Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

July Meeting is at the Porirua Emergency Management Office. This is in Porirua, Opposite Subway. Please call on 710 on the night if you need directions.

Porirua Emergency Management Office is located at Porirua City Council, 16 Cobham Court.

Despite Google Maps thinking otherwise, it's at Location 'D' as shown in the below map (the middle dot, labelled as Porirua City Council).

Wellington VHF Group AREC was called in for Land SAR Operation Coffey in the Akatarawa Forest Park on Monday.

A number of AREC members from the region assisted and the search had a successful outcome at 5:30 pm on Monday evening, with the missing party being found found by a SAR team on foot.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3886708/Lost-biker-used-ferns-for-warmth

Apologies for the brief outage between 1100 and 1200hrs today.
Looking into the root cause, in the meantime, remember to check BlakJak.net's Administrivia for the latest on the servers goings-on.

Change in Program! New speaker!
Mike Mendonca from WCC City Ops will talk about his time serving NZ Forces overseas and his work with the Council, including WEMO and City Ops. Mike is a great speaker and has some good stories to tell.
24 June 2010 at 7.30pm at the usual venue in Tawa.

At the NZART AGM held recently held in Auckland, Roy Symon ZL2KH as NZART President awarded Amateur of the Year to Peter Aikin ZL1TX for his outstanding contribution to the hobby, particularly in Northland and also at a national level.

Peter is the drive behind a large number of repeaters in his extended area including the National System stations, local data repeaters, the Whangarei ATV repeater and many others in Northland and the Far North.

Peter is a member of Branch 28 Whangarei Amateur Radio Club and also the Wellington VHF Group. He was nominated by both Branches.

At the NZART 2010 AGM in Auckland the remits were discussed and voted on.

Remit 2 had been withdrawn by Council but the submitting Branch held it's right to have it presented.

The outcome of the voting is:

Remit 1 Free ARX Services to NZART members - by count. For: 629, Against: 737 Lost on votes.

Remit 2 Review of Family membership - Carried with amendment to replace "principal member" with "licenced member".

Remit 3 Release of Call Letters X,Y,Z- Carried

Remit 4 Seek Mandate for Entry Level Licence - Carried

Remit 5 AREC meeting times at Conference - Lost

At the April meeting of WVHFG, Mark Foster ZL1VMF advised the meeting that due to a change in working circumstances, he would be relocating (back) to Auckland. Mark joined the Group in 2006 when he moved to the Wellington area from Auckland.

Mark, in his time with the Group, quickly became heavily involved in Group activities. He was voted onto the committee at the 2006 AGM and was also appointed to the role of Webmaster. Mark also served as Secretary of the WVHFG and remained as an elected committee member until the 2009 AGM. Often handy with his camera, many of the images found on this website and subsequently printed in Q-Bit were taken by him. Mark was also involved with the WVHFG AREC Section and assisted recently at the SAR Exercise in the Tararuas and arranged and coordinated WVHFG involvement in the 'Bike the Trail' event in both 2009 and 2010.

Mark Foster ZL1VMF operating the SAREX Base at the recent Police SAREX in Upper Hutt, April 2010

The May 2010 meeting was ZL1VMF's last regular meeting attendance. Members of the group thanked Mark for his efforts. Mark will continue to be associated with the VHF Group and will continue serving as Webmaster and webhost, allbeit based in Auckland and ably assisted by other members of the Web Team, which includes ZL2HD, ZL2TGQ, ZL2KG and ZL2WAL.

On a personal note, i'd like to thank Wellington VHF Group for the welcome they extended me on my arrival to Wellington, and their ongoing support over the last 4.5 years. I'm happy to continue to be associated with a positive, forward-thinking and progressive Amateur Radio Club that truly has the hobby (and its enthusiasts) at heart. - ZL1VMF

Mike ZL2BNB, the NZART Local Government Liaison Officer (LGO) has studied the approved plan change and it is not as we expected!

Although most of what amateurs wanted was included in the plan change, the key element was not- towers up to a decent height.

The organising committee of the Easter 2011 VHF Convention has been announced and have started work already. The venue at The Tawa Community Centre has been tentatively booked and work with the Wellington Expo Committee started to see that this is going to be suitable for the Expo.

The plan is to run Wellington Radio Expo and the VHF Convention together, with the Convention having its kick-off at 2pm on the Saturday after the Expo finishes. There will be a Friday evening informal Social event, but the forums and technical sessions will be on the Saturday.

At the May 2010 meeting of the Group, Gavin ZL2TVM was elected as a Life Member for his outstanding and long service to the Group. This was carried with acclamation.

Gavin joined the Group around 1999 and became a contester, spending time on hill tops and setting up gear. He was very active in the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and often had new projects to share with members. Gavin served as secretary for some time and has been Q-Bit Editor for the last ~5 years.