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W6SD - The San Fernando Valley Amateur Radio Club Bob Brehm, AK6R, is the Chief Engineer at Palomar Engineers, Inc., which makes antennas and RFI control devices for the ham, commercial and military markets. Bob here discusses the many advantages of non-resonant end-fed antennas.

Two Dashboards For CQ-UK YCS235 http://ycs235.xreflector.net/ycs/ CQ-UK DMR Master https://dmr.cq-uk.uk/

Isabella, pictured with her father Matthew, said her chat with an astronaut was 'amazing' An eight-year-old girl from Kent used her father's amateur radio equipment to chat to an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Isabella, from Broadstairs, spoke to American Kjell Lindgren for about 45 seconds as the ISS passed overhead. Dr Lindgren said the conversation "may be my favourite so far". Isabella said it was "amazing", adding: "Once he found out I was eight, his voice instantly turned from normal to joyful." During their chat, which he tweeted to his 67,000 followers, fellow amateur radio fan Dr Lindgren told Isabella "it's so great to chat with you, thank you for getting on the radio and saying hello". Afterwards, Isabella said she had been inspired by the encounter, saying it proved that "boys and girls can be whatever they want". Her father Matthew, who has held an amateur radio licence for more than 15 years, found out the ISS was passing overhead from fellow ham radio enthusiasts. He said: "You have to get the right time when the space station is passing overhead, and it has to be the right time of day when the astronaut is using the equipment. "I was a little bit jealous that it wasn't me talking to him. But it was amazing seeing Isabella having that contact." Kjell Lindgren described the conversation with Isabella as "may be my favourite so far" Isabella's parents said their daughter has long held an interest in space and ham radio, and they are encouraging her to apply for an amateur radio licence. Anyone who wants to operate as a radio amateur in the UK must hold a licence issued by Ofcom or qualify under international arrangements. Ofcom issues three levels of amateur radio licences - foundation, intermediate and full. To qualify for each licence, applicants must pass an exam at each corresponding level. Follow BBC South East on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk.

Thanks to Richard McKee Facebook : Baluns, ununs and Tuners. Gang, "ALL TOROIDS ARE NOT CREATED ALIKE"! Just because it's a toroid doesn't make it right for the job at hand. There are many different materials used for the many different applications. You must match the material and size of toroid to the frequency range, power level, and job you want it to perform. You can simply just pick out a "TOROID" from a bargain basement supplier and expect it to work. So, before you pay out your hard-earned cash, make sure you are getting what you need in the first place and it will save you a lot of frustration! The one pictured below is a mix 2, powdered iron core for example - not a ferrite core. But I see folks all the time trying to make baluns, ununs, chokes, and transformers with them, only to find out it doesn't work like they thought it should. Powdered iron cores are fine for use as inductors in tuned circuits such as low pass filters and such, but not for the reasons mentioned above - at least not for HF purposes. Anyway, do some research, ask questions, and research some more before buying toroid's and do it right the first time.

FAMPARC invited RASA (Radio Amateur Society of Australia) team to update their activities. Ian Jackson VK3BUF, Admin Secretary and Chris Chapman VK3QB will present their current and future activities plan on 27th August starting at 10.30am. Update: Peter VK3DEL will be also running a club BBQ after the meeting, so please hang around for a good feed. RASA has been focusing solely on improving Amateur Radio hobby by conducting evidence based research to lobby the Regulator for better privileges, providing information to help Amateurs better understand the regulatory environment. RASA also promote new and emerging technologies and encourage Amateurs to become more active. RASA has been working to address issues that impact the majority of amateurs in Australia. Their major project in 2019 was a free online resource to help amateurs deal with QRM, check QRM guru to see more useful information. Don’t miss this opportunity to listen to them and also provide your feedbacks for the future of our hobby. 73’s Mani, VK3IR President FAMPARC When: 27th Aug. 2022 Time: 10:30am Where: Famparc Club Rooms To visit the RASA Website Click Here

The new edition Foundation Licence Manual has landed in the WIA's store. This 4th edition has been totally updated and now includes an introduction to AC theory, capacitors inductors and resonance, digital techniques and ADC/DAC's, decibells, and SDR radios. Like previous editions, it is intended both as a study guide for obtaining a Foundation grade licence, and as a basic introduction to wireless technology. I hope you like it. All comments, suggestions, and brickbats, greatfully received. Click here for further details

Hello.. You may recall that I mentioned a while back that I would like to do a Promo for the club on the WIA Weekly News Bulletin Broadcast. Well.. The other day I produced document outlining recent changes to our club etc. I had a go at recoding it myself, but after listening to my bogan commentary, I decided to contact a old friend of mine who I keep in contact with on a regular basis. The chap is also a Ham, VK4BAT Trevor, he has a golden voice to say the least, he is also a Joc for a Sunshine Coast Radio Station, 4GY. He also does Voice Overs and I have used him for the place I worked at.. Anyway, Trevor was happy to do the voice over for us, as the grab only goes for around 90 seconds or so. After receiving the file, I forward it to the WIA. The reply from the WIA, was that there is a good chance that the Grab will be included in this weekends Broadcast. So listen out for it. Below is the file if you wish to listen to it. I hope it meets all approvals from our Members. Cheers. Craig vk3ncr

