Quizmaster Joe This week the club met at Woodend for our annual Xmas lunch. This year quizmaster Joe conducted a challenging trivia quiz that stumped many of the tables but was blitzed by the table of mostly ladies. I think they had double the score of the male dominated tables - which rather questions our abilities. Questions ranged from the hits of girl bands to the dates of bridge openings. A fine time was enjoyed by all. Peter, VK3RV, also handed around a mystery bit of electronics...

Most amateur radio gear runs on a supply voltage of under 14V but there are many LiPo battery packs that produce more than that and need to be regulated down. Frequent SOTA operator David, VK3KR, has been building supply adapters for this purpose. At Gresswell Hill, of the power supply running the mcHF transceiver. Primary power source is an 18.5V LiPo which has sufficient power for many hours of activating David was lucky enough to obtain a commercial grade DC-DC Converter, recovered fro...

The November meeting was informal with mostly socialising and a bit of show and tell. Graeme, VK3NE, brought along a very nicely made WSPR transmitter using an early Raspberry Pi with a low pass filter for two (really three) bands. Peter, VK3TPM, brought along a Quansheng UV-K5. It's a decent successor to the low cost Baofeng UV-5R but it features USB-C charging (unfortunately not USB programming) and more significantly optional firmware that enables new features. It can be re-flashed fr...

Like last year, a few members of our club made the journey down to Rosebud for the RadioFest. Lots to see It was very well organised and there was loads of interesting equipment on display or for sale. This mystery item was purchased and I have to say that I definitely feel more energetic since getting it back to the shack and putting it to the test. Happily it turned out to be what I had hoped - an amplifier and speaker in a box with battery or external power. Very useful aroun...

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...