IARS

The next meeting of the Illawarra Amateur Radio Society Inc. will be held at Industry World Coniston on Tuesday the 9th of March 2010 at 7.30pm. This meeting will feature a talk by Max VK2ARZ on audio quality and your signal. This will be a very interesting talk indeed.

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Cheers

Tony Stone

VK2TS – President

Illawarra Amateur Radio Society inc.

Greetings to all members of the Illawarra Amateur Radio Society Inc.

The next club meeting and Annual Monster Auction will be held on Tuesday the 10th of November 2009 at Industry World Coniston at 7.30pm

The Auction Rules of engagement:

• Please no junk. If you bring it, and it doesn’t get sold, you take it home. Anything found left at the end of the night will be disposed of at our discretion. Please don’t complain you didn’t know.
• All goods for auction to be booked in by 7.00pm, no exceptions to this rule. The meeting will begin at 7.30pm sharp.

• 10% of all sales to go to the IARS to help keep our club going, unless kindly donated to the club which will then attract 100% of the takings. John 2KEJ will organize settling this after the auction has closed and things have settled down. It does take time to work the totals out. Rest assured Simon knows what he is doing and he knows the rough value of all goods.

• Status of equipment to be the seller’s responsibility. If it doesn’t work make it known as any argument’s after the sale will be between yourself and the buyer, it has nothing to do with the IARS.

• All transmitting equipment should only be sold to those known to, or can prove that they have an amateur license, or they can convince us they are studying for it and their license issue, is inevitable. This of course does not apply to non transmitting items such as cable, components, accessories, receivers etc.

• Remember this is a fun night and we all should get a bargain. Let’s finish the night off with a well deserved cuppa and rag chew.

After the regular meeting business, Neil Justusson VK2VNJ will give a talk on amateur radio high altitude ballooning (ARHAB).

This talk will introduce you to flying amateur radio-based experiments using unmanned high altitude balloons. Learn about the different types of balloons, what kinds of equipment you can include, how the balloon is tracked, and a bit about the history of ARHAB.  Neil will bring his ARHAB gear for a bit of show and tell as well.

October’s meeting will be at 1:30pm on Tuesday 13 October at Australia’s Industry World (AIW) visitor centre at the BlueScope Steel north gate entrance, Springhill Rd Coniston.

See you there!

Hello one and all,

The next meeting of the Illawarra Amateur Radio Society is our Annual General Meeting for the year and will begin at 7.30pm Tuesday the 11th of August 2009 at Industry World Coniston. Please consider nominating for a position on the club committee. We really do need a publicity officer and some more general committee members to assist with the very important job of running and maintaining the club. For those that have never been in the club committee we are all eager to assist.

Here is the IARS Nomination form as a PDF file.

These can be given to the secretary Maeva VK2HUG before the meeting. Maeva email address is vk2aal if you’d like to complete the form and scan and email it thru. Don’t forget one has to be a financial member to be a committee member.

Not a member? Please give serious consideration to joining, any additional donations are also greatly appreciated. Now is also the time for renewals. As you could imagine in this day and age site rentals and other fees are increasing all the time. We have been considering decommissining some repeaters due to increasing costs. The only way we can avoid this is to raise more money for the club and attract more members. Unfortunately too few are currently doing too much and require assistance. Please think about joining, renewing and nominating.

Look forward to seeing you all at the next Annual General Meeting

Cheers

Tony Stone VK2TS

President – Illawarra Amateur Radio Society Inc.

Ph 0404 839465

Greetings to all members and visitors to the website of the Illawarra Amateur Radio Society Inc.

The next club meeting of the IARS will be held at 7.30pm on Tuesday the 14th of July 2009 at Industry World Coniston.

