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As the convention has been postponed until later in the year it was decided to hold a free club barbeque to bring the group together and share a few pre-loved items.

About 40 people were present and Tony VK5ATJ and Tim VK5AV were kept busy on the hotplate feeding the troops. Great to see some partners along too. Special visit by Trevor (Niv) VK5NC who parted with many of his treasures. President Peter welcomed everyone and suggested we should do more of these so something being planned at Dorodong with the Naracoorte boys once the weather warms a bit and with Portland Club members for early next year.

Big thanks to those who helped setup and cleanup.

Some goodies changed hands and there were smiles all around. The weather was outstanding, just a perfect winter’s day in Mount Gambier.

Following the recent COVID-19 lockdown in Victoria, and the closure of the border into SA, the Princess Highway border check-point east of Mount Gambier was re-activated.

Unfortunately, the check-point location has little or no mobile phone or internet coverage. SA Police again requested assistance from SERG to establish an emergency antenna to enable data comms for the Border Permit checks.

With thanks to Andrew VK5MAS, who coordinated the activity, he soon had the essential comms up and running, deploying the SERG comms trailer with its pump-up mast.

This will remain in position until the SA Police radio techs arrive with their own infrastructure.

Who can resist a free barbeque? Because the convention has been postponed we’re planning a free barbeque for anyone who turns up on Sunday 13th June 2021 starting at 12 noon.

The club will supply the meat (snags and hamburgers), bread and sauce. If you want something else you can bring it and pop it on the hot plate. You’ll need to bring your own drinks although the club has limited supplies of soft drink ($1 each).

We’re setting up some tables for people to put pre-loved equipment and stuff for sale. Niv has items as does Norbert but anyone is welcome to put sale items on a table. It is your own responsibility to look after it though, manage change etc.

No need to book in, just turn up either with money in your pocket to buy gear or just enjoy each others’ scintillating company over a hot snag!

See the Convention 2021 page for an update on the convention plans. The page will be kept up to date in view of the current Covid 19 situation.

The 80 foot ex VK5YM tower has become surplus to requirements by the current owner and is being offered for FREE, and needs to be removed from its present site.

We need to seriously have a good think about this offer, and we haven’t got much time to think about it.

Do we, as SERG, grab this tower for a future project, BUT, it will cost us money to remove it from the existing site at Moorak, and then we have to store it somewhere.

Let me know your thoughts by email to vk5be@wia.org.au

Peter VK5BE

SERG was well represented today (Saturday 10/4/21) by Peter VK5BE, Col VK5HCF, Andrew VK5VKC, Tom VK5EE and Andrew VK5MAS at the Reidy Park Centre working bee to extensively trim back the much over-grown hedge at the rear of our Clubrooms. Also thanks to the 2 Andrews for towing 2 of the 4 fully loaded trailers away.

Members from all groups contributed to the exercise making quick work of a mammoth task. This has resulted in the Reidy Park Centre saving hundreds of dollars in maintenance costs, which has now been passed on to all the Groups in the form of a rent reduction.

From President Peter

Last month I reported that negotiations to secure a site sharing agreement with the new land-owners of Mount Eckersley had broken down and that we had begun negotiations with the land-owners of the neighbouring property to secure a site sharing agreement.

Unfortunately, these recent talks have also failed to secure the rights to install the proposed Heywood repeater on Mount Eckersley.

Not to be deterred, a search for an alternate site has begun, with a number options being identified and considered.

Hopefully we can secure a formal site agreement in the near future to locate the Portland repeater.

In the mean time, the VK3RSW repeater remains on test on-air from the SERG clubrooms, and is linked into the existing South-East network and you are all encouraged to try it out.

Peter VK5BE

Two hard working people today.

1. Ross VK3KBO has put up a temporary link antenna at Naracoorte and the link has been turned on. Things need to be working well again. Well done Ross – a high gain home brew 10 element beam is doing the job very nicely. Great to have the whole network back on again
2. Peter VK5BE has been busy too. He grabbed one of our spare cavities from the clubrooms and tuned it up as a band pass filter using his tracking generator/spectrum analyser. The idea being to cut out harmonics from the 146.9MHz transmitter on the basis that maybe the mixing products we have been experiencing are related to a harmonic mix. The first harmonic at 293.8MHz is now filtered out by at least 40db and higher harmonics even further down. Peter installed it at The Bluff today (8/4/21) and so far so good, no noise. Have we spoken too soon! Thank you Robin for being the testing station from the Mt Gambier end. We’ve lost a little output power but if that means no noise I think we can tolerate that.

Update: Spoke too soon. Still having noise problems, maybe, just maybe, not as bad. Seems OK on weekends but weekdays are a different matter.

Today, March 29th, Peter VK5BE and Colin VK5DK completed the recommissioning of the VK5ROH 70cm repeater at The Bluff, together with the Echo-Link gateway from the Clubrooms.
All appears to be working as it should.
Attached pics are of the Echolink antenna and measurements at the Clubrooms.
Cheers,
Peter
PS : I haven’t tested the IRLP facility (Editor: it’s not currently working), so I’m not sure if its working, but Echolink works fine.