WIANEWS FOR WEEK COMMENCING APR 11 2010. ALL UP AND COMING IN THIS EDITION OF NEWS FROM THE WIRELESS INSTITUTE OF AUSTRALIA FOR WEEK COMMENCING APR 11 2010 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEXT WEEKEND IS DEEMED WORLD AMATEUR RADIO DAY World Amateur Radio Day will be celebrated on Sunday 18 April 2010, the theme for 2010 is "Amateur Radio: Combining communication experience with modern digital techniques." This Sunday can be a great opportunity for radio clubs to demonstrate amateur radio to the public at a shopping centre or mall. (SARL) weekend after is ANZAC Day and that's when Amateur radio salutes the servicemen and women in the many conflicts. CW - Morse code - was used as a means of communication during WW2, Korea, Malaysia and even early Vietnam. Museum ships, including the HMAS Whyalla, will be utilised to honour this event. Whyalla Amateur Radio Club together with the Whyalla Maritime Museum invite you to attend the HMAS Whyalla on ANZAC Day from 12.30 pm (0300 UTC/GMT) to witness and share in the experience of Morse Code communication. For further information please contact either : Whyalla Visitor Centre & Maritime Museum Freecall 1800 088 589 Whyalla Amateur Radio Club: vk5bwr@hotmail.com WIA CENTENARY Announcing a QRP contest for the Centenary The VK QRP Club is sponsoring a new commemorative contest that should have very wide appeal and be a lot of fun too. The WIA Centenary QRP Contest is open to all radio amateurs whether they be Foundation, Standard or Advance licensees with the aim of encouraging interest in the use of low level transmit power. For the entire UTC month of May the contest will be on the 80m and 40m bands using either CW, AM or SSB. It?s hoped that a lot of stations will be calling ?CQ WIA Centenary QRP Contest?. The rules will be published in the April edition of Amateur Radio magazine and on the WIA website. (AUDIO ON SITE ROBERT) Publicity support for all clubs The 21 clubs rostered to use the special callsign VK100WIA in June and July have received a comprehensive package of material to help them promote amateur radio, their club and the WIA Centenary. The material is ideal for any club that wants to promote an event or activity and gain positive media publicity for amateur radio. While clubs on the VK100WIA roster will automatically receive this material eight weeks prior to their three-day rostered slot, any other WIA affiliated club can request a copy from the WIA National Office. In a covering letter the WIA President Michael Owen VK3KI explains that the resources being provided include media liaison advice, a template media release, background sheets and guides. Clubs using this package will easily be able to create a 'Media Kit' to send to their local news media. Michael VK3KI said a number of clubs had asked him and other WIA directors at hamfests and meetings for this kind of support. We now look forward to seeing the results of club media campaigns. HAMS ACROSS AUSTRALIA. VK2 web service:- http://www.arnsw.org.au/html/news_vk2wi.htm VKG Roundup http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news Amateur Radio New South Wales Amateur Radio New South Wales will be holding their A G M next Saturday morning the 17 th. Aptil at the VK2WI site For further details see http://www.arnsw.org.au Oxley Region Amateur Radio Club 35th Annual Field Day. The Oxley Region Amateur Radio Clubs 35th annual field day is being held on Sunday 13th June 2010 at the Sea Scouts Hall in Buller Street Port Macquarie. NSW. A good representation of the trade will be in attendance on Sunday 13th June, along with the sale of preloved gear etc. Free coffee, tea and biscuits as well as a BBQ on Sunday from midday, if necessary we will fire up the BBQ for lunch on Saturday. Entry is a mere $5 per person, children under 5 free. (John McLean VK2KC ORARC Publicity Officer.) Stafford Simpson VK2AST tells us that the Albury Wodonga Amateur Radio Club have their Riverina Field Day 25th July. The event will be held at Lavington Scout Group Mutsch street Lavington. There will be major suppliers and second hand equipment WIA book shop and others. Email Address : staffordsimpson@westnet.com.au Central West NSW, have no monthly get togethers for 'Hams' but, as the song goes "help is on it's way".. Next week we will hear of how a groups ARE trying to domething about that!! Oh and in the mean time have a listen to tourist radio PHFM at 0410 utc Fridays for a ham radio segment! VK3 web service:- http://www.amateurradio.com.au/news/ VKC Roundup http://www.police Digital Amateur TV repeater with stereo sound The latest on the VK3RTV repeater on Mt Dandenong which services the Melbourne and Geelong areas is that stereo sound is now available for both its digital and analogue inputs. Peter Cossins VK3BFG advises that for analogue the sub-carrier frequencies at 6 and 6.5 MHz, and operators need to activate it by DTMF code Star Zero Three Hash (* 0 3 #). About seven stations transmitting digital DVB-S uplink also have the capability to transmit stereo sound. New 23 cm antenna arrays are yet to be completed and the system is currently running VK3RTV-1 on a temporary antenna. Peter VK3BFG also advises that experiments are being made with Internet streaming via the British Amateur TV Club. The VK3RTV repeater digitisation has been primarily funded by Amateur Radio Victoria with $1,000 also provided by the WIA Club Grants Program. (Peter Cossins VK3BFG) Chris Chapman VK3QB reminds all Gippsland Gate Radio & Electronics Club's 2010 Hamfest