Author: webdev

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.

From President Peter, VK5BE

Today, Colin VK5DK and I had a very successful activity at The Bluff to restore our 70cm repeater, VK5ROH, following the mounting of the dipole array last week-end on the Hutchesson tower.

Correct galvanised bolts fitted to the array mounting brackets.
Dipole array realigned to face north.
Coaxial cables neatly routed down the tower to our hut.
Custom cut extension cables using RG-213 installed to the rack equipment.

Tx SWR = 1.13 to 1
Rx SWR = 1.08 to 1

Initial signal reports suggest the coverage is as expected.

Note from VK5DJ
At the top of the photo, just to the right of the tip of the Mt Benson yagi you can see a 2M vertical dipole. This was installed by Gambier Electronics for us some months back and had some performance issues when used as a duplexed antenna. Sometime in the next week I plan to drive to The Bluff and put that currently unused antenna on the receiver but leave the transmitter on the top phased dipoles. It’s worth the try to overcome the poor receiver performance. I may be able to remove a received cavity also.

On Sunday 21-3-21 we had a get-together at the Bluff. Tim VK5AV and Norbert VK5MQ set up HF portable operation for the John Moyle field Day. They had some success, Tim using a horizontal wire and Norbert tested his vertical. Forty metres was the best band.

Col VK5DK and Gary VK5JR setup 1296MHz equipment but failures prevented successful operation. An attempt by Gary and Norbert to get a 1296MHz contact over 200m was unsuccessful as the contest time ran out.

It was all great fun, we had a good turn up of members considering the short notice. President Peter also relocated the UHF repeater antennas on the tower although the coaxes will wait another few days.