As members know, the club holds a weekly net each Wednesday. From 8pm it's on the VK3RMM 2m repeater, which covers a lot of Victoria. From 8:30pm it's on 3.685MHz, which is generally regarded as a good spot for local chat. This week I received a reception report from Stephen, VK2BLQ, located in Chatswood, Sydney, who was able to hear some stations using an indoor receive loop. He's using an amplified broadband receive loop called an MLA-30 but he's enhanced it by substituting the thin...

VK3HUG Hugo, VK3HUG and Peter, VK3TPM gave a presentation about how trunk radio works and how they listen to local fire fighters (CFA) here in Victoria. While there are commercial scanners from Uniden that come with the CFA trunk frequencies in them, if you have a couple of low cost RTLSDR dongles there is a free option. SDRTrunk is free software and it is amazing. After explaining how trunk radio works and its many advantages over analog systems the presenters demonstrated SDR trun...

VK3RV Wolfenden wows the crowd yet again! Club member, Peter, VK3RV presented the talk he gave at the Macedon club to the prestigious Old Timers Club at the Caulfield RSL. The talk was a detailed history with many fascinating stories of the progress of electrification starting in Melbourne and slowly branching out to other suburbs. It seems that the engineers in Melbourne were up to date with advances around the world and, while starting with DC, had made early preparations for switchi...

The September 2023 meeting was simply a chat and show and tell meeting. New gear from around the internet was shown, much of it suitable for portable use. There was a compact HF vertical and a very nifty Z Match tuner. David, VK3KR, showed his portable station including his unique link dipole. Peter, VK3TPM, showed his Xeigu G106 transceiver purchased with the aid of a single malt whiskey late one night. It was used on the club 80m net and while the signal was good, audio w...

A significant number of Macedon Ranges Amateur Radio Club members made the trip to Shepparton for this weekend's Radiofest. It was a very well organised event with a wide range of equipment and parts on display or for sale.

VK3KPP operating off grid Tony, VK3KKP, from our sister club Bendigo Amateur Radio Club, invited us to observe this weekend's operation of a disaster communications exercise. The premise of the exercise is that a fire in central Victoria has driven people from their homes to a “Bushfire Place of Last Resort” - BPLR, in both the Shire of Mt. Alexander and the City of Greater Bendigo. Small groups of radio operators deployed to almost all of the BPLRs in those areas and transmit simulate...

Ralph, VK3ZZC, who spoke to a club meeting recently on home metalwork, brought along a fascinating coil winding machine capable to winding honeycomb coils. This device is fascinating and has been shown by Peter, VK3YE, on his popular YouTube channel. Today I see that the famous Hackaday site is featuring it on the front page. Warm congratulations Ralph on hitting the big time! Surely this cements the role of being guest speaker at MRARC is a step on the path to international fame....

19 Members and 2 visitors were in attendance for the meeting and the presentation by Peter VK3RV. Joe and Barry slaved over a hot oven to produce some great finger food to conclude the day's events. The following members were elected to the committee for the 2023/24 year: President: Joe Balassa VK3MAB.Vice President: Graeme Wilson VK3FCDO.Secretary: Graeme McDiarmid VK3NE.Treasurer: Barry Theodore VK3BRTCommittee:John Bell VK3JCB.Peter Cooper VK3PRCPeter Marks VK3TPMHugo Steiner VK...

July's club meeting at Woodend was a combined opportunity for members to bring along things to show to the group and also sale of items, many of which were donated to the club and sold for a donation. The room was configured for dining and dancing Interesting things were shown including David, VK3KR's full power mobile setup including a unique power supply. David shows his lithium power supply Stephen's germanium crystal set for listening to 3LO without batteries John brought bea...

An idea pinched from Richard, VK3LRJ, to identify coax cables when you have multiple antennas. The little tags that hold bread bags closed can be clipped on to RG58 coax and used to label the antenna. Do you have a brilliant tip that others haven't thought of? Let us know!