is 17 July 2010. EDUCATION YOUTH AND ADVANCEMENT OF AMATEUR RADIO www.hamcollege.com.au Congratulations to Hayden VK7HAY for being awarded the Best Electronics Project (North) and Jarrod VK7RJ for Best Soldering Project (North) as apprentices with the Tasmanian Skills Institute. It's great to see our young amateurs getting a good grounding in the electronics trade. Keep up the great work! (VK7NEWS) INTERNATIONAL NEWS With thanks to RSGB, Southgate AR Club, the ARRL, Amateur Radio Newsline, NZART and the WW sources of the WIA. Bahrain Licensing of the amateur services in the Kingdom of Bahrain has taken a major step forward with the release of new regulations by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority. New additions for General Class licensees include 135.7-137.8kHz with a power limit of 10W, an extension of the 160m band changing the upper limit of 1,850kHz to 2,000kHz, the inclusion of the 40m band extension up to 7,200kHz plus the 30m band. Above 30MHz new additions include 50-52MHz and improved access to bands at 430MHz and above. With the exception of the segment 50-50.5MHz, which is Primary, all new allocations have been granted on a secondary basis. Permitted power to the antenna on all bands except 136kHz is 1500W. A new Intermediate Class licence has also been introduced that permits operation at 28MHz and above with power output to the antenna of 100W. Aeronautical Mobile, Maritime Mobile, Mobile and Portable operations are also permitted within the terms of the new licence. The IARU say that congratulations should be offered to those who negotiated these new regulations. Negotiations continue for the use of other bands in use within Region 1. And Digital v Analogue TV is "in the news". US Amateur Radio operators want old residential TV towers. Bowling Green area ham radio operators want to give new life to residential TV towers by incorporating them into an emergency communications system. The Kentucky Colonels Amateur Radio Club (who have come up with this 'finger lickin good' idea along with the Kentucky 4th District Amateur Radio Emergency Services are seeking donations of the TV towers, which have become increasingly obsolete as more households have turned to cable, satellite and digital TV providers. Bill Schlicht of the KCARC said members will remove the towers for free, recondition them and install them at numerous locations in the 10-county Barren River Area Development District to support emergency communications among ham radio operators, hospitals, county emergency management directors, American Red Cross chapters and other emergency workers. Now, "seirously' is the Ten Tower up for grabs here? or would the Nine one "still be the one". ============================================================================= WEIRD AND WONDERFUL NEW MORE ISLAND IS NO MORE ISLAND If you are thinking of sponsoring a DXpedition to New Moore Island in the Sunderbans you might as well forget it. This is because the disputed island in Bay of Bengal has disappeared into sea. For nearly 30 years Bangladesh and India have argued over ownership of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now Mother Nature has resolved the dispute for them. Due to rising sea levels, as of March 24th the island's gone. According to news reports, its disappearance below the waves has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols and one might now say that New Moore Island is, no more. (arnewsline) OPERATIONAL NEWS - SPECIAL EVENTS AND ON AIR CONTEST COLUMN - D A T E L I N E 2010 Apr 24 Harry Angel Memorial Sprint APR 30 - MAY 6 Westlakes CQ Repeater contest contestmanager@westlakesarc.org.au May 8 WIA VK Trans Tasman 80m Phone Bruce Renn vk3jwz@wia.org.au May 15-16 NZART Sangster Shield http://www.nzart.org.nz/contests/index.html WIA Centenary QRP contest The VK QRP club is sponsoring a low power contest during May to commemorate the Centenary of organised amateur radio in Australia. All three grades of Australian licence can join this one, provided they limit their output power to five-watts CW and 10 Watts for AM and SSB. The contest will be on the 40m and 80m bands. Operate each evening in May between 1000 to 1300 UTC and then submit an entry for your best 20 days. More details and the contest rules can be found on the WIA website. Winter VHF-UHF Field Day John Martin VK3KM WIA Contests Manager lets the vk7news guys know last week that the rules for the Winter Field Day, which is held on the 19 and 20 June, are now available and can be found on Australia's only official contest pages when you click the link that just WON'T go away, wia.org.au Via the 7 news team we learn there HAS been a major rule change: the introduction of a separate section for rover stations. This new section will allow portable and rover stations to compete against other stations that have similar scoring potential. The rover section will apply to all stations that operate from more than two grids, or change location more than twice. This allows stations in the regular Portable sections to change location once, and return to the original grid square, without being required to enter the Rover section. 