Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

January Picnic

Our picnic was again held at Sladden Park, adjacent to the Hutt River. Although the day had started out overcast and windy, by mid-afternoon it had changed to blue skies and little wind, followed by a perfect evening.

We had a good turn-out of members and their families, including at least two family groups spanning three generations. (Some future amateurs there?). As is becoming traditional, several members brought along their favourite new toys, including hand-held rigs, power boat, jetski, canoe, and one water rocket which was last seen going into hiding near the top of a tall pine!

Great people, great BBQ, and a great social event. See the February issue of Q-Bit for pictures of this event.

Digital ATV

The Group continues to show technical leadership in the area of Digital ATV (DATV). In addition to defining and then publishing the transmission standards for DATV, (see Q-Bit, July 2009, pp 9 – 13), and then publishing the Group’s strategy for the implementation of DATV, (See Q-Bit, September 2009, pp 11-13), the Group has now embarked on some projects working toward implementing DATV in Wellington.

At their January meeting your Committee agreed to a project, which is designed to reduce the power consumption of some existing ATV equipment at Belmont, making it suitable for future use in the DATV era. Doug ZL2TAR reports that the first part of the power cost reduction has now been completed, involving the replacement of 74-series TTL with 74HC-series CMOS, which has now achieved a halving of the power consumption of the pattern generator. Doug has now started work on the second part of the project to modify three power supplies. All this work is time consuming, but it is considered essential if we are to continue to use this gear. Thanks Doug for your perseverance

At their February meeting your Committee agreed to a further project, which is to purchase DATV boards from a German supplier and to construct a DATV station for installation at Belmont. These are from the same supplier as the boards VK3 and VK7 have used for their Melbourne and Hobart stations, respectively. A considerable Amount of research preceded this decision. The existing racking, pattern generator, power supplies and power amplifiers will be re-used. The station configuration will follow the Group’s DATV Standards and Strategy. The exciter operates at standard IF frequency and may therefore be converted for any output channel. For Belmont, an existing BARCO modulator will be used to convert to Channel 39. (But, see below).

Channel 39 Lost?

On a serious note, Channel 39 may be lost to amateurs. MED have been re-planning to free up spectrum with the introduction of digital TV services. As previously reported, our committee developed a 13 page response to an initial “Digital Dividend” scoping paper released by MED.

MED then released a plan, which proposed to exclude the amateur service from the UHF Digital TV band. They invited interested parties to comment on this plan, and a 7 page detailed submission was presented by NZART, (available from NZART). This emphasised that we should retain Channel 39.

Both of these submissions appear to have fallen on deaf ears – an MED announcement titled “Digital Dividend Information Release”, 24 December 2009, states:

“The present analogue licences in the UHF band will cease at Digital Switch Over (DSO), and any required digital television licences will be provided in the VHF bands thereafter. Discussions will be held with amateurs to confirm the preferred approach to allowing television use in the 54 – 68 MHz band”. Follow the link in the article on our website, www.vhf.org.nz to see the MED announcement.

This is not the preferred outcome we have pitched for. Having our ATV allocation shifted to VHF was not an option we preferred. We would lose our public face if terrestrial TV viewers can’t see our transmissions. We would face large costs to re-engineer our infrastructure, antennas, feeders, amplifiers, etc, and may even need to erect new, larger tower or pole supports.

We are currently transmitting analogue TV in the UHF band, and are ready to change to digital, but the MED is blocking conversion of our licences to digital. We are caught in a dilemma which is not of our making. The MED is intransigent in this matter, and there appears little option but for us to take this matter to the MED’s boss.

APRS coverage extended

In my November column I reported that with fine weather available, work had been done to complete two of our projects, Taupo 9825 batteries and charger, and Ngaio 955 new UHF repeater.

Another project has now been put on-air, the addition of an APRS receiver at Hawkins Hill. A separate APRS receiver has been ported to the 6625 data repeater. This provides APRS receive coverage of greater Wellington, and some of Marlborough and Horowhenua.

One early result of commissioning this has been the very first recorded APRS plot of a vehicle travelling from Picton to Wellington! Presumably the vehicle involved was on an upper deck of a strait ferry. See the plot in February issue of Q-Bit.

Thanks to Peter ZL3TC and Paul ZL2BEZ for the provision of this extension to the Group’s on-air services. (One wag was heard to mention that this project should be named Mary – get it?).

Belmont

Since the shack has been levelled, we have ponding of water inside. An investigation will be carried out, weather permitting, to find our just where the water is getting in. We already have a contingency plan to seal the roof, which will be done at the earliest opportunity.

KiwiSAT Update

Our lead article this month features the progress being made on KiwiSAT, our own N.Z. amateur satellite. Wellington VHF Group has provided strong support for this development, particularly the Tecstar solar cells and battery charge regulator (BCR) module.

Special thanks to Terry ZL2BAC, our rep on the development team, for keeping us informed.

National System Award 2010

Congratulations to Hamilton Branch for completing a successful award during January and early February. The inclusion of historic places provided a further dimension to this popular award this year.

The National System Award was originally designed as a bi-annual event, and it was a proposal by Raymond ZL1RGM for Hamilton to run it in 2010, which saw it move to an annual event. Well done Raymond and team, 2010 will be a hard act to follow!

Dick Greenbank ZL2TGQ
President, Wellington VHF Group Inc