Here are photos of the January 2019 meeting at the CTARC clubhouse. Grateful thanks to Chris ZS1CDG and Nick ZS1ZD for providing the photos.
The written report-back is [
here].
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| Before the meeting, a great opportunity to catch up on the skinner |
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Chairman Rob ZS1SA reports on the recent Committee Meeting,
welcomes new guests and informs us of progress at the
mornings antenna work party. |
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Rob kicks off the Show and Tell session by showing us his
fine tape-measure VHF DF antenna |
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| Detail of the antenna |
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| Detail of the antenna |
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| Detail of the antenna |
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Rob also showed us his nifty DF attenuator,
made from a BNC plug and co-ax adaptor |
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Keverne ZS1ABU assembles his AMSATSA dual-band VHF/UHF
satellite antenna |
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This antenna is very portable and lightweight, and available from AMSATSA
for a very reasonable sum. |
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Mike ZS1FP demos his coax stripper tool, which he
kindly donated to the CTARC after his demo. |
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| Mike also showed us his Snap-On coax cutter, |
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Nick ZS1ZD showed us his cheap Chinese portable receiver,
which is proving very useful for hunting down RFI problems in the shack |
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Chris ZS1CDG showed us his finely constructed weather station,
consisting of an LED readout, an Arduino-type chip with code
cobbled together from various internet resources, and a WiFi link to
his laptop PC, that download the data from weather websites |
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| Close-up of Chris's unit. |
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Rob ZS1RDM showed us some military rigs that will be very familiar
to some of us of a certain era... |
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| A close-up of the front fascia of a B25 transceiver |
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| The internal construction is modular, to assist rapid servicing |
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Configured as a base station, with the transceiver. a 100W linear amp
and an automatic antenna tuning unit. |
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| The B25 was also configured as a manpack. |
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| No doubt about it - green radio are cool! |
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| Mil-spec construction of the innards of a B25 |
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| This handset will look familiar to some of us signalmen... |
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Rob has a growing collection of green radios, which he restores
and considers very useful for demonstrating amateur
radio to potential newcomers to the hobby. |
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| Chris ZS1CDG tries out the military headset |
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Paul ZS1Z shows us a 60 GHz point-to-point data link unit
that can send a 1 GHz-wide stream of BPSK data
to a similar unit, up to 8 km distant |
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| The cadioptric feedpoint of the business end of the 60 GHz unit |
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| Fred ZS1FZ takes a look at the cast-aluminium chassis of the microwave unit |
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Outside the clubhouse, David W5TN (visiting from Texas USA}
set up his impressive Elecraft K3, laptop and 40m loop antenna
and started making FT5 contacts straight away. |
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| Lem ZS1LEM and Fred ZS1FZ |
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Danny ZS1BL, Enzo I2VZL {visiting from Italy}
and Rob ZS1SA |
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| Enzo I2VZL, Dennis ZS1AU and Enzo's XYL |
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The man with two hats! Dennis ZS1AU proudly wear's Enzo's club cap AND his
Bouvet Island DxPedition cap. Chris ZS1CDG kindly provided Dennis
with transport home |