2010 International Museums Weekends The 2010 International Museums Weekend special event will again be a double-weekend and will take place on 19th and 20th June plus 26th and 27th June. Radio amateurs are encouraged to participate in this event by setting up stations in their local museums. Harry, M1BYT, who is organising the event, asks that all those intending to take part should register their museum via e-mail to harry.m1byt@tiscali.co.uk Full details of the event can be found on the International Museums Weekend website at www.ukradioamateur.co.uk/imw (rsgb) All shapes and sizes We have the very tall, some are broad while others stout. Most are white, some black, blue or even red in colour. Looking at them in wonder takes you back in time. Many will blink back at you? What am I? Uuuummmmm? With all those clues clearly the answer is a 'lighthouse', and this a reminder that the International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend run by Scotland's Ayr Radio Group GM0AYR is only four months away on the 21st and 22nd of August. So far 135 registrations from 23 countries have been received from radio clubs and individual radio amateurs for this popular and friendly on air weekend. An interesting trend in VK this year is the number of lighthouses that will be put on air for the very first time. These include VK4DMC Archer Point Lighthouse, VK5PBZ Port Germein, VK6FLAM Guilderton and VK7ZM Rocky Cape Lighthouse. Each lighthouse has an interesting history. For example the Guilderton Lighthouse in Western Australia is one of our youngest, a red brick structure built in 1983 at the place where guilder coins were found from a Dutch ship Vergulde Draeck (Guilded Dragon). The sailing ship came to grief in 1656. To see where Australian lighthouses are located you can download a Google Earth file - the URL can be found on the text edition of this broadcast (http://illw.net/australia_lights.kmz) or from the website illw.net The International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend, 21st and 22nd of August will again be a lot of fun. (Jim Linton VK3PC) SPECIAL EVENT CALLS, REPEATER BEACON DX AND NET ADVICE hf nets ON the net, www.timroberts-vk4yeh.id.au/ An international team are operating as 3W6C from Con Co Island, Vietnam, which is IOTA reference AS-185, started 10th wirelessing till 18th April. Plans were to run four stations 24 hours a day for the two weeks with a goal of 60,000 QSOs. (sourced to rsgb) THE QNEWS WORK BENCH - the nuts and volts report - (Measure twice - Cut once!) NEW FORMAT OF HARD DRIVE STORAGE COMING IN 2011 Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years. Amateur Radio Newslines Norm Seeley, KI7UP, in a recent report said that By early 2011 all magnetic hard drives will use an advanced format that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them. The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable. However, it might also mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using the changed format. According to Science On-Line, since the days of the original DOS operating system, the space on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes in size based on the floppy disks of that era. Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. While 512 bytes made sense hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, its of less significance when drives can hold a terabyte or more of data. As a result, in large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive. Drive makers say that moving to an advanced format of 4 kilobyte sectors means about eight times less wasted space. This will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction technology. Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association all hard drive makers have committed to adopting the 4 Kilobyte advanced format by the end of January 2011. WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- ATV (Every pixel tells a story) - Video arvideonews.com hamradiotube.com youtube.com Operating Amateur Radio while skydiving is an aspect of the hobby that has been attracting interest as a YouTube video shows. The YouTube description reads: Skydive Monterey Bay at Marina Airport in Marina, CA. These are "parachute mobile" jumps which skydivers are amateur radio (ham) operators that make radio contacts while under canopy (this is impractical in freefall, at 120 mph airspeed noise is extremely loud and duration of jump is too short for numerous contacts*). These jumps are hop and pops at exit altitude to provide maximum canopy hang time to make radio calls. Watch Parachute Mobile at Skydive Monterey Bay Marina Airport just search out youtube.com (SouthGate) WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- RADIO SCOUTING http://www.scouts.com.au http://www.scout.org/jota http://www.international.scouts.com.au Not only the WIA is in 100 year celebration mode, Bob Bristow tells us that Boy Scouts of America in celebrating 100 years In 1910 the United States Congress officially chartered the Boy Scouts of America. The San Francisco Bay Area Council of B.S.A. is hosting a centennial anniversary celebration jamboree at the Alameda County Fairgrounds April 16-18 and part of the celebration includes two "Jamboree on the Air" stations where amateur radio will be demonstrated to youth and adults Scouts. Information is available from www.100thanniversaryjamboree.org The station will be demonstrating HF voice and code operations, VHF/UHF voice repeater operations, satellite communication, radio direction finding, and, CW practice stations. The station (WZ6BSA) will be on the air 7.190 SSB 7.030 CW 14.290 SSB 14.060 CW IRLP W6CX IRLP: 3057 N6LDJ IRLP: 7712 No matter where in the world you are, if you can't make it to the fair grounds, please get on the air and talk to these Scouts for their 100th anniversary. WW SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS --- RESCUE RADIO PADDLE FOR LIFE CANOE MARATHON - 17-19 APRIL. Summerland AR Club provide safety and control comms for this charity event. A three day canoe paddle, Lismore - Coraki - Broadwater - Ballina abt 120Kms. 1 opr in SES boat, 1 mobile follower, 1 next stop loc. Others if available. Can you help? advise 2JWA if you are available. ARRL and Red Cross Sign Memorandum of Understanding ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN, HAS signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the American Red Cross, the MoU, which replaces an earlier Statement of Understanding that expired in 2007, provides a "broad framework for cooperation" between the ARRL and the ARC "in preparing for and responding to disaster relief situations at all levels in rendering assistance and service to victims of disaster, as well as other services for which cooperation may be mutually beneficial." When one Sunday recently John Oakberg, NK4N, of Tennessee, went hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park he was about 1 mile up from Alum Cave Bluff, and came across Judy Potter, 57, of Atlanta who had broken her ankle while on the trail. Oakberg reached for his cell phone to call 911, but there was no coverage available. He then reached for his handheld transceiver and put out a call to any Amateur Radio operators who may be listening via some nearby VHF 2 meter repeaters, back they came and AGAIN Ham Radio saved the day! Congrats John. (arrl) GAREC-2010 date and venue announced The Global Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Conference, GAREC, will be held in Curacao, Netherland Antilles on the 11th and 12th October. The annual conference for those engaged in providing emergency communications will this year be organised by the Dutch Amateur Radio Emergency Service (DARES) and the IARU radio society VERONA (Vereniging voor Experimenteel Radio Onderzoek in de Nederlandse Antillen). The conference theme this year is "Learning through practicing". The program is yet to be finalised however the organisers are keen to include first-hand accounts of emergency communications following the devastating Haiti and Chile earthquakes. The purpose of GAREC is to exchange information and experiences between all radio amateurs and groups interested in emergency communications. Presentations to previous conferences can be found at www.garec.net (Jim Linton VK3PC) REWIND - A LOOK BACK IN HISTORY Rewind a look back at our history through the serialised written history by WIA Centenary Committee member Peter Wolfenden VK3RV with assistance of others, that is being published in the WIA journal Amateur Radio magazine. Struggle to get back on the air With the moves to re-start experimental wireless after World War I, as reported by Sea, Land and Air magazine in September 1919, a national effort was being made to represent all experimenters and private users of wireless apparatus. Prior to the Navy issuing receiving licences in November 1919, many experimenters quietly re-built their stations and commenced tuning into the ether again The Wireless Institute of Victoria contacted other states requesting they appoint proxies to represent them on a possible Federal Council, which would approach authorities to re-issue transmitting licences. However progress did not occur overnight. Most war-time restrictions were not removed by the Government in late 1920 and the Postmaster General regained control of operator examinations. But transmitting licences were not generally made available until late 1922. The new Controller of Wireless was Jim Malone, generally sympathetic to experimenters and he issued a number of special transmitting licences, ahead of time. One was for the Wireless Institute of Victoria from May 1921 that granted permission to transmit nightly. Another for the South Australian Institute enabling it to operate from September of that year. There were a few others. The authority wanted one experimenter or amateur voice to deal with, and the WIA provided that representation. SOCIAL SCENE 2010 No Hamfests etc on horizon until June - RELAX time! HiHi JUNE 12 VK2 Oxley Region Amateur Radio Club's 35th Annual Field Day. JULY 17 VK3 GGREC Hamfest Start Time : 10:00 AUGUST 1 VK6 Northern Corridor Group Hamfest Cyril Jackson Sports Centre Ashfield Please think of the environment before printing this email ============================================================================= WIANews - we've reported...YOU decide. Societies and Club News Letter Editors can EXCHANGE a feed prior to the actual broadcast date, e-mail nationalnews@wia.org.au Call-backs follow the RF editions, but also for text readers you may lodge a quick reply to let us know you read it, who knows, you might even get a "cheerio call". Thanks to to our dedicated band of broadcast volunteers who utilize their time and equipment in bringing you this weekly broadcast. The purpose of "WIANews" is to rapidly provide news of interest to active amateurs residing in Australia and the globe. We strongly encourage membership in the Wireless Institute of Australia and participation in the activities of local clubs. Opinions expressed in "WIANews" are those of the writers who submit material and do not necessarily reflect those of the rebroadcasters, nor the National WIA, but are broadcast in the spirit in which they were submitted. Material may be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form, a credit to WIANews wouldn't go astray... Compiled by VK4BB on behalf of the National WIA.