Posts

The ever-ongoing upgrades carried out on the SERG VHF Repeater Network requires help from many sources. One of those sources is the expertise and workshop facilities of Eric VK5BT.

Eric has always been available, usually at rather short notice, to fabricate all sorts of metalwork required for the project. He usually has an easy solution to the strange rough-drawn notes given to him by yours-truly. The jobs produced are always of a high professional standard that will last a lifetime in service.

Eric is affectionately known as Mr Arkwright, quite rightly named after that TV character that operated a corner store that had everything. Eric’s store contains relics of bygone years “that will come in handy one day”. They surely have, his stocks of useful bits are migrating into the SERG network.

My personal thanks go to Eric for his ongoing help and support on the various stages of the project. He contributed to the professional network that is in place today.

Brian Roberts.

VK5VI

July 2022

On Sunday 3/7/22 a working bee was held at The Bluff repeater site to create a path to our building. In winter the old path became wet and overgrown with weeds.

Chris VK5MC contributed suitable material (Scalps) and then the merry gang of Peter VK5BE, Tim VK5AV, Col VK5DK, Owen VK5HOS and Chris VK5MC spread the material while John VK5DJ did a software update of VK5RMG. In addition Peter dug out room for the drain from the building below path level and overcome a trip hazard. Great job fellas.

A summary and results of the Foxhunting are now on the results page at:

Convention 2022 results

Great job by so many of the club meetings or their partners.

An internal initial review is on the members’ pages. Lots to think about for next year.

The Convention Committee has decided that we’ll set up the hall at 6:30PM on Friday 10th June 2022. The Scouts will have brought in the tables and chairs.

The Naracoorte club will be sleeping over in the hall on Saturday night.

As the tables will be populated on Sunday morning (Convention Sunday only) it’s unlikely there will be equipment to watch over.

Don’t forget to book your Sunday night dinner (see convention page) ASAP. Bookings by 3/6/22 to sergconvention@gmail.com

Sandy needs numbers for catering purposes, please help by getting your booking in. Date extended to 3/6/22.

We’re still looking for volunteers. It’s time for a whole club effort, especially at catering times: Lunch 9:45AM to 2:15PM (open for business 10-2) and for the evening dinner.

Yesterday 7/5/22 AREG launched another balloon. This time with a camera and telemetry.

For those interested in hearing these balloons listen on about 434.2MHz for the digital telemetry and if you have a vertical beam point it at about 330 degrees (Millicent as the starting point) towards where most of the balloons are launched near Mt Barker. If you want to decode the balloons you’ll need a 64bit Windows machine and a copy of Horus-binary. See here for download. If you’re using a USB connection from your rig you’ll need to change some settings in your radio to activate USB audio.

If you want to see if your decodes are getting through you’ll need to go to this site using your browser. If you are decoding and sending data you will see an antenna symbol at your location on the map and a green line from the balloon to you. You’ll also see your callsign appear in the list on the left along with your signal report (automatically included in your data uploads).

Well done to Mark and his team at AREG. Saturday’s balloon reached a record height of over 40,200m for an Australian amateur balloon. Yes, the Earth is a sphere despite what some believe.

Big thanks to the team from SERG that provided the comms for Round 1 of the SEAC rally series. We proved our worth once again in delivering a first class comms network that was able to resolve every issue in the event very rapidly. Thanks to Colin VK5DK, Col VK5HCF, Tim VK5AV, Norbert VK5MQ, Hans VK5PHS, Andrew VK5VKC, Owen VK5HOS and a huge thanks to James VK3JBM for making the trip down from Horsham to assist with the event.

President Peter VK5BE (in Race Control)

I’m not sure what has happened but we seem to have lost the photographs in some sections of the website. I’ll try to gradually replace these but some may be lost forever.

In case we have too much in our media library I am also deleting old information. It might be we overloaded the media library. I don’t really know.

John
Webmaster

A reminder for club members that lottery tickets are available until latish in February. Here’s your chance to win big. The club gets all the proceeds.

Click here for the link to the community lottery.

If I win a car I’ll donate $1000 to the club
John

The website has been down for a couple of days. This was caused by the automatic update of the news ticker (the plugin that puts the crawler on the front page).
The author has corrected with an update and all seems to be working again.

Happy New Year to you all.
John

Now that the tyre smoke has cleared & the dust has settled, the 2021 Trident Tyres Legend of the Lakes Hillclimb has been run & won (by Dan Day again). From a SERG perspective, it was one of the best we have ever been involved with. Our team of volunteers worked tirelessly during the long days in some unfriendly weather conditions at times, providing the excellent comms required for the safe management of the event.

Our TV coverage again was one of the best ever, performing faultlessly throughout the event.We can all hold our heads high with pride knowing what we have just achieved.

We are planning to hold a de-brief as part of this Friday’s activity night at our Clubrooms. Please come along if you wish to contribute to the discussion.

Well done everybody, your very proud President, Peter VK5BE