Last Tuesday night we had a good turnout on our Repeater VK3RMC… Thanks to Bill VK3MMM for running the net and all the FAMPARC members that joined in.. We would like to see all members join in on this great net. Don’t forget to use this repeater as much as you want as it’s not only a good meeting place for our weekly net.. but anytime any day.. so get on and have a chat to a another FAMPARC member. If you are having trouble setting up you radio.. feel free to bring it to the club on Saturday or Wednesday and I’m sure someone will be able to set it up for you. Our thanks to the Moorabbin & District Radio Club Inc for the use of the repeater.. Hope to see you at the club… and enjoy our new 50” tv and a new seating layout and shortly our new couch and comfy seats.. Get involved! Cheers Craig VK3NCR

Hi Members, We have been very lucky to have had a lifelong member run our Tuesday night nets. Bill VK3MMM has been in the hot seat for many years. I cannot remember a time when he has not been at his radio at 8.00pm on 146.425. Whilst local members have no issue with joining the net. Other members who live further away report they cannot hear the net. A recent discussion at the club regarding the use of a local two metre repeater resulted in. Mr Ken Millis who is the secretary of the Moorabbin & District Radio Club offered their two meter repeater VK3RMC to Famparc to run our Tuesday night net. We are most grateful to their club for this very kind offer. Bill's radio has been set up, and found to fully quiet the repeater. Next Tuesday 12th July at 8.00 pm Bill will open the net through the repeater. Members will require to tune their radio as follows 147.325 up 147.925 and include a tone of 91.5 Please be aware the Moorabbin radio club holds their net meetings on a Wednesday. Please avoid disturbing their meetings, or you are most welcome to join in for a chat. As one Famparc member suggested, perhaps we could all monitor this repeater at other times. Repeater Details: Aprox. Location: Narre Warren Vic. Output Freq. 147.325 Input Freq. 147.925 Repeater Tone: 91.5 Grid Location: QF21PX Please do your best to join our clubs net each Tuesday at 8pm via the repeater.. At least make the effort to check in and check out if you are pushed for time. Enjoy what your club has to offer.. FAMPARC Don't forget our For Sale section on our Forum !

UPDATE REMINDER When: Friday August 19th at 7.30 pm. Where: Bendigo East Hall, 35 Lansell St. Contact: Graeme, 5441 5461. Official Launch of the BAREC Field Operations Group - Friday August 19th at 7.30 pm. Bendigo Amateur Radio & Electronics Club invites you to our August meeting - theOfficial Launch of the BAREC Field Operations Group, presented by Neil VK3ZVX. This Special Interest Group will focus on BAREC's contribution to Community Support during a regional emergency. Its mission is to Plan, Prepare, and Train for the inevitable. As an Amateur Radio Club, this is the most important work we can do. The first step in this process will be a Show-and-Tell night with a focus on Field Operations (SOTA, Mills-On-The-Air, Parks Activations etc). So if you have:- a Go-Kit, - a good box for a Go-Kit - a Squid Pole antenna of any sort, - a favourite Wire Antenna, - a portable Antenna Mount, - a Shack-in-a-Box, - a Shack-in-a-Sack, - QRP rigs, - Batteries, - Battery boxes, - Portable/camping Solar Panels, - a Pedal Radio setup, - Portable Logging Hardware / Software, - a Compact ATU, - something that you think is worth demonstrating - e.g. WinLink, Digital Mode - or anything else which might help you to operate away from home and without mains power, - even if it is only a half-baked idea, a half-built project, or a pile-of-bits for one ...BRING IT ALONG... (...and be prepared to explain it if need be...) What matters is that we get the widest possible range of ideas and inspirations. This will enable us to design BAREC's Go-Kits with the cleverest solutions from our combined experience and skills. Our Hall is well heated now, but with covid numbers rising again we encourage everyone to make their own best decision about attending. Masks, hand hygiene, and social distancing will apply for everyone's well-being. The presentation commences at 7.30 pm, Friday August 19th at BAREC Headquarters, Bendigo East Hall, 35 Lansell St. A gold coin donation would be appreciated, and a light supper will be provided. For more information, contact Graeme on 5441 5461. The presentation will also be made available after the event on the BAREC YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyg-RkGPc5yn5Mgp0gVJIrA

Photo Friday: Harlow & District Amateur Radio Society (HADARS) recently ran a Radio Masterclass for Year 7 pupils at Robert Barclay Academy, Hoddesdon. The young people experienced morse, satellite, voice and data communication, as well as successfully building their own one chip, digital FM radio. Altogether over fifty confirmed QSOs were made using VHF, HF and data modes. Each pupil was presented with a certificate of achievement for completing all the activities, as well a printed QSL card for the special event call used on the day (GB0RBA).

