A well-attended and engaging meeting today at Woodend. Joe, VK3MAB, gave a detailed overview of the state of the art in low cost SDR reception. He showed a variety of client software including SDR#, SDR++, and many others. Excellent HF recordings were played as well as DMR recordings of airport workers who can be heard from Joe's place. He demonstrated reception of 433MHz devices including a garage door remote. A UHF FM transmitter was demodulated. A fascinating a wide-ranging pr...

A good turnout and a lovely day for the coffee morning at Gisborne. Due to extreme fire conditions we weren't able to access our normal venue of the CFA building. Ron had the bright idea of simply dropping the name of John, VK3JCB at the near-by SES and that got us in the door there. Very kind of them. We had an animated discussion, solving world problems as always. Peter, VK3TPM, brought a new (to him) Xiegu X6200 radio which seems like an excellent portable radio with built-in ba...

Well guess what? The tour force of MRARC attended the fest. JoeVK3MAB, BarryVK3BRT, JohnVK3JCB, Ron VK3ZJ, PeterVK3 PRC, PeterVK3RV, Peter B, JohnVK3IC, EricVK3ED, CraigVK3CDN, Geoff VK3MGM. The day started with breakfast at the Big M at Ballan. The second wave arrive at the ham fest at 10.00am. Crew assemble ready to hunt for the best deals and buying what was on offer at the various tables. Everyone did at least three rounds around the tables looking for that elusive bargain. Lot...

After all the recent fires and flooding rains around the state it was a perfect day for the club's annual picnic day at Days Picnic Area on Lions Head Road, Hesket. The turnout was excellent with many members, including some who often don't make it to meetings. What was particularly striking was all the radio gear and antennas that were set up. There were end feds, squid poles, ground mounted verticals and even a loop antenna. Unfortunately band conditions where not terribly good but a f...

This year the club Christmas function was well attended and highly entertaining. Howard opened the bar, Barry and Peter cooked up a brilliant feast. Joe began gave a fashion parade of the proposed options for the club's coming range of clothing. A challenging four round quiz was run with only a few appeals - amazing given some of the proposed "answers" we were offered! Our thanks again to Joe, VK3MAB, for a fine effort in preparing the material. We were very pleased to welcome ...