Bernard presented on small magnetic loop antennas at the June meeting.  Bernard has been working on these for many years, and the main message was -They work very well but must be made very carefully and you need to accept a number of limitations.

The main limitation is the very small bandwidth, followed by the high level of care required in designing and making them.  A key issue is loop resistance. Bernard makes his loops from 1 inch copper pipe and to reduce the resistance from the joins, uses 4 x 90 deg angles, carefully silver soldered. His loop is a square!

Bernard is well known for his work with HF loop antennas and has many years of designing, building and evaluating these interesting (and somewhat rare) variant.

 Bernard's recent talks at other local branches have had very good reviews and some members asked if he could speak at our monthly meeting, which Bernard has offered.  This was also following a loop building session at his QTH where models were build and tested.

Please come along on Thursday 27 June to hear Bernard's talk.  

Thursday 30th August 7:30 PM Tawa Community Centre

Don ZL2TYR has offered to give us an update on the recent changes with AREC, as well as tell us some of the plans AREC has for the future.

Prohibiting illegal use of two way radios

The RSM Compliance team are working on a Prohibition Notice to limit the import and illegal use of a range of low end two way radios. 

There are a variety of these radios on the market, like Baofeng, Pofung and Woxun for example. They allow users to programme their own frequency from the front panel or via a USB cable.  Although designed for the Amateur Radio Operator, these radios in the wrong hands have been attributed to malicious calls on police, forestry and rail frequencies.