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.

The annual Macedon Ranges Amateur Radio Club family day on Mount Macedon was a very enjoyable get together. As we picnicked in the paddock there were entertaining discussions on a wide range of topics.

Quite a few members of the club live on larger blocks of land and have the space to experiment with big antennas. I'm fortunate to be on five acres with many trees so put up a full wave length antenna cut for 80m. It's not a thing of beauty, it just meanders around a few trees and is held up with paracord at each corner. I cut 82m of wire, strung it up, and then started shortening the loop until it was resonant within the 80m band. The loop is driven with a 4:1 balun and works pretty ...

The first coffee morning of the new year at Gisborne CFA was very entertaining. Apart from the normal one-on-one chat Graeme, VK3NE, showed pictures of high power transmitter coupling and organs. There's a move afoot to share information about the coffee meetups of other Victorian clubs so we look forward to welcoming some new people in the future.

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...