Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

Now that Brian ZL2BRF is off to work in VK, I have accepted the role of President until the next AGM in October. Thank you for entrusting me with stewardship of the Group.

Brian achieved a lot for the Group during his term as President, for which we are grateful. We presented him with a framed certificate of appreciation at a dinner held in his honour at “Curry Heaven”, one of his favourite dining establishments. Good luck for the future Brian, from your many friends in the Group.

The focus of your executive will continue to be “we support members doing amateur radio, in whatever way they want”. In addition there are several specific concerns that we will be giving our effort to.

We must keep emphasis on our maintenance programme to ensure that all our various stations are fully functional. After the large effort and expenditure to refurbish the Belmont tower and mains power line, there is now work underway to replace the hut door, and to re-locate the battery bank to a new external battery store. There remains a need to finish the on-going work with re-instatement of antennas and feeders and repair of repeaters. I am concerned that we are loading too much on a keen few individuals, in particular our Trustees Gavin ZL2TVM and Peter ZL3TC.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Ford ZL2VK as Coordinator of repeaters, beacons and projects. The role is to better organise our projects, to spread the load of work to a larger pool of participants, and to make faster progress.

One specific concern that I have, that I know is shared by many, is the slow rate of recruitment of new members to the hobby. If we want the hobby to flourish, we need to encourage people to become Amateurs, and encourage new members to our group. Having said that though, I am pleased to report that all but three members renewed their subs in the past year, and that the group continues to attract new additional members and to flourish. This is due in part to the efforts of the team led by John ZL2HD, in organising and running recruitment and training classes at Onlsow College night school. We will be running classes again shortly, so if you know anyone who you can interest in coming along to these classes, please talk to them, and also let John know. We do know that generating new amateurs is an activity that must occur at branch level, no-one else can do it for us, so I will be encouraging your committee to look at other ways we can interest new people to join the hobby.

Are we doing enough to support you, our members, in your hobby? I know that we are doing many things. But are we doing what you the members want? Rather than present you with a questionaire, can I simply ask that if you have any ideas, or opinions that you contact me. I will listen, and I will see that your suggestions are considered by the committee.

I am pleased to announce a new “column” will be established in Q-Bit, called “Over …”.
This is specifically for Members, where you can have your say on anything of interest, or anything that is of concern. The only editorial controls for this column are that subjects must be related to amateur radio, nothing rude, nothing political, and nothing religious. It’s your column, please use it. (See elsewhere in Q-Bit for this column).

Q-Bit Journal is an excellent way to communicate with you our members and to publish interesting material. I encourage you all to contribute to Q-Bit. Please consider writing that article you’ve been thinking about, other members will be interested to read your story. And, if you have any other ideas to improve Q-Bit please let our editor Gavin ZL2TVM know about them.

We hold our monthly meetings and we strive to have speakers on subjects of interest. These meetings are great social occasions too. It’s sometimes a real challenge to organise speakers, and sometimes we don’t give you enough notice of what’s coming up. We will organise this better, so that you have plenty of time to plan ahead and to ensure that you can attend.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of John Andrews ZL2HD as Coordinator of meetings and speakers. The role is to identify speakers that you will find interesting, and to organise a schedule. Please give John your assistance by suggesting topics you would like to see, or contacts that you have, who would be interested in presenting appropriate subjects to the Group.

We run a Special Interest Group (SIG), with focus on different activities from time-to-time. Recently members have built a batch of ATV linear amps to support “Project 39”, followed by a batch of marker oscillators, the latter which also introduced the skills in construction using SMD. The current project comprises two batches of Softrock software-defined radio kits. This activity is lead by Peter ZL2VK, whose slogan is “putting the Amateur back into Amateur Radio”. If you have any ideas for future projects that the majority of members can enjoy, please let me know.

Finally here’s an observation I’d like to share with you. We are fortunate that so many members of our group have accepted positions of responsibility in governance and administration of Amateur radio at a national level. John Andrews ZL2HD, Fred Johnson ZL2AMJ, Vaughan Henderson ZL1TGC (Life Member), and Lee Jennings ZL2AL, have been elected to Council for the 2009-2011 term. Doug Ingham ZL2TAR (Life Member) continues as Secretary of FMTAG, Don Wallace ZL2TLL (Life Member) as ALO, and Jeff Sayer ZL4JS as Director of AREC. The new council have many serious tasks ahead of them. On your behalf I wish them well in their endeavours to make amateur radio a better hobby for all of us. They have our Group’s full support. May I also suggest that if you feel so inclined you drop a personal message of encouragement to these volunteers from our ranks.

73, Dick Greenbank ZL2TGQ, President.