Is There Anybody Out There?
Today, we had couple of noise related projects. Firstly, the Man in the Box is back from his extended holiday. Yes the 5775 repeater is now back to its unique identity with the voice announcements, EOT beep and long tail. Noise that is Musick to our ears [ stop trying… [Read More]
Dave ZL1DL and Harry ZL1BK caught practicing rope knots? Maybe knot. They were just whipping up (knot funny) a quick ferrite based choke for John ZL1OJ to try on his recently installed “random wire” antenna. After that, Dave produced an “unlikely to impress” multi-band HF vertical. With a tapped coil… [Read More]
A good turn out resulted in a mixed bag of activities for Sunday. John ZL1OJ, keenly wanting to get going on HF, fitted a length of coax with PL-259’s. After discovering the 5775 repeater still had a low but annoying beat tone noticeable at low receive levels, Keith ZL1BQE and… [Read More]
Wednesday 17/7, we made a start on our emergency resilience project. A relatively simple exercise for the day – install extra low voltage battery powered lighting for use if there is a mains outage. The operating consoles have an overhead light fitting – the contents of which was replaced with… [Read More]
The 5775 repeater has undergone a minor adjustment – thanks to Keith ZL1BQE. A temporary replacement was switched out on Sunday morning. with the return of the current repeater. An accompanying / annoying low level tone was audible on the repeater output for weaker signals into the repeater. An adjustment… [Read More]
A big welcome to the ham fraternity to Ira, ZL3INM who sat his exam at MP on Wednesday 3/7. Ira passed with flying colours and his QTH is on the North Shore. We have armed him with a portable on 144 so hopefully we will hear him soon on the… [Read More]
A lady visitor to the area approached Rob ZL4ROB for information regarding the MP building. Turns out she hosted a program, called Kia Ora Brazil, on a Hamilton community radio station. Rob roped Dave ZL1DL into telling the story, which to his chagrin was recorded and advised would be material… [Read More]
As part of the ongoing reduction of years of accumulated “could be handy but never actually gets used” valuable equipment, Martyn, Maurice and Dave moved some of the heavier items on Monday 17/6, to transport them to a recyclers. Some of the smaller batteries, which were actually quite hard to… [Read More]
So what is there in common with Harry clearing up leaves and Rob fiddling around in the back of his vehicle? Read on and all might be revealed. Firstly, Rob demonstrated the one person easy lift antenna pole – designed to make the one person POTA trip a doddle. Well… [Read More]
A relatively early start for the troops on Wednesday; Rob ZL4ROB suggested participating in an AREC exercise, from MP. More of a check-in than an extensive exercise, there were 3 nominated frequencies on 80, 60 (near), and 40m, to be able to make contact on. Rob, as ZK1EBR, kicked off… [Read More]