Wellington VHF Group, Inc: Online.

At the NZART AGM held recently held in Auckland, Roy Symon ZL2KH as NZART President awarded Amateur of the Year to Peter Aikin ZL1TX for his outstanding contribution to the hobby, particularly in Northland and also at a national level.

Peter is the drive behind a large number of repeaters in his extended area including the National System stations, local data repeaters, the Whangarei ATV repeater and many others in Northland and the Far North.

Peter is a member of Branch 28 Whangarei Amateur Radio Club and also the Wellington VHF Group. He was nominated by both Branches.

At the NZART 2010 AGM in Auckland the remits were discussed and voted on.

Remit 2 had been withdrawn by Council but the submitting Branch held it's right to have it presented.

The outcome of the voting is:

Remit 1 Free ARX Services to NZART members - by count. For: 629, Against: 737 Lost on votes.

Remit 2 Review of Family membership - Carried with amendment to replace "principal member" with "licenced member".

Remit 3 Release of Call Letters X,Y,Z- Carried

Remit 4 Seek Mandate for Entry Level Licence - Carried

Remit 5 AREC meeting times at Conference - Lost

At the April meeting of WVHFG, Mark Foster ZL1VMF advised the meeting that due to a change in working circumstances, he would be relocating (back) to Auckland. Mark joined the Group in 2006 when he moved to the Wellington area from Auckland.

Mark, in his time with the Group, quickly became heavily involved in Group activities. He was voted onto the committee at the 2006 AGM and was also appointed to the role of Webmaster. Mark also served as Secretary of the WVHFG and remained as an elected committee member until the 2009 AGM. Often handy with his camera, many of the images found on this website and subsequently printed in Q-Bit were taken by him. Mark was also involved with the WVHFG AREC Section and assisted recently at the SAR Exercise in the Tararuas and arranged and coordinated WVHFG involvement in the 'Bike the Trail' event in both 2009 and 2010.

Mark Foster ZL1VMF operating the SAREX Base at the recent Police SAREX in Upper Hutt, April 2010

The May 2010 meeting was ZL1VMF's last regular meeting attendance. Members of the group thanked Mark for his efforts. Mark will continue to be associated with the VHF Group and will continue serving as Webmaster and webhost, allbeit based in Auckland and ably assisted by other members of the Web Team, which includes ZL2HD, ZL2TGQ, ZL2KG and ZL2WAL.

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

Mike ZL2BNB, the NZART Local Government Liaison Officer (LGO) has studied the approved plan change and it is not as we expected!

Although most of what amateurs wanted was included in the plan change, the key element was not- towers up to a decent height.

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. This was carried with acclamation.

Gavin joined the Group around 1999 and became a contester, spending time on hill tops and setting up gear. He was very active in the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and often had new projects to share with members. Gavin served as secretary for some time and has been Q-Bit Editor for the last ~5 years.

Wellington VHF group can now be found on Twitter!

For those unaware, Twitter is a piece of online technology known as 'Microblogging'. Twitter allows you to subscribe to the message feeds of others, who send messages out bound by a 140 character limit. You subscribe to as many feeds as you like, and receive their updates directly.

Similarly we are able to generate updates to Twitter and have them instantly viewed by all our subscribers.

The Twitter account will mainly be used as a pointer to content @ vhf.org.nz - obviously 140 characters isn't much! But this will provide timely updates for those watching the Twitter 'timeline' at the time.

Check us out at http://twitter.com/WgtnVHFGroup.

A recent Amateur Radio Training Course run by the Tauranga Emergency Communications Group Inc., NZART Branch 88, trialled Wellington VHF Group’s preparatory material and ARX facilities.

Part of the procedure is that each successful candidate receives a message, firstly enabling them to check the accuracy of the certificate that SMART has emailed to them. Then secondly, to assure each new amateur that future assistance with regulatory matters is known to be available. The message from the Examiner to each new radio amateur reads:

On Saturday April 10th, ZL2BHE, ZL2TTX, ZL2BEZ and ZL2KG as well as family and friends attended CLiff ZL2ALY's 80th Birthday party.

Happy Birthday Cliff from all of us at Wellington VHF Group!

Thanks to ZL2KG for the headsup - and the photograph.

This from Peter ZL2VK:

On Saturday, 10th April, 2010, the Belmont repeaters were switched off while work proceeded to remove the old and rusty door from the repeater hut and replace it with a nice new green one.

The old, rusted door.

The following report by ZL2TGQ...

At their Group Meeting held on Thursday 25th March, Members were impressed with the inaugural transmission of digital ATV.

This project has now reached the stage where two sets of transmission equipment have been commissioned, one on 1284 MHz and the other on 430MHz. This result comes from the import of modules from a German supplier and a fair bit of work by, in particular, ZL2TAR, ZL2TVM, ZL2TGQ and with advice from ZL2TIQ.

The 1284 MHz transmitter was used for this test transmission, and had an output level of 5 mW, which was more than adequate for “across-the-room” communication. The signal was received on a commercial digital receiver, with a simple quarter-wave (55mm) whip antenna.

Left: Doug ZL2TAR with 1284 MHZ transmitter modules, Right: Members studying received picture quality.

The equipment was next displayed to over 200 Amateurs at the combined Branch EXPO 2010 held at Lower Hutt on Saturday 27th March. Here, in addition to a local digital receiver close by the transmission equipment, a remote digital receiver was located outside the main hall in the foyer to greet visitors arriving at the EXPO. On this occasion the frequency used was once again 1284 MHz, with the 5 mW power boosted to 300 mW by a linear amplifier constructed by ZL2TAR.

Transmission equipment, 1284 MHz transmitter (L), 430 MHz transmitter (R), with a local digital receiver and display to the right.

Many compliments were expressed, both on the progress of the DATV project, and the quality of the received video.