Broadcast - 29 Sept 2024
We will start off with a quick update of last week’s clubroom Technical Night. This saw the latest iteration, from Colin VK7ZCF, of his 3D printed parts for antenna creations. His 1296 MHz yagi beam turned up again but this time fully assembled and ready for serious work. All elements had been correctly spaced, aligned onto the same plane and locked down with screws. Colin has now included a secondary fibreglass under support rod to brace the main boom, this has minimised unwanted droop and movement. To stay with his theme all new mountings including the vertical mast mount have also been 3D printed. For completeness Colin had mounted the 23 element yagi onto its own Manfrotto tripod with pan and tilt head, this will make field use much easier. The portable and now usable beam certainly caused a lot of interest amongst members, especially Colin’s 3D printed, fully functional, M5 bolts used in the assembly! Next comes real world field testing, good luck and let us know the results.
Peter VK7KPC had a recent purchase from e-bay which he brought along. It was a pre-assembled printed circuit board and LCD display module intended to be used for decoding Morse code. Peter had installed it into a clear fronted plastic enclosure, he also included external connections for a 12 Volts DC supply and Morse key. Primarily it is intended as a practice unit, with the keyed Morse code being decoded and displayed as text on the LCD display. When demonstrated Peter managed to obtain excellent agreement between what he was keying and what was translated into text on the screen. But my non practiced Morse attempts were abysmal, with maybe only a couple of intended letters being displayed. Well it is a practice device after all! The unit also incorporated a buzzer for audible feedback of keying but strangely when in buzzer mode the display decoding is disabled! Maybe that is something Peter can work around given time.
Now something from last century, Stuart VK7ES brought in one of his larger commercial inductor units. The inductor coil was made using rectangular profile copper conductor that was silver plated and was wound thin edge facing in and out, the coil roughly measured 140 mm diameter by 250 mm in length! It also incorporates a “Vari-O-Meter” at one end for fine adjustments. The manually adjusted wiper taps were very positive in their contact connection and were locked into place with brass knurled knobs. The overall unit is substantial and obviously designed for large RF currents and high voltage use. From its appearance and construction a manufacture date of circa 1950 would probably be a good guess, with its manufacturer most likely being AWA. It spent its life in an AM transmitter site operating on the Medium Wave Band and putting out about 5kWatt of power... Thank you Stuart, a piece of broadcast history and still completely serviceable after probably seventy years!
As we are about to recommence Daylight Savings again next Sunday the 6th of October the next Club General Meeting will revert back to being held on a Wednesday night. So Wednesday 9th October will not be a Club Technical Night but a General Meeting, commencing at 7.30pm.
As always, pictures will be available on the NTARC Web site under “Blogs” for this broadcast. NTARC Blogs
UPCOMING EVENTS
TestNet and TechNet session - Every Wednesday, TestNet/CW course on 3.580MHz from 7 pm till 7.30 pm, then a TechNet on 3.567MHz from 7.30 pm till 8.30 pm. Your host for the evening is Nic VK7WW.
Club General Meeting - Wednesday 9th. October at 7.30pm. Held at the NTARC Club Room, Rocherlea Scout Hall, Archer Street, Rocherlea. If you have items you would like added to the agenda please email the secretary at: secretary@ntarc.net no later than Monday the 7th October.
Coffee Morning - held every Friday in the NTARC Club rooms. Time is from 10 am to noon and we look forward to seeing you all there. So why not pop in check the QSL cards and join us for a cuppa, there is endless tea and coffee along with biscuits available for a donation.
JOTA is coming to NTARC Clubrooms - Saturday and Sunday the 19th and 20th October. Help from any members or other local amateurs with setup or operation over the weekend will be appreciated. Please register your interest with Peter VK7KPC at club meetings or via phone on 0408 805 086 or any other any other committee members.
Finally - A reminder to all members that if you have any items of news you would like added to our weekly roundup, no matter how trivial, then please email them to the Secretary at the following address news@ntarc.net all items to be received no later than 5 pm on the Friday prior to the Broadcast.
That’s all folks,
73, Stefan VK7ZSB, Secretary NTARC Inc.
