Sunday 27 January 2019

CTARC Photos of January Meeting - 26 Jan '19

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].

Before the meeting, a great opportunity to catch up on the skinner


Chairman Rob ZS1SA reports on the recent Committee Meeting,
welcomes new guests and informs us of progress at the
mornings antenna work party.

Rob kicks off the Show and Tell session by showing us his
fine tape-measure VHF DF antenna

Detail of the antenna
Detail of the antenna

Detail of the antenna

Rob also showed us his nifty DF attenuator,
made from a BNC plug and co-ax adaptor

Keverne ZS1ABU assembles his AMSATSA dual-band VHF/UHF
satellite antenna

This antenna is very portable and lightweight, and available from AMSATSA
for a very reasonable sum.

Mike ZS1FP demos his coax stripper tool, which he
kindly donated to the CTARC after his demo.

Mike also showed us his Snap-On coax cutter,

Nick ZS1ZD showed us his cheap Chinese portable receiver,
which is proving very useful for hunting down RFI problems in the shack

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

Close-up of Chris's unit.

Rob ZS1RDM showed us some military rigs that will be very familiar
to some of us of a certain era...

A close-up of the front fascia of a B25 transceiver

The internal construction is modular, to assist rapid servicing

Configured as a base station, with the transceiver. a 100W linear amp
and an automatic antenna tuning unit.

The B25 was also configured as a manpack.

No doubt about it - green radio are cool!

Mil-spec construction of the innards of a B25


This handset will look familiar to some of us signalmen...

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.

Chris ZS1CDG tries out the military headset

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

The cadioptric feedpoint of the business end of the 60 GHz unit

Fred ZS1FZ takes a look at the cast-aluminium chassis of the microwave unit

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.



Lem ZS1LEM and Fred ZS1FZ

Danny ZS1BL, Enzo I2VZL {visiting from Italy}
and Rob ZS1SA


Enzo I2VZL, Dennis ZS1AU and Enzo's XYL

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