Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

This month we celebrate two notable achievements by members, as well as some other activities.

Peter Aikin ZL1TX awarded NZART “Amateur of the Year”

At the NZART Annual General Meeting held recently in Auckland, Peter Aikin ZL1TX was awarded this prestigious award.

Peter is a long-time member of both Wellington VHF Group and Whangarei Amateur Radio Club. His nomination was made jointly by both clubs, in recognition of his stalwart contribution to northern branches and to VHF/UHF, particularly to VHF Convention technical programmes and the National System.

In making the presentation to Brian Winger ZL1BSW, who accepted the award on Peter’s behalf, Roy Simon, President of NZART commented, “Hearty congratulations to Peter. It is Amateurs like Peter who keep our hobby in good heart – and the award was designed for amateurs who contribute as much as he has”.

I was very pleased to be able to join with Brian to make this nomination. Well done Peter.

Gavin Cross ZL2TVM awarded “Life Member” of Wellington VHF Group

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.

Gavin joined the Group around 1999 and became involved in contesting, and was, (and still is), very active in the Special Interest Groups (SIGs).

Gavin was elected to the management committee in October 2000, and was appointed Editor of Q-Bit journal in November 2004, a post that he has held continuously through to now, a period of nearly 6 years. He was appointed a technical trustee for beacons and repeaters in January 2007, a role he continues with currently. He has contributed a huge amount of time, energy and expertise to this task.

Gavin has been our delegate to NZART conference on several occasions, our contact on the Wellington Expo planning committee, and he has attended VHF Conventions around the country.

Congratulations, Gavin. We are proud to recognise your enthusiasm, your participation, and your dedication to the success of the Group. Our best wishes for your on-going enjoyment of amateur radio.

Webmaster moves north

Mark Foster ZL1VMF has advised that due to a change in working circumstances, he is relocating (back) to Auckland. Mark joined the Group in 2006 when he moved to the Wellington area from Auckland.

Mark has served as Secretary of the management committee, and remained as an elected committee member until the 2009 AGM. He also was involved in the AREC section activities, and organised the Bike-the-Trail public service event two years running.

Mark hosts our website and is also webmaster, keeping the website up to scratch and keeping the contributors under some semblence of orderly control.

Mark commented on his time with the Group:

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

Thanks Mark for your keen participation in the activities of the Group, and we look forward to your continued activity from “up north”.

May meeting “Show & Tell”

The presenters, talks and activities at monthly meetings continue to interest and sometimes astound members. May was no exception, the show and tell session was entertaining, as always, illustrating the diversity of activities enjoyed by some of our members.

The following notes are by John ZL2HD, and first appeared on our website, thanks John.

We had six speakers and two new guests introduced themselves – Teemu ZL2MRJ and Mira ZL2GEE have migrated to Wellington with their SAR search dogs, cats and radio gear from Finland. Previously they had worked for a (smallish) Finnish company called Nokia!

The talks

Project 1: Peter ZL2VK talked about his Elsie Meter project. This is a Group funded project that is an L-C meter based on using a PIC micro. It has a large LCD screen and the kit costs $70. Those interested please contact Peter or come along to the next Special Interest Group meeting to buy one. First in first served - so don’t wait if you want one! The prototype batch was all pre-sold, so we know demand is high.

Project 2: Also, Peter had his SDR HF radio all built and working well. Peter also has the 2m/6m kit and is going to build this very soon. The new VHF kit is very popular and in high demand. We look forward to a demo very soon.

Project 3: John ZL2HD and his Yacht Race Starter. This is a PICAXE based project that switches on the horn of a boat to do the countdown sequence for sailing teams racing. It plugs across the horn switch of the boat to take its power and shorts the switch to sound the horn. Toots are 3, 2, 1 minute, 30, 20, 10 seconds 5,4,3,2,1 and starts with the 3 minute again. This has been tested and been used at Evans Bay Yacht Club and is popular with the race starters!

Project 4: Bruce ZL2ABC showed his Motor Boat Racing Buoy. The race officials needed a way to tell the race drivers to stop, so a red flashing light on a buoy is used. The project had no budget, so Bruce used an old commercial radio and took the busy light in the receiver to a relay kit from Jaycar, and drove a red beacon light. The project is housed in a small plastic barrel with a PVC pipe holding the beacon light clear; where the boats can see it. A second use of the project is with a horn speaker attached: it is used as a wireless PA system to communicate with the crews on the shore.

Project 5: Wayne ZL2BKC described and demonstrated his “network analyser in a box”! Yes, a small black box with a USB port and two SMA connectors is a real, live, working network analyser up to 1300MHz. Wayne built this from a project kit, and for around $600 it has most of the function of units that start at nearly 100 times this price! The software and the chipset do the “smart bits” and Wayne showed us how it analysed a few passive devices. This is an amazing tool that brings a network analyser down to a level suitable for amateurs and small companies that need these functions. We look forward to doing antenna tests with Wayne’s toy once summer is here.

Project 6: Rob ZL2WAL demonstrated his Google Earth/Google Maps project. Rob has collected all the fixed station data in ZL and converted it to a .KML file that Google uses to display data on their maps. Some smart programming has joined various bits of info together to give a good display for each licence, as well as having it correctly placed on the map. Rob has removed the NS linking stations from the display in such a way that the added data and hidden data is not lost when tables are refreshed from various sources. Rob is working to release the code and the output for use by others. Look out for the file on the VHF web site for general use.

Project 7: VHF Group on Twitter: Mark ZL1VMF gave us a quick demo of twitter and how the Group is using it. Although the general idea of Twitter is a micro-blog, it is more than this once you start following various feeds. If you follow the VHF Group on Twitter you will get informed when the web site changes for instance. This was a good introduction to this tool that has become popular, and Mark challenged us to think about how we might make more use of it.