In the 1956 novel The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor the veteran, a flawed but great man with many achievements to his credit, falls to the modern usurper with a handsome face but no real ability. And so on February 16, 2016 an iconic veteran of New Zealand radio transmission, the 696 ft* 2YA mast fell to the enfeebled broadcast service we make do with today. Welcome to the new age.
Due to the Weather the picnic has been cancelled
Talk in Belmont 710 and DMR VKZL
Park at Churchill Drive car park and walk along to the Troop Picnic Area for a BBQ. Bring your own everything (Free BBQ's are available).
Date: Thursday 28 January
Time: from 6:00 pm
Location: Otari Wiltons Bush, Troop Picnic Area
For the November meeting we are privileged to have Peter Lake ZL2AZ, IARU R3 Director, speak to us about his 10 years as director and the progress that has been made during this time. Peter has recently announced his retirement and this will take effect just before the meeting.
Date: Thursday 26 November
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre
This month's SIG meeting will cover the use of and services available over the mesh. James ZL2ET has also created the virtual tunnel to the nodes of Rob ZL1FLY. This in turn has allowed us to view other sites around the world.
James will outline the VTUN, the services he is hosting at his QTH, and how to use them.
Mike ZL1AXG will show us the services he is hosting and how we can access them.
The highlight is that we hope to be able to use the voice facilities over the mesh and James and Mike are excited to be able to demo this.
The August general meeting will have two speakers:
Propper networking in the microwave bands: John ZL4JY will talk about professional microwave networking and why the mesh is not the answer to everything. John has considerable experience across the subject, and has provided the microwave link that brings internet services to Colonial KNob for the DMR repeater. What next?
At the SIG for July 2015 Code plug update and overview the new ZL-TRBO codeplug structure was presented by Jeff ZL2JG. These codeplug are now available at AREC.info Downloads for download.
A description of the various talkgroups are available at the AREC DMR Network page. Lastly some interesting links have been put up on the Event & Links page of the AREC.info website.
- John, ZL4JY
A further series of mobile field strength test runs along Stratton Street has been performed, and a report is being prepared for consideration by the interested parties.
An inspection of the BQ32 sheet of the Topo50 map series shows that some receive locations on Stratton Street are line-of-sight from Belmont and are heavily obstructed from transmitters using the adjacent 494 to 502 MHz and 510 to 518 MHz bands, potentially resulting in reception in these bands having an unfavourable signal-to-noise ratio, caused by any out-of-band radiation of the DATV transmitter.
Since the DMR system was set up at Colonial Knob, a number of enhancements and extensions have occurred. The code plugs determine the radio front panel channel setup, and changes have been made to make the radio easier to use when moving around the Wellington region, to support new DMR repeaters, and allow for the upcoming frequency changes. Support for the analogue channels has been made within the local zone, and plenty of channels added to make the radios usable in a number of situations.
The June general meeting will be a talk from the NZART President Stuart Watchman ZL2TW.
When commissioned in 1965 the Benmore-Haywards interisland HVDC link was a pioneering feat of electrical engineering. Stuart (a non electrical engineer!) will present the history of this link and how it fits into the NZ power grid.
Date: Thursday 25 June
Time: 7:30 pm Location: Tawa Community Centre
Links related to the presentation:
