A report on Heath VK3TWO's presentation to the Macedon Ranges Amateur Radio Club If you've ever wondered why so many hams are suddenly talking about little $30 boards, solar garden lights and a map of Victoria lit up with blinking packets, Heath VK3TWO's talk to the Macedon Ranges Amateur Radio Club was the explanation. Heath took us through LoRa, the MeshCore network that has spread across the state in the past year, and LoRa APRS — and finished with a challenge to clubs about where new ama...

As always, there was a good rollup of Macedon club members at our sister club's excellent hamfest in Bendigo. The room was full and we all circulated around looking for components and radios at decent prices. There was an opportunity for a bit of haggling happily. Spotted in the crowd from our club were Richard VK3LRJ, Hugo VK3HUG, Peter VK3TPM, Colin VK3XW plus friends of the club Dallas VK3EB and Dave VK3ASE. Colin VK3XW won the fashion parade yet again. There was a d...

Rex Moncur, VK7MO, came to the Macedon Radio club talk with a result from only a few days earlier. Using near-infrared LEDs, a telescope-style receiver and a lot of patience, he and a fellow ham had decoded signals across Bass Strait by bouncing light off high clouds. The speaker Peter Wolfenden, VK3RV, introduced Rex. They first met on 2 metres in the mid-1960s, having both been licensed in the early 1960s, and later worked each other on 70 centimetres. Peter recalled being amazed at...

A fantastic talk at today's meeting in Woodend. Mark from Mount Macedon Honey addressed the club. Beekeeping has hardly changed in 250 years. You drive out to an apiary, open the hives, find that everything is fine, and realise you've burned half a day and a tank of fuel on a hive that didn't need you. Mark Bichan talked to our club about trying to change that. His goal is a low-cost network that lets him manage his apiaries from home, using LoRa radio, cheap microcontrollers and a lot ...

Members of the club made the journey up to Shepparton for their excellent Hamfest yet again this year. We had an early start to the day left at 6.30 am. From Sunbury pick up Eric drove Barry and Joe to Mt Macedon to Peter Cooper's place. We drove to Shepparton dodging potholes all the way. Thanks to Peter's skilled driving we missed most. The Ham fest was well attended with the usual stuff on offer. We caught up with Huntley, Dallas had our chats. Joe managed to buy an antenna.2M.70M. 6M...

As an experiment before tonight's 80m club net, VK3TPM tried out some software that turns an image into a sonogram. And a rendering of the club logo. It doesn't work too well for a fine image like our logo. These images were captured on the Shepparton SDR.

Ron VK3ZJ and Barry VK3BRT picked a rather damp day to help put up a new ZS6BKW antenna for Wally VK3WAF. Barry felt his skills were best utilised indoors loading channels in to an IC-9700 leaving Ron to enjoy a thorough clothing rinse. We look forward to hearing Wally on the club's HF net on Wednesday evenings.

A happy and friendly Annual General Meeting today at Woodend. President Joe VK3MAB presided. The meeting was well attended. After a spill the current committee was re-elected in the same positions as before. Joe cooked up a sumptuous lunch and Josh opened the bar. After lunch Joe and Peter headed down to Sunbury Radio to be interviewed about the wonderful hobby of Amateur Radio. We'll have more details when it goes to air.

This week your committee came in early on a frosty morning to clean out the club's storage cupboard. It has built up over time and disposal of much of it was well over due. Our featured speaker this week was new member Peter Gray (VK3...) who is an experienced cyber security professional. Peter talked about how hacking and the various attacks to get our data or more directly money, is now an international business run by organisations that have sales and technical support departme...

Committee members Graeme, VK3CDO and Peter, VK3TPM undertook a field trip to evaluate some options for a future field trip and possible camp out. First we headed to Monument Hill Reserve near Kilmore. There is a nice bluestone tower structure that could be good for VHF activity. Our Meshcore devices were pinging away during our stay as well. We had a VHF contact with Joe, VK3MAB, from the top of the tower. Next we hung an end fed wire from a tree branch over to a squid pole attach...