An excellent club meeting at the Gisborne CFA today. We were pleased to welcome Ian who is planning to get a licence along with his daughter. Many global issues were discussed and solved over coffee and later over lunch. It was decided that the current US administration was not up to snuff so we agreed to change it this afternoon. An interesting show and tell included a 3D printed Morse key.

This week, on the regular club 80m net, Peter VK3TPM joined using home brew SDR software that drove a Hermes Lite 2 transceiver. As you can see it was a very noisy band tonight with lightning storms across the north of Australia. Here's a recording of some of the net with reports on the transmissions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19PlOzab9Ow More info on this new macOS software on Peter's blog.

At Saturday's meeting we were privileged to get a demo of the new all band IC-7110 from Icom. Those of us who have used previous Icom radios will find the user interface instantly familiar. For a 100W rig it's remarkably compact. The connection between the head unit and the backend box is via an ethernet cable and I understand this can be remote over a network as well. It covers HF + 2m and 70cm and more in some markets. On the back are two SO-259s. Sounds like it will hit th...

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.