Wellington Amateur Radio Club - ZL2WB

For at least 11 months of every year, for the past 50 years, the Secretary or the Newsletter Editor of Branch 50 NZART (now Wellington Amateur Radio Club Inc) has prepared a newsletter for mailing to members with club news. Most of these newsletters have made it into the club's archives, but sadly a proportion of issues have not been filed. You can now read back in time as all copies of newsletters that we have in our archives have now been loaded on to the website. They have also been backed up on to hard drives and the cloud so that the hard copies cluttering up committee member's garages can be disposed off. It would be great if somebody had the time to write up a history of key events and activities spanning the 50 year period and to make a list of those occupying executive roles in each of the last 50 years. Let Mike ZL1AXG know if you have the time to do the necessary research! It would also be good to fill some of the gaps where we do not have newsletters, particularly missing years (like 2009 and 1999 from recent history). If you have any of the following issues it would be good…

Christmas Dinner at Evan's Bay Yacht Club has been and gone. It was a very good Christmas ham meal with special vegetables and salad. We all enjoyed the great view over the water and the quiet and peaceful setting. I imagine we may want to return again next year! All the best of the season to our members. Don't forget the BBQ at the Chairman's home on Wednesday 21 January at 6pm. Everybody is welcome! See the contacts section for phone contacts. Mike ZL1AXG  

ZL1AXG now on Hamnet - a Mesh Network for amateur radio operators Three WARC members have recently established a Mesh Network (Hamnet) on 2.4Ghz using Ubiquiti Nanonstation M2 equipment and Linksys WRT-54 routers. These pieces of wifi equipment operate on WiFi channel 1, but because this is in the amateur 2.4Ghz spectrum we are able to load mesh software developed by amateurs and, if necessary, operate on higher power and with gain antennas. The Nanonstation M2s seem to have good signals over 2Km paths with just 500mW of power, allowing 130Mps traffic. The Linksys devices have a more limited range and lower speeds. An IRC chat node, webserver, bulletin board and demonstration video application are up and running! For further information contact James ZL2ET to get yourself connected as a new node. Cost is around $170. You will need a computer! Temporary installation of Ubiquiti Nanostation M2 equipment running on Hamnet

by Mike ZL1AXG A four square antenna has now been built and assembled, assisted by a number of local amateurs (Doug ZL2AOV is photographer, Bernard ZL2BD, James ZL2ET, flatmate Josh, and Malcolm ZL2UDF and myself are in assembly mode). Full testing wasn't possible because 20m at the test location in Grenada Village was full of local QRN at S6+ and peaking over S9. It did, however, pull in stations on 15m, even if it was not designed for that band! The team are busy assembling the portable four square array for 20m. The array takes about an hour to assemble: four antennas, four feedlines, a control box, coax and an ethernet line back to the rig and remote control, and 32 radials! Bernard ZL2BD measuring the impedance at the feedpoint with his antenna analyser. Note that we found in this first test that the initial feed arrangement wasn't satisfactory, creating too much coupling to ground. Doug reworked the "feet" giving them nice painted toenails (in British racing green). I started this project with the intention of engendering interest in phased vertical arrays. I imagine that the club will get to play with this antenna (and hopefully others like it) in our annual efforts in Oceania DX Contest and CQ WW contests. 20m was…

Baluns and antenna tuners with our special Canadian guest, Dave McCarter VE3GSO AND Our annual Blackwood Cup shoot out for best home construction project. Lutheran Church Hall, King St, Mount Cook at 7.30pm on Wednesday 15 October 2014 Supper will be served as always. Please feel free to join us.