Table sales coming up:
Saturday 7 November, 9am:
Kapiti Branch 69 Clubrooms
Saturday 21 November, 9am:
Wellington Power Boat Club, Titahi Bay
October Mesh Special Interest Group
The third in a series of Broadband-Hamnet (Mesh) SIG meetings was held at the Tawa Community Centre on Thursday 22 October at 7.30pm. A slightly smaller group turned up, due to proximity to Labour Weekend and hte.
John ZL2HD provided an introduction to how to get a node working when it didn’t seem to be responding to your computer.
Mike ZL1AXG provided an update on the mesh coordinating group meeting earlier in the week, and mesh developments.
October Meeting: Blackwood Cup
It was Blackwood Cup time again on Wednesday 21 October. Four members brought along home brew projects they had completed over the last 12 months and gave a brief talk on them. John ZL2HD somewhat surprised himself by winning the competition, and taking away the cup. Of course the winner gets to go and get the engraving put on the cup base!
John’s construction was a clock inspired by a clock he acquired from the estate of the late Bill Hamer ZL2CD. However, this one is controlled within microseconds of the real atomic time and sources its time via an arduino and a GPS chip. In a sign of the times, most of the project time was spent in writing the Arduino “sketch” or program that controls the clock. Well done John!
The runner up in the competition was Col ZL2COL who produced a rugged lightweight box for his FT857, power supply, tuner and other bits and pieces, including a swivel out light for the portable shack! This was put to the test on the South Coast at Karori Rock Lighthouse in the International Lighthouse Contest.
Other entries included James ZL2ET application of a Raspberry Pi to a miniature transmitter deployed on WSPR service. Don’t know what that is? Then come along to the February meeting to receive a full explanation and to see it demonstrated!
Ted ZL2TB showed us a very well constructed home brew interface between his rig and the sound card in his computer. No RF in the computer with that one!
The fact that we are still getting a muster of entrants every year means Wellington branch members and still doing some home construction!
WARC expands mesh to Mt Climie thanks to Upper Hutt Br 63
James ZL2ET, Doug ZL2AOV, Ted Zl2TB and Mike ZL1AXG were up on Mt Climie on Saturday 26 September at the invitation of Branch 63. We installed a temporary 20dBi Airgrid M2 at the site pointing towards Colonial Knob.
We were somewhat surprised to find that the radio lock in (at least intermittently) with the tell-tale red light showing on the Airgrid.
However, we had issues in connecting a PC at the “shack” end. The cold and sleet meant we didn’t pursue this any further when we had trouble removing the Airgrid from its extension shaft.
On arrival back in Wellington it became clear that the Airgrid was actually connecting intermittently with the Ngaio node. This had not been anticipated or we would have aimed the dish in a slightly different direction!
It is hoped to install an Airgrid soon at Colonial Knob to connect more reliably with Mt Climie.