Foundations of Amateur Radio The microphone gain game ... One of the most misunderstood settings on your radio is the microphone gain. You'll often hear people talking about adjusting it up or down depending on what they hear and the results are often displeasing to the ear. The very first thing to know is that the microphone gain is likely the single most audible setting on your radio, right after the tuning frequency. It's pretty much the first variable between your voice and your transmitter. Set it too low and you'll hear nothing, set it too high and you'll hear gibberish. I said it's pretty much the first thing, but it's not the very first. That's your voice, unique in all its glory, loud, soft, happy, sad, funny or not, it's the thing that your microphone captures to transmit. Closely coupled to your voice is the distance between your mouth and your mike. The closer you are, the louder, the further, the softer and the more background noise creeps in. As an aside, speaking of noise, there's background noise at play, but there's also the noise that comes from the audio circuitry itself, which can for example change depending on the temperature of your radio. I'm going to refer to both as noise here, even though they're slightly different. So, starting with the ideal model where you always speak in the same way, at the same volume, at the same distance from the microphone, with a constant temperature in your radio, at all times, the next thing is the microphone gain, or gain. Gain is an imperfect attempt at corralling your utterings into electrical signals without causing the audio circuit to distort or drown in noise. Distortion comes as a result of overloading of the audio circuit when the gain is too high, causing clipping, which essentially changes the audio waveform into something that no longer resembles your voice. At the low end of the gain range there is no difference between audio and noise which results in your voice being buried inside a hissing noise. You might wonder why we don't just build transmitters that cannot clip and increase your volume. Well, we do. We use things like AGC, or Automatic Gain Control to attempt to prevent such things from happening, but this isn't perfect. All this results in the microphone gain being a setting that you need to tune to your voice and adjust as things change. Overall, the best outcome is when you set the gain so the AGC just engages when you talk normally. This gain setting also applies to computer generated signals, often fed into your radio via an audio or microphone input. If you set the gain too low, noise is the problem, set it too high and the Automatic Gain Control will distort the signal to the point where it no longer works and causes interference for everyone else including the station that you're trying to contact. On older radios the output power was fixed. This is also true for Software Defined Radios. To reduce output power, you can change the microphone gain down and reduce the power. Change it to halfway and your output power is essentially reduced to half power. This works for a range of settings, but get too low and we're back to noise and audio fighting each other. The opposite isn't true. You cannot increase the microphone gain to increase power. The moment you exceed the audio circuit range your signal is distorted. On an SDR this means that you're exceeding the ability of the Analogue to Digital converter to represent your audio. In digital terms, zero means no sound and all on means 100%. If your audio is so loud as to only be 100% on, that's like sending a tone out the transmitter, resembling anything but your voice. All of what I've talked about is related to SSB signals and to some extent AM. FM is a different animal entirely. For starters, output power on FM is fixed. The next difference is the signal or channel width. Without going into full detail, FM comes in different widths, WFM or Wideband FM, NFM, or Narrowband FM, and between the two, "normal" FM. To make things more fun, not everyone agrees on what each one means at any given time. Also, channel width and channel spacing are not the same thing, but that's for another day. Gain aside for a moment, consider two matched FM radios using the same channel width. Your voice volume is determined by how much of the channel you use. Louder means wider, softer means narrower. Adjust the gain up, the signal gets wider, but the limit of the channel width remains, get too high and it clips at the channel width and distorts. At the other end, changing the gain down, you'll use less of the channel width and eventually the noise and your voice will be at the same level and you won't be heard. Let's look at what happens when you use a normal FM signal to transmit to a narrowband FM receiver. Essentially your signal is too wide and the result is that your voice will be clipped unless you speak really softly or if you've set the gain really low, either way comes with more noise. Similarly, if you transmit a narrowband FM signal to a normal FM receiver, then your voice will be very low, regardless of the microphone gain setting and turning it up will only distort it due to clipping inside your transmitter. So, for FM, before fiddling with the gain, make sure that you're using the same FM mode as the other station. One thing to remember is when you use a repeater, if the audio is always too loud for everyone, your mode is probably too narrow. Similarly, if the audio is always too soft and you always need to turn up the volume on your radio, your mode is likely too wide. Check your radio specifications to determine what each mode means. In broadcast audio this whole thing is managed by calibration using standard tones, but as amateurs we tend to rely on other people reporting their feelings on the quality of your voice with the often heard admonishment to adjust the microphone gain. I'm Onno VK6FLAB • This article is the transcript of the weekly 'Foundations of Amateur Radio' podcast, produced by Onno Benschop, VK6FLAB who was licensed as radio amateur in Perth, Western Australia in 2010. For other episodes, visit http://vk6flab.com/. Feel free to get in touch directly via email: cq@vk6flab.com • If you'd like to join a weekly radio net for new and returning amateurs, check out the details at http://ftroop.vk6flab.com/, the net runs every week on Saturday, from 00:00 to 01:00 UTC on Echolink, IRLP, AllStar Link, Brandmeister and 2m FM via various repeaters, all are welcome. Thanks to :