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.

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...