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!

In the city 80m is a very noisy band but here in regional Victoria the situation is much better. The club's regular Wednesday night 80m net on 3685kHz attracts a good group of stations mostly running 100W or perhaps more. Signals are generally very good (except when our wires come down due to strong wind or bird attack). At the start of February I saw and ordered an amazingly small 10 band 5W transceiver from QRPver called the Minion. I am sympathetic to the wartime disruption in Ukraine but...

The June club meeting at Woodend was very well attended. Ralph, VK3ZZC, gave a passionate presentation on successful metalwork for the radio amateur. He gave tips on improving precision and showed a great collection of tools he uses including many he's made himself. Ralph made the case that a precision of +- 0.1mm is required for even amateur construction if nuts and bolts are to be used effectively. He talked about only drilling after "bluing" the metal surface, marking with a scribe an...

At the next club meeting at 10am, Saturday, June 17, we are delighted to welcome prolific home brew builder Ralph, VK3ZZC who will share lessons from his long experience of metalworking at home. If you have the urge to construct your own ham equipment then at some stage you will be required to perform some simple metalworking operations. In the old days this activity was called "chassis bashing" when all things radio were mounted on an aluminium or tin plate steel chassis. Making the lar...

Ross Gairn with The Queen Saturday's MRARC meeting was a memorable one as we had a guest speaker, Ross Gairn, who worked in the Royal Household. You might well ask how does an Aussie get to work for the Queen? Ross explained the rigorous interview process. In light of the recent coronation celebrations in London, with the precision timing, immaculately attired participants and amazing procedures, our speaker gave us his account of the years he worked for both the late Queen and Prince Phi...

At this month's meeting, Barry Theodore, VK3BRT, gave a fascinating talk about his experiences building systems to automatically time laps of cars in races and also horse races. As a young teenager, Barry used to enjoy going to car races. Later, when he was working with computers, and watching drag racing at Calder, the race stopped due to computer problems. This led to an opportunity to help with the timing system and the start of a long association with this sort of technology. Cars...