Tom Clarke ZL2TDD passed away on Saturday 26 October aged 75 years.
Tom was Treasurer of the VHF Group for many years and was a stalwart contributor to many Group projects as well as AREC events.
His funeral will held at St John's Anglican Church 18 Basset Rd Johnsonville at 10am on Thursday 31 of October at 10am
From Stuff: (the last part of the article; read the link for the full details)
Radio Spectrum Management has granted a short-term licence, number 256129, for additional tests of Digital Amateur Television transmissions from our Mt Belmont site.
The first transmissions will consist of an un-modulated carrier on 506 MHz during testing of the modified transmitting antenna. The dates and times of these tests will be notified on this website.
Due to the Tawa facility being used for Business Continunity purposes by the WCC, we are not able to meet there this week.
We will look at how we can reschedule the meeting and the speakers.
We do not have a December Q-Bit, so most likely we will not be in communication until Janurary 2017. Have a safe and happy Christmas.
73
John ZL2HD
President, Wellington VHF Group, Branch 74 NZART
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.
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.
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.
Two news items this month worth sharing. The first is a great story that appeared in The Dominion Post and available here:
Today the Rangituhi - Colonial Knob AIS service was restored to service after a failure of the VHF receiver. Coverage from the site has been gradually deteriorating over the last few months.
Last weekend a working bee installed a new VHF marine band antenna at the site. The new antenna is a PD220 Celwave Super Stationmaster with a gain of 5.25 dBd (7.4 dBi) arranged with a 6 degree electrical downtilt.
- John, ZL4JY
For more than 25 years, first analog then P25, the 147.075 MHz (+600 kHz split) repeater has covered the north of Wellington, New Zealand. The original machine was a home made crystal controlled 10W design by Peter ZL2ARW but the site now features a 100W capable Motorola Quantar.
