Breakout 2016 – 04 April

BREAKOUT

The Newsletter of the Hastings and Napier Amateur Radio Clubs

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier 25 NZART
Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

Hastings Br [Branch] 13 Club Calls
ZL2AS
ZL2QS

Napier Br 25 Club Calls
ZL2GT
ZL2G

IRLP Node
6793
147.250

Branch Nets
9.00 AM
Sunday Morning
3615 kHz
439.175 MHz

Editor
John Newson
ZL2VAF

http://www.zl2gt.nz/   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zl2as/

Inside This Issue
Hastings Branch 13 Report   Page 2
Napier Branch 25 Report   Page 3
Living History (nostalgia trip)   Page 4
RAF Field Day   Page 6
Software Defined Radio   Page 7
For Sale   Page 7
Last Visitor   Page 7
DC Award for AREC   Page 8
Another side to Emilia-Ramagna   Page 8

KIWI
ZL
DX GROUP

Photo caption – Errol Lilley (ZL2IT) beside the ‘670 repeater. “His” aerial filter(s) can be seen at the bottom of the rack – more in the “Living History” Article inside

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 2   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

HASTINGS BRANCH 13

President:   Rob Leicester ZL2US   Ph 8786381
Secretary:   David Walker ZL2DW   Ph 8760518,   email [email protected]
Treasurer:   Peter Keong ZL2PW   Ph 8774529   email: [email protected]
AREC/CD   John Newson ZL2VAF   Ph 876 0370   email: [email protected]
AREC Deputy:   Robert Wallace ZL2SG   Ph 878 4993   email [email protected]

Committee
Jan Suldovsky ZL2CZE   Ph 021 833 487   email [email protected]
Rob Shepherd ZL2AN   Ph 8440109    email [email protected]
Bert Cunningham ZL2OC   Ph 8448549   email [email protected]
David Sullivan ZL2OK   Ph 06 8578853 wk   email: [email protected]

Hastings QSL Distribution:   Wally Shuker ZL2MO   Ph 8435497   email [email protected]
Magazine Editor:   John Newson ZL2VAF   Ph. 027 230 3642   email [email protected]

NZART License Examiners:   Peter – ZL2LF
Club Call:   ZL2AS and ZL2QS

Club Nights: Fourth Wednesday each month at 7.30 pm Pakowhai Hall, Pakowhai Road, Pakowhai

From THE COMMANDER (retired)

Yes I’ve sold my business hence the “retired” addition above hi hi. I have been lending the new owner a hand on and off and of course that involvement with decrease as time goes on… leaving me more time to get the sheds cleaned out at home ready to fill up with… nothing.

The end of a 16 year involvement… the end of another activity in my life. So for me now every day is a Friday hi hi.

So has this translated to more time on amateur radio… no I haven’t settled into that action yet, in fact I haven’t been active on the radio for a while now… obviously I’ve been pre occupied elsewhere……maybe letting my brain drift away regarding some travel plans for Sue and I some time in the future.

Last weekend I water blasted my boat and that is now spic and span and ready for sale… anyone want to buy a boat ?

Ah, life and contents are changing.

I enjoyed the Ham Fest [Festival] provided by Br 25 on 9 April, thanks guys. It certainly showed that the hobby has some “bright people” out there.

I was also pleased to see a young lady (a ham) in attendance, that was particularly pleasing.

At our next Br [Branch]13 meeting at Pakowhai Hall on 27 April, Ross ZL2WRW will give us a talk on “Software Defined Radio”, this should get our “grey matter” working. (Ross started out with us a High School boy ham and has gone on to get an Electrical Degree… always nice to see, well done Ross), I look forward to seeing you all there.

73, Rob (ZL2US) (Br 13/HBARC, Hastings, President).

Branch 13/HBARC Officers
(left to right)
David Walker (ZL2DW, Secretary),
Rob Leicester (ZL2US, President),
Peter Keong (ZL2PW, Treasurer,

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 3   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

NAPIER BRANCH 25

President:   Wally Shuker ZL2MO   843 5497   email [email protected]
Secretary:   Karl Matthys ZL1TJ   8454372   email [email protected]
Treasurer:   Stan White ZL2ST   845 2422   email [email protected]
AREC:   Mike Bull ZL2VM   843 6052   email [email protected]

Committee:
Michael Mullins ZL2MY   843 4210   email [email protected]
Dave ZL2MQ,   0212428959   email [email protected]
Revell Troy ZL2SS   0210742837   email [email protected]
Peter Breen ZL2CD   0274721527   email [email protected]

Committee Meetings:   7:30 pm, 3rd Tuesday of January, March, May, July, September, November
Club Calls:   ZL2GT, ZL2G
Club Web Site:   http://www.zl2gt.nz/

Club Nights:   First Wednesday each month (except January) 7.30pm at the Club Rooms:   123 Latham Street Napier

Branch 25

Well that’s another month gone.

