Secretary of the Wireless Institute of Australia, Peter Clee, VK8ZZ attended today’s club meeting at Woodend and gave an update of recent WIA activities.
Peter was in the area for the AGM of the Radio Old Timers Club AGM and luncheon in Melbourne.
Last Sunday was a meeting of affiliated clubs. There were 51 registrations – limited to one per club because with 150 clubs it can get a bit busy.
51 is a good number as everyone gets a chance to say something and be heard.
The WIA is really pleased to announce that they’re re-introducing the Grants scheme. It’s $10,000 this year with $5,000 from the WIA and a $5,000 bequest from a silent key. Affilliated clubs can apply for up to $250 for anything that is educational or developing a repeater or beacon site. Half of the fund will be hardware.
A new WIA website is under development. It’s not ready to go live yet. The current site is large and costly by modern standards. It will be a big effort to migrate over but will pay off quite quickly once done.
Peter attended the Tokyo Ham Fair. It is massive. It opened at 10am on Saturday and the queue to get in was 150m long. Icom, Yaesu and Kenwood were there.
There was lots of gear for sale and Peter puchased an antenna aimer suitable for satellite use.
Peter talked about repeater installation in Darwin and the challenge of attracting younger members.
The VK Summit next year will be held in Albury and hopefully some members of MRARC will be able to attend. It will be a technical summit rather than a “trash and treasure” style event.