Wellington Amateur Radio Club - ZL2WB

The Branch AGM took place on Tuesday 19 April at around 1.50pm following the RemoteDX Inc AGM (which commenced at 1pm). The venue was the Collective Hub, 1/33 Johnsonville Road, Johnsonville. Ten members were present, meeting our rules for a quorum. Mike ZL1AXG also gave a short talk on "virtualisers and emulators", although he had trouble with his computer projecting on the larger screen, so was unable to demonstrate some of the features he discussed. The meeting concluded with tea and coffee at around 2.50pm. The Agenda and Reports are available below: [wpdm_package id='4979'] [wpdm_package id='4982'] [wpdm_package id='4985'] [wpdm_package id='5005']

13:00 - 15:00 ZOOM meeting due to Omicron: Bernard ZL2BD and Mike ZL1AXG gave a Zoom talk on assembling a basic set of test equipment to support typical operating and antenna and equipment construction projects undertaken by amateur radio operators. This equipment is so very affordable today. The talk discussed relative priorities for purchases, and how to avoid making costly mistakes.

For anybody who has been around in amateur radio for a while, the ZC1 will be well known. It was developed by Collier and Beale during WW2 for use by the NZ armed forces. As it covered both 80m and 40m, it was highly prized by hams, in an era when commercially made equipment was hard to come by. On Sunday 6 March 2022 Bernard ZL2BD gave a talk (on Zoom) on a ZCI test jig that he built, and has used to test the working of several ZC1s. The club owns a ZC1 that is for sale to any member interested in purchasing it and was tested using this test jig. Bernard also demonstrated a replacement vibrator that doesn't require modification of the ZC1 power supply. He is still working on variants to perfect this. 11 members and visitors joined in on the Zoom session, which was very well received by those attending. [wpdm_package id='4999']

Our first regular meeting of 2022 was to have taken place on Tuesday 22 February at The Collective Hub, 1/33 Johnsonville Road, Johnsonville. Given the Omicron outbreak it has been decided to cancel this meeting. Richard ZL2FY, one of our Central Region counsellors was to have attended. Richard will be invited to attend a meeting later in the year. Future meetings in March and April will shift to Zoom online meetings.

The Nano-VNA is a powerful tool for assessing the characteristics of all types of filters, including crystal bandpass filters. At the first shed workshop of 2022, Mike ZL1AXG discussed the construction of multiple crystal filters for HF rigs. This included a 12 MHz crystal filter for the Simple SSB 80m rig he is constructing in modular form (and this reflected the fifth presentation on that transceiver construction). He also revealed a further 12 MHz filter and 2 filters at 4MHz for other planned construction projects. In this workshop, Mike covered crystal selection, design options (including lattice filters in general and Cohn and QER filters) and the challenges of achieving a nice shape and a passband that doesn't have too much ripple. He also demonstrated a "universal jig" for use with the nano-VNA and discussed when things go wrong with filters (in this case an LPF, or rather the test set up).