Broadcast - 29 Dec 2024
JOHN DEEGAN VK7JFD (SK)
It was with great sadness that we were informed that John Deegan VK7JFD had passed on the afternoon of the 21st December 2024.
John obtained his Amateur Foundation licence at the NTARC Clubrooms in April 2018, then becoming an active Club member, attending morning coffee sessions and meetings until changes in his health and needing Home Help restricted his movements. Attending Club social dinners was a favourite where his prowess with lamb shanks became legendary. He was a keen amateur though, and he set his radios up in his kitchen so he was not far from them at any time. He could be heard at various times of the day, and always chatted with amateurs on their way home from work, some with long journeys, to keep them safely focused. He maintained a rigid schedule, retiring early and rising in the small hours of the morning to participate in nets from the mainland and overseas, especially Queensland. Having retired from the transport industry, driving school buses and fuel tankers around Tasmania, there were lots of stories and anecdotes to be told. Using CB in his work vehicles stood him in good stead to progress to Amateur Radio. He was such a “larger than life” character, when at the Club or social events, that he will be greatly missed.
Vale John VK7Juliet Fox Delta now Silent Key.
From the NTARC Committee.
As touched upon in last week’s round up of the final Clubroom Technical session for the year, one of the things Lionel VK7ZLB, brought in was a multi-coloured stack of square records. Yes I did say “square records”.
First of all forget about picture records like the ABC’s “Farewell Aunty Jack” where the entire record surface was picture printed on, grooves and all. These were substantially rigid like a normal vinyl record. Lionel’s disks were approximately 8 inch or 200mm square and not round, they were meant to be played at 33 and a 1/3 revolutions per minute and were double sided flexible plastic records. Very similar flexibility to what you would expect from a piece of photographic film. Each record has three holes, one in the middle and two down one side, before you ask it they weren’t meant for some weirdly exotic record player with three spindles. The one in the middle was for the record player central spindle and the two holes down one side were for clipping the record into a ringed binder that you would keep paperwork in.
These were released in 1976 by the Heath Company and were part of Heathkit’s “Continuing Education” series and was part of the Digital Techniques learning package to be used with a Digital demonstrator. It may not have been the same as putting a YouTube video on, but for its time it was quite a divergence from the usual construction or educational manual that you would have been used to. After all it was nearly fifty years ago and you didn’t need an internet connection.
Lionel also passed around a small plastic spool or bobbin. It was about 25mm in diameter with a 12mm space between spool cheeks. Wound onto it was a fine solder looking wire. Most attendees had never seen one before. There were a few members that had worked on test equipment repair or calibration last century, for them it was a flash from the past!
Some manufacturers like Tektronix supplied their mix of thin solder on a little spool and stored it safely inside the piece of test equipment. If any maintenance work was required then the correct solder would be on hand. I must take the top off my current Tektronix and see if they continued the tradition across into microprocessor based oscilloscopes.
Also on Wednesday night Peter VK7KPC, had his working 40 and 80 metre band, low pass filters that originated from Minikits. They were mounted within a metal case and the front panel now has visual indication of the selected band i.e. green LEDs. The filter unit also contained a small 0.8Ah rechargeable 12Volt Lead Acid battery to provide power for the relays. This makes a very compact and usable portable field unit. Peter had the filters connected to Colin VK7ZCF’s, SysJoint Vector Network Analyser and was displaying the selected filter frequency response in a very easy to see format.
One thing we unfortunately didn’t get a picture of was Peter’s small zip case that contained dozens of gold plated RF adaptors. Each one had its own storage location making it very easy to select and more importantly to see at a glance which ones hadn’t been returned. I had a distinct feeling that this lovely case of easy to find adaptors was added to many member’s wish list! HiHi!
Well it’s almost the end of another year and certainly a break from club activities. But a few thanks are in order:
Nic VK7WW is taking a well-earned break from the Morse code training and radio tech session that he hosted every Wednesday night throughout the year. On the odd occasions that Nic’s dates clashed, we have been lucky enough for Phil VK7ZPD and Rick VK7HBR to stand in to fill the rather large boots of Nic as Net controller. Thank you to Phil and Paul VK7KPA for supporting the Discord side of things to compliment the on air Nets. Phil also provides a very useful audio feed of the on air proceedings to all that are logged into Discord.
A big thank you to Ros for the opening up and preparing the club rooms every Friday morning for the ever popular and well attended club morning teas. They certainly have proven to be a very important part of the social side of club member’s interactions. Regardless of wide ranging views and ideas the overall friendship of club members certainly shines through.
On a slightly different note, over the years some club members find it hard or impossible, through failing health, to make it to morning teas or technical nights or even be on air. A big thank you must go to Brendan VK7VIP for his “Keeping in touch visits” with a number of Amateurs on a regular basis. With the recent loss of another club member being no exception.
Hopefully see you all in 2025!
As always, pictures will be available on the NTARC Web site under “Blogs” for this broadcast. NTARC Blogs
UPCOMING EVENTS
As all club events are now in recess but the broadcast soldiers on, a reminder to all members that if you have any items of news you would like added to our weekly roundup then please email them to the Secretary at the following address news@ntarc.net
That’s all folks,
73, Stefan VK7ZSB, Secretary NTARC Inc.
