Meetings

John has recently joined his MotoTurbo repeater as a node on the worldwide MotoTrbo network. This enables easy communications to nodes around the world using pre-set talk groups. MotoTrbo and P.25 continue the amateur tradition of converting commercial gear to amateur use in a way that takes it beyond the original use. There is also gear from amateur suppliers and plenty of used gear on Ebay and TradeMe. This is quite an exceptional direction for digital comms and an exciting direction for the amateur world.

Randall ZL2RJP will present and demonstrate the new currency of choice for the internet generation. Bitcoins have varied in value and one consumer purchased a pizza for 10,000 bitcoins. Today That would buy you a nice house! At the time, it was about the right price

Bitcoins can be mined, earned, traded and converted to/from cash. See below for the audience requirements be be ready to trade with Randall on the night.

Date: Thursday 31 November
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre

Demonstration: Audience Participation Requirements

The October meeting will be the Annual General Meeting of the VHF Group and the AREC Section. This will be followed by a show and tell session so bring along any projects you have been working on and share them with the group.

Date: Thursday 31 October
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre

The special interest group meeting this month will be a follow up from the August Single Board Computer presentation.

Date: Thursday 10 October
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre

From the simple - checking the location of a site, to the complex - mapping all of the Amateur repeaters in the country Rob ZL2WAL will give an over view of some of the ways of using online maps for amateur radio, including an overview of the development of his automated system for producing online maps of the licensed NZ Amateur Radio Repeaters, Beacons & Digipeaters.

Date: Thursday 26 September
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre

New offerings in the single board computer have opened up a world of opportunities for experimentation, projects and even new products. From the PIC processor, the PICAXE, the AVR, then the Arduino, Beagle Board and the Raspberry Pi, we have a range of power, complexity and cost. Wayne ZL2BKC will talk about the offerings and how they can be used to do amateur radio and show off some of his projects. This is a not-to-miss talk on the state of the art in amateur radio construction.

Date: Thursday 29 August
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre

Planning what we are going to do at our Colonial knob site, what work needs to be done on the site and what our priorities are.

Date: Thursday 8 August
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Tawa Community Centre

We are holding an exam night on Wednesday 7th August for anyone who is keen to become a radio amateur.

We will have examiners and plenty of exam papers, so please contact an examiner, ARX or anyone in the Branch to get the details. We are hoping to have a location in Porirua that we have been using courtesy of Pete from the Cross Country Vehicle Club. We will start at 7 or 7:30 (you come at either time).

Follow the call sign services links on this site to find the study guide, online practice exam and other material.

If you think you are interested, then give it a go!

New Zealand's electricity market has lead the world in the developing into a successful free-market model, where regulation is used to ensure market power is not abused. The system has changed the long term planing of generation, but prices have risen. How are prices set, and what barriers are there to new retailers who could offer competitive pricing? This talk will cover some of the dark secrets of the market and provide some background to the current debate around the “single-buyer” model being proposed.