Sitting here on a lovely Autumn morning trying to think what to write.

April was a great month, we had our HAM FEST which was a great success.

I would like to thank all those who attended, hope you all had a good day and got to learn something.

A special thanks to Laurie ZL2TC for getting it off the ground and the others that helped with the event.

Also a special thanks to all the speakers who contributed on the day.

Thanks to HB Cricket Club and to Rose for keeping us well fed and watered.

On a different note nothing but a rumour at the moment but there is a group of 10 Europeans, and Americans ops who believe they can activate a full scale DX pedition inside DPRK (North Korean) in the month of May.

It seems that ARRL has approved Dom 3Z9DX’s trip to P5.

If you hear CY9SPI its a pirate station.

IA5J Giglio Island activation from 25th April 2016, all HF bands 6m CW.SSB.DIGI
MODES ON.
JT6M
JT9A
ISCAT
JTMSK
JT65A
QSL via IU3BXI
OQRS
plus 6m EME activation

Cheers that’s all for this month ZL2MO Branch 25

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 4   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

LIVING HISTORY (nostalgia trip)

November 1961 saw two young fellows site testing for a future Post Office radio link to supply a multi channel telephone service. One at Kahuranaki HB (Errol Liley) and the other at Mahanga, just inland from the Mahia Peninsula (Peter Mulhare, also celebrating his 21st birthday while on site). In those days Kahuranaki was a “green field” with the new building and “48 channel” telephone link equipment coming to the site in 1962. This same year saw VHF Land Mobile Radio repeaters established on site also. In latter years Michael Bull was involved with site equipment installation at Kahuranaki.

(Kahuranaki is 17km’s south of Hastings at 2224 ft asl, with a very panoramic view of Hawkes Bay and beyond).

Eventually all three went on to become Ham Radio operators, Errol ZL2IT, Peter ZL2IK and Michael ZL2VM, all are still “practicing hams” today.

It took fifty five years but Peter finally got to see the “other end” of the link that he was testing… on 7 April 2016. A nostalgia trip was made by the above three technicians, accompanied by David Walker ZL2DW, to Kahuranaki HB. It was great to hear the guys talking about their Post Office days and the tribulations they went through to establish part of New Zealand’s telecommunications infrastructure.

Naturally some “hi-jinx” were part of events of the time… but we won’t talk about them.

The “48 Channel” equipment installed at Kahuranaki and made operative was, for the record, part of a network between North Range Road (above the Manawatu Gorge), Awatoto (near Napier town), Mahanga (near Mahia) and Kaiti Hill (Gisborne), using frequencies of 70.6, 80.5, 171.2 and 166.7 mhz and apparently some at UHF as well.

Much roaming of the site was had and memories put into top gear to locate old VHF Rhombic aerial mast positions etc. The piles for the old original TV translator site were visible and Errol was able to give a description of that gear (and it’s Rhombic aerial).

A tour of the two buildings on site was again a historical revelation and they noted much change of equipment and the much smaller size of the new equipment. Of particular note was that the original cavity filter(s) module (built in 1976 by Errol ZL2IT) for the amateur 2m repeater, ‘670, was still in place and doing an excellent job.

I might add that these guys are not the only ones amongst us that are “Living History” related to local electronics/communications technology.

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABuZIVYKcCp5BNU&cid=F4CFDF51FA6C699

(video clip of/from Kahuranaki HB, video and narration by Michael Bull ZL2VM)

(Written by David Walker ZL2DW)

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 5   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

Mike Bull (ZL2VM), Peter Mulhare (ZL2IK) and Errol Lilley (ZL2IT) standing amongst the old “48 channel” aerial mounts.

Michael Bull (ZL2VM), Peter Mulhare (ZL2IK) and Errol Lilley (ZL2IT) standing in front of the modern VHF LMR radio rack

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 6   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

The RNZAF has it’s own HF Field Day… with a few differences

Ex Noble Skywave

AC Brian Jamieson

LAC Jeremy Martin and AC Adam Burden

Exercise Noble Skywave

By CPL Vanisha Patel

Exercise Noble Skywave is an International High Frequency radio communications competition conducted annually, sponsored by the Communication and Electronics (C&E) Branch and hosted by 21 Electronic Warfare Regiment, Canadian Armed forces. The competition encourages friendly competition between Canadian Armed Forces units and Allied partners. This year invitations were extended to Australia and new Zealand, and Communication Information Systems Flight (CISF) jumped at the chance.

All regular and reserve units, bases, wings and ships with High Frequency (HF) capability were invited to the party and boy did we. Participants came from all over the world including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and the US. New Zealand participants included two teams from the RNZAF [Royal New Zealand Airforce] CISF. The exercise covered a 36 hour period starting at 9pm on October 21 and finishing at 9am on October 23. CISF teams were made up of three person dets on rotating shifts, including the Air Operation Communications Centre (AOCC) Our teams got to experience night time HF in the comfort of two 14 x 14 tents located on the far side of the Whenuapai Airfield and the AOCC.