Our Annual General Meeting is also coming up on the 11th of August 2009. Financial members please consider nominating for the committee at the AGM. It has become increasingly difficult to keep the club financially rosie as there are too few doing too much. For those that are considering getting involved we are only too pleased to assist with mentoring new committee members. I remember only a few years ago being nervous about not knowing what to do. Fortunately at that time some of the club members assisted with the process. The additional committee members also ensure important decisions are made by a greater majority of members.

Not a club member? Please seriously consider joining. Club membership is still only $25 and $20 for concessional members. Membership fees have not risen for many many years. We expect a direct deposit system to be available soon. Stay tuned for account number and BSB information to be listed on the website shortly.

Please support the club that now has Eleven, thats right, Eleven repeaters! Unfortunately now with the Department of Lands tax for all our sites have become even more expensive. If we cant attract more members and raise more funds some of our sites may have to be abandoned. I am sure you will all agree this is the last thing anyone wants to do. Current Members and those regularly utilising our repeaters should receive a letter soon asking that they renew their membership or join the club to show their support.

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for your valued support.

Cheers

Tony Stone VK2TS

Club President – Illawarra Amateur Radio Society Inc.

Attention all members and interested Amateurs…

The VK2RMP 6 Metre Repeater is back up on air at Maddens Plane on 53.650MHz  with the usual 1MHz negative offset. A 123Hz CTCSS tone is required for access. John VK2AAL has built in an interesting feature. 5 ptt keys of carrier will put the repeater in to temporary Carrier mode to allow those without CTCSS to access the system. After a set time the repeater automatically reverts to CTCSS mode to prevent the ongoing interference problems which made the use of CTCSS necessary.

Thanks to John VK2AAL for his great work modifying and installing the repeater back on site.

Have a play, its lots of fun.

Cheers 

Tony Stone VK2TS – IARS President

Wollongong Council and the Sustainable Illawarra project are holding a free e-waste collection day.

This is a great opportunity to get rid of all (or at least some) the accumulated detritus of a lifetime as a radio amateur!

Date: 26 April 2009
Venue : Kembla Grange Racecourse
Time: 9.30am – 3.30pm.
Domestic quantities accepted.

Dispose of your e-waste responsibly by bringing domestic quantities of electronic waste for recycling. Electrical wastes that will be accepted include televisions, monitors, projectors, desktops, electronic games, laptops, joysticks, all computer peripherals, printers, CDs, DVDs, tapes, photocopiers, cameras, servers, DVD players, video recorders, electronic components, speakers, network equipment, sound equipment, scanners, faxes, mobile phones and landline phones. Remember if the goods are in working order, please check with local charities and second hand goods if they will accept them before bringing them to the e-waste collection day.

Items NOT Accepted – Smoke Alarms

This activity is open to residents of Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama Council areas only.

Congratulations are in order to Brian ”Golden Tonsils” Farrer – VK2AH, and Ted Thrift – VK2ARA, for taking out third and fourth place respectively in the Ross Hull contest 2009. I just spoke to Brian and he said we will have to try even harder next year. Ted took out first place on 6Metres. Could Brian and Ted achieve an outright win for the very first time for VK2 next year?

We will have to wait and see:)

See the complete results at http://www.wia.org.au/members/contests/rosshull/documents/Ross%20Hull%20Contest%202009%20Results.pdf

Well done guys!

Cheers

Tony Stone

President – IARS

Rob VK2MT and I visited the Madden’s Plains repeater site this afternoon to see if we could sort out what the problem with the VK2RDS D-Star gateway. It appears that there was a dodgy connection on the CAT5 cable that runs outside to the Avalan 900MHz Ethernet link system. A bit of wiggling of plugs and the gateway server, which had been running the whole time, was back in service.

Let me know if you have any further problems.
Neil VK2VNJ
VK2RDS D-Star gateway administrator

The VK2RDS D-Star gateway server at Madden’s Plains appears to have lost its Internet connectivity. We are looking into it, and will let everyone know when it is working again.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Neil VK2VNJ
VK2RDS gateway administrator