Wellington Branch 50 NZART wins award

John ZL2HD spoke at our Wednesday 17 August about the kinds of antennas, masts and towers that are permitted within the Wellington City boundaries. John outlined efforts involved in trying to protect Amateur Radio interests in the face of city council moves to regulate the proliferation of cellphone towers and streetside cabinets. The process has continued since 2010, when cellphone masts started proliferating. The council had no control over placement of antennas on the roadside utility corridor. Wellington has separate definitions for antennas and aerials in its District Plan – antennas are what telcos use, aerials are thin bits of wire that radio amateurs want. Masts are fine. Towers are something else again. The upshot: “Masts or supporting structures of any height are permitted if they are below 102mm in diameter (guys don’t count so long as they’re not thick); “fatter things” (including lattice masts) cannot exceed 18m in height on a residential site, or rise beyond 5m above the “building profile.” The building profile is determined by a surface at 45 degrees to the horizontal starting two metres above the ground on the property boundary. Rural sites have their own rules, seasides and ridgelines are special cases. Heritage areas are a separate problem. Existing installations survive…

Field day operations At our May WARC meeting on Wednesday 18 May we were given a presentation on how the Patea/South Taranaki branch has approached NZART Jock White Field Day over the last 53 years. Glenn Kingston ZL2KZ, one of our own WARC members, has travelled north each year (with just one or two exceptions, such as when his XYL came down with a high fever) to assist with Field Day operations in South Taranaki. Glenn showed photos of two Field Day sites used over the last 50 years. For some time now, the South Taranaki branch has based their Field Day activities at a primary school located along the sea coast north of Patea. A 60' aluminium tower (sourced by a member who worked at the Motonui synthfuel plant) is stored on site. This is erected each year using a local farm tractor or RV as available. This skyhook allows for an 80m folded dipole antenna to be mounted at near a quarter wavelength above ground. A 40m antenna is mounted lower down the mast. More recently a secret weapon in the form of a vertical incidence 3 element 40 metre yagi pointed skyward has been added to the line up of antennas. The yagi has deployed knowledge provided by another WARC member…

The first three nodes of the Wellington Amateur Radio Mesh Network went live on 18 November 2014. So the mesh is now a year old. From 3 to 35 nodes in a year is not too bad!