We met for Christmas Dinner on 6 December 2017 at the Thai Country Café, 124 Main Road, Tawa, at 7pm. Some 16 members and XYLs attended. A good time was had, but some weren’t used to the more spicy tastes!
RemoteDX update at the November meeting
The November meeting, and “Remits Night” again. However, nobody had any ideas for a remit (thank goodness!).
Bernard ZL2BD ran a Powerpoint presentation of recent developments in the project, assisted by Mike ZL1AXG and Ted ZL2TB. Discussion extended to the associated amateur mesh project, with an outline of plans for a high-speed backbone connecting Mt Field, Colonial Knob, Mt Climie and Kaiwharara nodes (off-mesh) and associated peripheral links. There was also an outline of preferred site options for the remote station.
Some of us brought out our construction projects
The October meeting featured the annual Blackwood Cup. Three entries were received – one each from Bernard ZL2BD, Ted ZL2TB and Mike ZL1AXG. The trophy went to Mike ZL1AXG for his adaptations of the BITX40 transceiver. But voting was very close. Mike will be writing up his BITX40 mods on the Arduino section of this website as time allows.
The other projects included:
- a 4 way antenna switch (from Bernard ZL2BD) which was beautifully presented (the case was made with 2 aluminium channels and a ). Channel isolation was found to be around 70dB (i.e. excellent) with insertion loss in the fractions of 1dB;
- a collection of home brew single lever paddle (from Ted ZL2TB) that use magnetic latching to provide a nice key “feel”. Ted has a few for sale as well if anybody is looking for a nice non-iambic paddle.
All at Sea (Revisited) – September meeting
Our branch member, Bob ZL2AVM gave us an excellent presentation again this year on his adventures at sea. Bob returned to pick up on his journeys around the world’s oceans with more “tales from the sea” at our September meeting.