Jim Gordon introduces Michael Goode An excellent turnout from club members at the latest RAOTC club lunch at the Caulfield RSL. Thanks to the excellent rail service from the north it's not too hard to travel to the big smoke for a gathering such as this. The speaker was Michael Goode, VK3BDL who talked about 'Holiday Dx-ing'. He has travelled all over the world and organised reciprocal radio rights in most places. Another highlight was Barrie, VK3AXK, who was able to spend some tim...

At the club meeting in Woodend, our guest speaker was Tony Falla, VK3KPP from our sister club BAREC who talked about his experiences in providing backup communications that can be used during emergencies. Tony talked about how quickly the communications we rely on, primarily mobile phones, can stop working in times of stress. Reasons include power outages that exceed the backup batteries, destruction of cell towers, or even the network overload due to people calling for welfare checks of...

The new venue this year, Rowsley Hall, was bursting at the seams with all the enthusiastic amateurs in attendance. The intense sun telegraphed that the day would turn out to be a warm one. Happily there were refreshments including, I'm told, a large number of hot chocolate options. While there was a strong team from our Bendigo brothers, I didn't spot any members of MRARC, at least early on. While those excellent capacitors were very tempting, I came away with...

Today's meeting at Woodend was well attended. Graeme, VK3CDO, gave a fascinating talk starting with a bit of history of aircraft in Australia and ending up with a survey of air disasters in our region. Graeme covered the history of the "DC" line of planes, starting with the DC1, DC2 and later the incredibly popular DC3. 13,000 DC3s were built over the years. Among the "highlights" was DC2 VH-UYT which hit Mt Dandenong due, we think, to navigation errors which led to them no...

Once again many club members made the trip to the excellent Ballarat Hamfest. While the weather was warm there was a very pleasant breeze through the venue. Our congratulations to the organisers for another very professionally run day. It was great to catch up with many old and new friends.