Our deployed antenna base was made up mainly of our common operational antennas, including such classics as the Half-Wave Dipole, Delta, 32 Whip and Sloping Vee. Each antenna has its own list of attributes that we needed to consider at different times of the day,as well as for each different distant station. However, we got a bit more adventurous and tried a couple of more long-distant antennas, such as a two-waved length Long Wire and a mighty Rhombic that covered almost 100 metres in length. These bad boys are needed to operate up to 15,000km! All in all, you’re looking at over 570m of radiating elements operating on a 400 watt radio system. The AOCC operated on a powerful 1000 watt radio system and directional hard standing antenna, the Linear Periodic Array.

The competition had multiple stages: establishing communications using Automatic Link Establish technology, and a free play use everything available phase. With such vast distances, engineering the multiple circuits in real time could have been a serious issue. We covered this by using KU satellite communications to maintain a deployable internet network, which allowed us to have a constant connection with the other teams through an on-line chat forum. Changing frequency and trying to establish communications has never been easier, except when it didn’t work!

Overall the exercise was a great success, in the competition we came in 30th out of 82 participants. Both the AOCC and the deployed team were able to reach distances to our allies of up to 15,000km to Canada and 19,000km to the UK along with talking to stations from all locations. We were looking forward to next year’s competition.

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 7   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO

My presentation (at the Branch 13 27 April meeting) is an introduction to the extreme flexibility of the software aspect of Software Defined Radio – much of the complexity of a radio is moved out of the hardware and into software, where it is very easy to make changes. I am assuming the the audience has prior knowledge of the basics of oscillators, mixers, filters etc.

Attached is a screen shot of “GNU Radio Companion”, showing part of a “flow graph” and a couple of frequency spectra. The receive hardware is a “HackRF one”, and the flow graph which is executing is a crude FM stereo receiver. The lower spectrum plot is of the entire FM broadcast band, which is sampled in real time! The upper spectrum is the baseband of the station that is currently tuned – if you look closely at the baseband spectrum, you can see the mono audio (L+R) from 0 to 15 kHz, the stereo MPX pilot tone at 19 kHz, and the double side band suppressed carrier stereo difference signal (L-R) centred around 38 kHz.

HackRF Initial Review

http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/GNURadioCompanion
http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/GNURadioCompanion

Ross Whenmouth (ZL2WRW) <[email protected]>

FOR SALE
Mosley 3 element tri-band yagi, 20/15/10 metres.
Contact ZL2TC for further details. 06 843-8519, or [email protected]

LAST VISITOR
At the last Branch 13 meeting, in March, Ivan Horn ZL2ATU gave us a presentation wearing three hats.

1 – telling us about the “Old Timers Club” and what the history and membership requirements were.
2 – regarding the Wanganui Award and what was required to achieve one
3 – giving us a back ground to the QSL activity he deals with and then an impromptu “Money or the Bag” by Ivan and xyl Pat was given… using Farads or Ohms in lieu of money in the “offering”.

Coming from Germany and being a comparative youngster I think Holger (ZL2IO) was a bit lost by the proceedings however he went away with “The Bag” and seemed pretty happy about it all. Certainly a bit of nostalgia for us older ones though, Selwyn Toogood would have been impressed hi hi.

Many thanks for your contribution to our meeting Ivan and Pat, it went down well.

Hastings Branch 13 NZART – Napier Branch 25 NZART   Page 8   Volume 16, Issue 4 April 2016

Hastings City Council CD award for AREC

AREC received this award last week from the council for services to CD. Five AREC personnel attend the CD HQ each Wednesday morning and do radio checks to the CD posts around the District. We are open to more people being involved in these checks if available.

The Emergency Management Officer, Alan Daly, has requested the names, phone numbers and address of those hams willing to be involved in supplying communications when there is an emergency event. At this time the intention would be to get a report from the ham’s QTH on the event. It would also probably be appropriate for us to supply information of those of us with 4 wheel drive vehicles who wish to provide mobile communications as required

If anyone is interested please contact John ZL2VAF 027 230 3642 or [email protected]

Discovering Another Side To Emilia-Romagna

Italy is a country full of history wherever you go. Even places little known to the masses have been witness to important historical events and now proudly guard that history. Case in point: driving approximately 20 minutes south-west of Bologna, the main town in Emilia-Romagna, will take you to Villa Griffone, in Pontecchio Marconi. Few people would know where that is, yet the building, now a museum, was for many years the home of radio pioneer and Nobel prize winner Guglielmo Marconi.

http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/discovering-another-side-emilia-romagna