The year ahead

Wellington Branch 50 NZART club member, Bob Vernall ZL2CA, was awarded Amateur of the Year 2021 by NZART at the 2022 Annual Conference. Bob was instrumental in freeing up the 60m band for amateur radio use. Many amateurs will be grateful for opening up a new an interesting HF band for daytime use.

Wellington VHF Group was formally formed in August 1970, as a sub group of Wellington Branch 50. This August marks the 50th anniversary of this meeting, where Bill Hamer ZL2CD moved that the Group be formed. According to the latest Q-Bit, the VHF Group is planning to hold a celebration to recognise reaching 50 years this August. They are looking for expressions of interest in the event. They will hold their regular Thursday night meeting on the 27th August and dedicate the evening to short talks on events and projects that the Group has initiated, such as the Wellington Walkie, the UHF National System, Belmont repeater, ATV, various repeaters and other projects, even the DMR National System and the Colonial Knob project. On Saturday evening, 29 August, they plan to hold a dinner as the main social event. If you are keen to participate, the Wellington VHF Group would love to hear from you and if you have ideas to add, they would like to hear from you. Please email the secretary@vhf.nz

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…