� -------------------------------------------------------------------69 QNEWS FEBRUARY 09 2025 - VK4 ON AIR --------------------------------------------------------------------* DID YOUR CLUB TELL ANYONE ABOUT AMATEUR RADIO THIS WEEK? --------------------------------------------------------------------* THE FOLLOWING NEWS CAN BE HEARD FROM OUR AUDIO SERVICE Available in Audio RIGHT NOW QNEWS thanks to Tony VK7AX can be found on www.vk7ax.id.au/wianews/ 203.31.7.19/wianews/ QNEWS audio ready to download thanks to Brendan VK4BLP from www.wiaq.org.au Also search QNEWS (make sure it IS the Ham Radio QNEWS) in your podcast. --------------------------------------------------------------------* VK4 SILENT KEYS @ WIA YEAR FROM MAY 6 2024 SK CALL SK NAME DATE ADVISED BY VK4PS ALAN STEPHENSON 23/05/24 (vk4zz) VK4FANG ROGER HARNDEN 22/07/24 (vk4zz) X/VK4TC Terry Harding Cain 30/07/24 (vk4zz) VK4CWJ GORDON WEBSTER July 2024 (vk4vp) VK4SWR JOE SEBAST5IANI 03/07/24 (vk4zz) VK4TE ALEX McDONALD 27/09/24 (vk4ra) VK4NL NOEL DESJARDINS 16/10/24 (vk4vp) VK4RG RON GRANDISON 22/12/24 (vk4hit) ---------------------------------------------------------------------* DARLING DOWNS RADIO CLUB http://www.wia.org.au/clubs/vk4/DarlingDownsRadioClub/ vk4wid@gmail.com Good morning, good evening, good night, good day and good grief. So many repeats on this news that I hope you get it before the club meeting this coming Monday. Hi; I'm John VK4JPM, Secretary of the Darling Downs Radio Club and this news will be fresh if it's Sunday 9th of February. Most importantly, tomorrow night Monday 10th is our February club meeting, where members, guests and others will find out lots about the Amateur Radio take on the Fox Hunt, and how you can have massive amounts of fun and learn useful stuff at the same time. The meeting will be hosted by Bruce VK4MQ, who has been beavering away over the last two months to construct a heap of projects to show you how a Fox Hunt works. Actually, you might not know what Fox Hunting is all about, so here's the gist: the person assigned as the fox takes a small transmitter of sufficient power - which might not be very much - and hides it somewhere. The hunt participants then use a receiver and a directional antenna to locate the fox. That could be really simple - for instance if the fox is hidden in a back yard under a garbage bin it won't be hard to find. Or it could be tricky and tough, for instance if the fox is hidden up a tree on the other side of a river. Or somewhere even more challenging than that. We're wondering if someone has though of hiding a fox on the international space station. Hey, it could happen. Bruce is going to show you Fox Hunt equipment designs that you can make really cheaply and simply. Let's start with the obvious item: a hand-held directional antenna. Bruce has designed a portable antenna that works wonderfully and can be built in under an hour using conduit and coathangers or any other wire you have around. Next, how about a signal strength meter, so that you can see how close you are to the fox? Bruce found a cheap Chinese module that gives a useful expanded meter display, and that would set you back for well under ten bucks. I've seen the prototype and it has more than 70dB of linear scale on a real meter, and it looks gorgeous. Finally you might need a 2m filter for your handheld, and Bruce has created one of those to get rid of other noise that might confuse your receiver... and you. The Fox Hunt meeting special, and indeed all the projects, has been designed for those of us who have no experience with Fox Hunting and no particular skill. That makes it a meeting that's ideal for newbs and young'uns, so bring the kids and let's get them started with our hobby? Plus it will get you started on the path to our planned club Fox Hunt day in May. The meeting starts at 1900 in the Toowoomba Library in Herries Street near Grand Central on Monday 10th of February, and it's in a meeting room on level 3. That's easy to find, and there's plenty of free offstreet parking. A reminder of events in the future: Stand by for details of the club's plans for the John Moyle Field Day over the weekend of 15-16 March; there's a WICEN event in Southbrook on 8/9/10 March; and pop Saturday 10 May in your diary for the Club's first annual FoxHunt and social BBQ. Did you miss anything? No? Not a problem. you can subscribe to QNEWS and get this in audio or text every week, and all the details about club events are on our website at www.ddrci.org.au - go to the calendar items on the home page and click the "view detail" buttons. We welcome out-of-towners and non-members to our events - if you're planning to travel in then let us know so that we can set the red carpet for you and *your* guests. Secretary@ddrci.org.au gets to us very quickly, and www.ddrci.org.au is where you find the website. 73s from John VK4JPM and all the gang at the Darling Downs Radio Club. --------------------------------------------------------------------* Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking. The continuing stories of the weather and the flooding in the north of Queensland seem to be expected to continue for some time yet. Along the central coast we have had the inconvenience of showers and the odd rain squall but the stressful and dangerous deluges have spared us. It is something that I can, in part, identify with from my youth on the regularly flooded north coast of NSW. It is perhaps too early to know if the amateur fraternity have been engaged in assistance efforts but I haven’t seen anything appear on my internet feeds indicating WICEN and other groups have been activated. I would like to remind listeners that our regular WIA National News presenter, Felix Scerri, and his family live in the heavily effected town of Ingham which has been without services such as electricity for several days. To Felix and amateurs in the flooded communities, I trust you are remaining safe and that relief comes soon. Whilst our news services have been following the flooding the world has remained active and from a north American news outlet, MSNBC, comes a report of an event which hopefully can never happen in this land down under. Commentator Rachel Maddow tells of what appears to be politically driven actions by the Federal Communications Commission. It is alleged that under the new White House administration, there is a policy to direct support for news services towards those businesses that support the new administration. In her story, Miss Maddow, told of how a local newspaper which had a readership of over many hundreds of thousands, and was identified as the paper of record for official advertisements for that area, has had its contracts with the Federal government withdrawn and the business transferred to adjacent area publishers. It would be inconceivable for we Aussies to see the ACMA act in such a partisan political manner as this news story presents. However we individually may view our governmental processes we seem to be better protected by administrative structures than our colleagues across the Pacific, allowing for the truth of the report. Returning to the floods and the possibility of amateur radio support during this crisis period, there is the question as to whether the resilience mapping actually accommodates our skill base and uses it. If the answer is yes, then we seem to be hiding the efforts of many people as we don’t usually get to hear of their efforts. Then if the answer is no, we must ask the question as to whether we have lost recognition and credibility as a volunteer support group. Certainly there are good reasons for getting the word out about our contributions or finding out why our participation is dying on the vine. I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think�.how about you? (vk4zpp@wia.org.au) -------------------------------------------------------------------* Social Scene VK4 - Redcliffe & Districts Radio Club REDFEST April 12 at Deception Bay North State School. (wiacal) VK - WIA AGM May 3 - 4. Hosted by Bendigo Amateur Radio & Electronics Club and their Technology Expo (vk3gtv/wiacal) VK - Australian Ladies Amateur Radio Association 50th anniversary Glen Waverly July 26 president@alara.org (vk2ayl) VK4 - GOLD COAST AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY � 2025 HAMFEST NOV 9 (vk4dmh) Country Paradise Parklands 231 Beaudesert Nerang Road. 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