2026 MDRC Hamfest Information The MDRC Annual Hamfest is held in May on a Saturday. The 2026 MDRC Hamfest will be held on Saturday 9 May.  The MDRC Hamfest is widely renowned as the Biggest Hamfest in Victoria, with a huge turnout each year. Many attendees travel great distances to attend the MDRC Annual Hamfest from Interstate and overseas. The 2026 MDRC Hamfest will be held at  The Patterson Lakes Community Centre 54-70 Thomson Road, Patterson Lakes Ticket sales from 9.00am

Our good friend and member Ian VK3KO, will be presenting at the April Monthly meeting, Famparc Contest Team. Ian will have a short Powerpoint style presentation looking at the formation of a Club Contesting Team.. For more details, come along to the meeting and join in. When: Saturday 4th April 2026. around 11:30am. Where: Famparc Club Rooms. Basic Details: Re-discover contesting and competitions at FAMPARC Expose new members and operators to the enjoyment of amateur radio co

On Saturday, July 4 the Gippsland Gate Radio & Electronics Club will be hosting a Hamfest sale. The venue is at the Longwarry Community Hall at 14 Kennedy St. Longwarry, approx 60km East of Dandenong, Vic. The venue is easy to find. It is just 3 km South of the freeway interchange, 150 metres South of the Longwarry train station and level crossing. When: Saturday July 4th 2026 Where: Longwarry Community Hall at 14 Kennedy St. Longwarry Click Here for Google Map Location.

From Ian, VK3BUF Thank you to Ian for his report. I returned this evening from 2 days at the Sandown Park Train & Hobby show.    Robert VK3LOL was present, as was Dianne VK3JDI and Wendy VK3WEN There was plenty of interest in Amateur radio with lots of brochures linked to FAMPARC taken by visitors.  We had a working RTTY station on both a laptop and the Siemens 100. There was plenty of interest from visitors and we were busy the entire weekend Peter Parker VK3YE was also pres

Click Here !! When - Wednesday March 4th from 7:30pm - QD Clubrooms and Streamed Heath VK3TWO/VK6TWO will be taking us on a tour of Meshcore. Remember Packet Radio in the 80’s well Meshcore is a modern equivalent on the 900MHz ISM band so, you don’t have to be a licenced amateur. MeshCore is developed by HAM’s, but available to all and is a decentralised text-based communications platform. It is designed to run on commodity, affordable development boards and uses LoRa radios

I'm sure you have heard that modern radios will automatically backoff their power output stage if the SWR gets "too high", due to a poor antenna match. I have occasionally wondered what a "too high" SWR actually is and by how much would the radio drop its output power? In this video I share my accidental discovery that at 2:1 SWR the Icom 7300 drops to less than half its maximum power! This is a much greater backoff than I imagined, so it caught me by surprise. High SWR backo

Hello Famparc Family, As many of you are aware, we had our yearly AGM for 2026. The meeting all went well as expected and a new Administration and Committee has been installed for 2026. This is a overview of the latest and 2026 AGM: See details here. From the Chairpersons notes and comments: Craig vk3ncr Mick vk3vh also assisted me in the running of the AGM 2026 The AGM began at 10:30am at the Famparc Club rooms. Chairperson welcomes all members to the meeting. Apologies on b

Where: EMDRC – 13a McCubbin St, Burwood Admission: FREE for buyers and ‘tyre-kickers’ When: Sunday 29th March 10am formal opening for selling Sellers: From your Car Boot (no trailers)         $10 ea Inside upstairs – per table                   $20 ea Please contact Peter VK3QI at vk3er@emdrc.com.au – click HERE for further information. Parking for sellers: from the McCubbin St access and spaces allocated on the gravel car park. This area must remain open to the public how

MESHCORE Meshcore is a fascinating evolution in the amateur radio digital space. To help your club members understand it, you can think of Meshcore as the "bridge" that makes complex mesh networking accessible to the average ham. Note: Most of this informtion is taken and supplied by: https://github.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/blob/main/docs/faq.md#11-q-what-is-meshcore What is Meshcore? MeshCore is a multi platform system for enabling secure text based communications utilisin

Remembering a Legend: The Legacy of Elwood Downey, WB0OEW S.K The amateur radio community is mourning the loss of a true innovator. Elwood Downey, WB0OEW , the brilliant mind behind the Clear Sky Institute and the creator of the ubiquitous HamClock , has passed away. For many of us, HamClock isn't just a piece of software; it’s the heartbeat of our shacks. Whether it was tracking greyline propagation, monitoring solar flux, or simply providing that iconic "tactical" aesthetic