CTARC Forthcoming Meeting - 22 May '21

All being well, the CTARC plans to hold another monthly meeting, on Saturday, 22nd May, at the CTARC clubhouse. It will probably take place outside the clubhouse. Let's hope the weather is kind to us!

Our speaker will be Lem ZS1LEM, who will be talking about Satellites and working them on the ham bands.

The Radio Amateurs Examination and HF Assessments will also be taking place at this venue.

Further information will be made available in due course before the date.

CTARC Forthcoming March Meeting Postponed - 28 Mar '20

Following a considered decision by the CTARC Committee, the planned members' meeting for Saturday 28 March 2020 at the clubhouse at 14h00 has been POSTPONED. We apologise for the last-minute decision.

It is believed that the rapidly spreading Coronavirus is reaching the stage where it would be too risky for many of our members, many of whom are in the "target zone" age profile, to attend the meeting in the closely-packed clubhouse.

Also, large gatherings are now a potential risk too.

When the meeting does indeed take place, Lem ZS1LEM will do a presentation on Satellites and the equipment radio amateurs use to work them. It promises to be very interesting.

Further details will be published via the usual channels presently.

CTARC Homebrew VHF/UHF Moxon Antenna - Oct '19

Here is a link to what looks like a most interesting VHF/UHF Moxon Satellite beam antenna, described by PY4ZBZ:

https://www.qsl.net/py4zbz/antenas/ms.htm

The web page is not in English, however the dimensions are construction are straightforward and should be easily interpreted.

OM Lem ZS1LEM  built the version with 5 UHF elements and 2 VHF elements.

The components include:

• 3.2 mm aluminum welding rods are available from any welding supplier (Afrox etc).
• A piece of PVC pipe;
• A 3.2mm drill bit,
• A piece of RG-58 coax, and
• A coax plug.

It looks like an easy build.

Many thanks to OM Lem ZS1LEM for passing on the link, and obrigado to PY4ZBZ and PQ2HX for publishing the information online.

Photo copyright Hermes PQ2HX

Report-back on Repeater Work Party of 21 Mar '19

On the public holiday of  Thursday 21 March 2019 several CTARC members gathered at the club’s repeater site to form a work party to repair the UHF repeater and mount the UHF antenna onto I.R. Pope’s new tower. The UHF antenna has been mounted on the wall of the repeater building below roof level since the previous tower had blown down in the major storm of June 2016.

The back-up batteries were cleaned and a spare cable was identified and readied to be installed up the tower leg to mount the UHF antenna underneath our existing VHF antenna. Upon inspection, Paul ZS1S discovered that the cable connecting our VHF antenna to its antenna had never been waterproofed! Paul checked the connection and installed the waterproofing. Unfortunately, before he could install the UHF antenna, the wind picked up making further tower work unsafe and he had to come down.

While we were there we also checked the SWR on the VHF antenna and found it to be extremely high. Using his antenna analyser, Peter ZS1PGC discovered there was a very bad connection within the repeater building. Upon inspection we found a badly corroded connection and repaired it. The SWR was now excellent and the repeater works much better than before.

I would like to thank Lem ZS1LEM, Paul ZS1S, Dave ZS1SG, Peter ZS1PGC and Keverne ZS1ABU for coming up the hill and assisting that day. We still need to get our UHF antenna up on the tower and planning is in progress for that.

Addendum:

Following on from this work party, this yesterday Mike ZS1TAF, Peter ZS1PGC and Paul ZS1F put our UHF antenna back on the repeater tower and it is now working fantastically. Now that our Force 12 beam, the new rotatable 40-metre dipole and the tower at the club have all be repaired, all of our equipment is back in perfect working order. What a relief! No more freak June storms please...

Rob ZS1SA



 

 

CTARC National Field Day - 9/10 Feb '19

Members of the Cape Town Amateur Radio Centre set up a solar- and battery-powered field day radio station outside the clubhouse for the SARL National Field Day Event, which took place on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th February 2019.

The Field Day's traditional purpose is to give radio amateurs the opportunity to rehearse their emergency preparedness for comms operation in the face of a disaster or weather emergency, where adequate mains power and conventional fixed antennas would potentially be unavailable.

Danny, ZS1BL, Lem ZS1LEM, James (no call sign) and Chris ZS1CDG had a very windy day out in the field. Several different antennas were tried out but the gods of propagation where not on our side. We did make several contacts however and it was a lot of fun.

Thanks to Chris ZS1CDG for the photos below: