Contents
Front Page
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Editorial
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Optical Link Experiment
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Club Program
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Restoration Of AR7 Receiver
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IEEE Presentation On meta-materials
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To Aotearoa
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Licence Matters
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Silent Keys
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Wire-size Gauge vs Resistance
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WICEN
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WIA
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Licences & Examinations
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General Information
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Resource Links
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ALARA
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Club Contacts
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Website & Newsletter Information
FRONT PAGE
Editorial
Back to the Coal Face: After five busy weeks touring the north and south islands of New Zealand, I’ve returned to find AHARS still in good condition. Thanks to Leigh, David and the committee, I had nothing to worry about whilst away (other than my own dreadful driving skills in strange cities in strange vehicles).
Deceased Estates:
Amateurs like to help each other out, and when a fellow amateur becomes
a Silent Key, we do our bit to help the bereaved family by being
prepared to sell the radio gear of that person. Barry (VK5ZBQ) has just
put together a Policy Document for dealing with these deceased estates.
The document details the way that we deal with these. Sometimes handling
estates doesn’t go as smoothly as we would like, so, to protect both
AHARS and the family concerned, we will make use of his good work from
now on.
Three well-known old timers from our club have recently become Silent
Keys.
Please see page 5 for a brief tribute to them.
Club Program: Please check out page 2, to ensure that you’re up to date with what we’ll be doing in the future. We have some excellent events on offer.
John, VK5EMI, Editor and Club President.
(Pictured waffling on with John, VK5BJE-ZL at the
Icecream Cone in Christchurch, ZL=>>)
Optical Link Experimentation
I received the following email from Bill Cowley (UniSA) back in January:
"Hi John, I found your name on the WIA web pages.
Possibly the Adelaide Hills Amateur Radio Society might be able to assist our search for a suitable site to setup test transmissions to our SPRI Building at Mawson Lakes?
Briefly, we are starting a new project that aims to measure both RF and optical propagation characteristics over a 10 to 20 km link distance. The RF component is likely to use a 37 or 48 GHz low power transmitter and the free-space optical links will be eye-safe lasers operating at 1550nm. We are looking for a site with clear visibility to Mawson Lakes and wonder of any of your members may have a suitable property, or know of one that might be able to accommodate a low-budget research project? We would be happy to provide more technical details about this project if your society is interested. Regards, Bill Cowley,
Institute for Telecommunications Research (ITR) University of South Australia."
After quite a few emails around the club and the VK5 fraternity in general, I’m pleased to say that we have achieved some success in assisting Bill. Ben (VK5BB) of AREG has offered the use of a site in the eastern Adelaide Hills for the experiments. Some LOS (Line of Sight) issues still have to be resolved, but hopefully they will be soon.
Justin Giles-Clark (VK7TW), son of Wal (VK5TW) has also got involved.
(See AR April 2009 for one of Justin’s optical experiments).
I’m pleased to see amateurs helping Bill with his leading- edge experiments. Ed.
ALSO OF INTEREST (AMAZEMENT!) IS THIS EMAIL FROM
JUSTIN TO BILL RE HIS OPTICAL
EXPERIMENTATION
"We are using narrow bandwidth weak signal modes available through the WSJT application and the mode we are using is JT65A to transfer information.
This application was originally developed for meteorscatter (FSK441) / troposcatter (JT6M) and EME (Earth Moon Earth - JT65A) applications.
Further info can be found at: http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjt.html.
This application was developed by Joe Taylor K1JT.
This application can decode a signal down to -28dB below the noise floor.
73, Justin, VK7TW"