Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

An acquaintance of mine published http://futureofutc.org/ on their Facebook page today.

This is interesting. An excerpt from their front page:

A conclusive proposal to fundamentally redefine UTC is scheduled for a vote by the Radiocommunication Assembly of the ITU-R in January, 2012. The proposal will halt the contribution of so-called leap seconds to UTC after 2017, and will also terminate the requirement that time services transmit the difference between UT1 and UTC. If approved, UTC would no longer be useful as a type of Universal Time for most technical applications.

Many software and hardware systems needing to know how the Earth is oriented with respect to the sky rely on UTC for this purpose. Should UTC be redefined, significant consequences may be anticipated for applications and infrastructures across various fields. Applications that do not apply so-called Earth Orientation Parameters and/or DUT1 corrections to UTC would be most affected.

Sessions will cover diverse topics of pragmatic timekeeping in a possibly changing world.

It's obvious to anyone working within the IT Sector alone that changes to the way UTC is handled will have far-reaching affects. This may be something that we all need to keep an eye on; all sorts of technology makes use of accurate timekeeping and the flow on effects of a change such as the one proposed may be significant.

Belmont tower now has some of the panel antennas mounted on it, thanks to a couple of long hard days on site.

Peter ZL3TC Gavin ZL2TVM and Brian ZL2BRF spent time with Peter's new winch to lift and bolt the panels on. Peter built the electric winch on a member that can be bolted on the lower tower and used to lift heavy parts aloft ver quickly and precisely.

The NS and the 710 antennas are still the dual band vertical on the shed, but progress is being made.

The tower is expected to be compeleted by late summer, hopefully before Easter 2009.

A little while ago I picked up a Dick Smith Electronics (DSE) 100 Watt 2m Linear Amplifier kit. The kit featured in the March 1986 edition of Electronics Australia. DSE stopped producing these kits in the 90s, and fortunately while this kit had been opened it was still largely complete.

Figure 1.

An interesting point for consideration in Amateur circles; perhaps more in the HF space but definately a subject to be wary of.

George Boorer ZL3PN was recently featured in the Otago Daily Times commenting on his experiences with an energy saving lightbulb.

What do you think? Is Halogen the answer? Should incandescent bulbs be retained on sale (perhaps more expensively) as a useful alternative for some situations? Or do the energy savers need a complete rethink?

Mark Foster ZL1VMF is interested in your thoughts. Please use the Contact Us link to send him your feedback. Also vote on the Poll he has on his site and then keep an eye on it for what others think....

Article submitted for publication by Simon, ZL1SWW. Our thanks for the contribution! Others with articles to share are welcome to contact us...

Well with the winter months slowly coming to an end, it’s the time to think about preparation for things we like to do in summer time. One thing is hill topping, going out to a high spot and playing around with the SHF bands.