A big meeting today at Woodend. First up, Jim, VK3KA, gave a detailed presentation of the state of the Starlink low earth orbit satellite internet service. Amazing technology stack and continues to improve in various ways.
Did you know that satellites are designed for demisability?
As well as serving homes, Starlink also provides fast internet to vehicles, ships and planes. Already short messages can use it from standard mobile phones and in the future it seems it will support voice and video calling features too. A full report is available here. There’s also a video about what Starlink satellites are doing.
Graeme, VK3CDO, talked about new mesh hardware he’s picked up with a vew to setting up a solar powered repeater near his home. During the meeting a station not previously seen belonging to VK3CHF was spotted and he was in the room with some devices we hadn’t seen before. One on Meshtastic, the other (a GPS tracker beacon) on Meshcore.
Joe talked about the online auction of no longer needed equipment belonging to dear departed Graeme, VK3NE.
After the meeting some members went for lunch at the local Milko cafe and overflowed the usual long table.
It was great to welcome some new faces.