff, well almost! A lot of my radio gear is modified
ex-commercial and Home Brew, things like Antennas, Antenna
tuning units, cavity filters, Power supplies, RF-Amplifiers, DC-Receivers and PLL
circuits. Information and circuits on these topics can be found in publications
as listed in the links section of these pages (VK3CAE's) and or probably from
your local Radio Club.
Chris VK3CAE - Please
send any comments to cja@rmit.edu.au