Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

VHF+ RECORDS 2011-12

Via the Wellington Thursday Night Curry group I became aware of a goodly supply of workshop equipment likely to be of interest to those with a more practical hands/on bent, currently for sale.

The listings can be viewed on TradeMe. The notice I received included the following:

A friend who is a brilliant inventor and engineer is in his 80s and close to the end of his time with us.

Cheers

Digital Radio Mondiale is an OFDM radio transmission scheme having provision for callsign ident, text, voice, data, moving & still images, in bandwidths from 2.5kHz (non-standard ham mode) thru 96kHz (DRM+ FM band digital radio). It can operate in a single frequency network (SFN) to reduce band congestion and work cleanly even over HF paths – raising the possibility of a Digital National System distributed via HF.
I embarked on a series of experiments to test it out....

http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/regulation/51390-senate-enquiry-calls-for-dedicated-emergency-comms-spectrum

The mobile telephony industry has failed to convince a parliamentary enquiry into the communications needs of emergency service organisations that these needs are best met through services provided by the mobile communications industry rather than by dedicating spectrum for emergency communications services.

Click above for more.

There are lots of ways to communicate via lightwaves and this project gets started with a simple optical headend transceiver compatible with direct modulation or the more complex modes by using a PC to do the modulation and demodulation using DSP and SDR techniques.

I picked up an article on Slashdot that may be of interest to some:

Bionic Implants and Spectrum Clash

"The battle over scarce radio spectrum that has embroiled the mobile broadband world even extends to a little-known type of wireless network that promises to reconnect the human nervous system with paralyzed limbs. At its monthly meeting next week, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will consider whether four sets of frequencies between 413MHz and 457MHz can be used by networks of sensors implanted in patients who suffer from various forms of paralysis. One intended purpose of these MMNS (medical micropower network systems) is to transmit movement commands from a sensor on a patient's spinal cord, through a wearable MCU (master control unit), to implants that electrically stimulate nerves."

Slashdot being a discussion forum, folks will likely be interested in some of the comments likely to come up... both smart and witty.
The root article comes from Techworld Australia.

In 2009, when the inaugural EofA project to activate as many large Apollo-era dishes for a day of Moon talk on 23cm was announced, I had good reason to be interested. My workplace had one remaining 30.5 metre, fully steerable antenna that had been replaced with a smaller model and the site decommissioned, a fate already dealt to five similar size dishes and countless 10-metre class TVRO setups around the country.

Well that was an interesting year. Started with the possible loss of Kordia Sites and in particular "Breaking" of the National System. An extended power outage at the Belmont 710 sites (Only power from a Genset 2-4 hours a day) followed by District Plan Changes that got parts suddenly changed at the end of consultation.

As part of the work for the shift of the BBS from Newlands to our Ngaio site, the Ngaio UHF repeater frequency has been changed from 439.550 MHz to 434.550 MHz.

New Licence: 231999
Frequency : 434.550 MHz

Old Licence : 221215
Cancelled : 439.550 MHz

Please note that the MED have indicated that their name for the site is Kaiwharawhara Hill, and this will appear on the licences. So, the name for this repeater will now be;

455 Kaiwharawhara Hill

The Trustees, (ZL3TC, ZL2SX), would appreciate any signal reports.

The results of the NZART Doug Gorman Memorial Frequency Measuring Contest 2011 are presented below. These results are provisional and have been checked carefully but if you think an error has crept in please let NZART HQ know as soon as possible.

This year was a very interesting turnaround from last year with several entries in the Norm Edwards category beating out Ultra entrants with Mike ZL4OL showing how it’s done. The four top scores were all better than the first place result from last year, no doubt a combination of better technique and propagation conditions.