MANLY-WARRINGAH RADIO SOCIETY Quarterly Newsletter EMAIL EDITION UP THE STICK - JUNE 1988 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Wednesday, 8 July. Seems early in the month but July 8th is actually the second Wednesday in July, (July, this year, having five Wednesdays). The AGM is held in the big room with ample tea and biscuits &c. To date we have 47 paid-up membe rs, 24 of whom have Email. PRESIDENT'S FAREWELL As I write this, my term as President of the Manly Warringah Radio Society is drawing to a close. Our Constitution dictates that a President can only serve a maximum of two years, so at the July AGM the honour of President will be handed over to a new person. I would like to take this opportunity to formally thank all members in general, and the committee in particular, for the help and support to me in my capacity as President over the past two years. Rather than the traditional President's Farewell to recapitulate on the successes, advances and changing state of the Society over the last couple of years (and there certainly have been some advances!), I thought that I would instead reflect on what actually characterises the success of our Society. It is the nature of the individual members which determine the character and direction of any organisation or society. At the risk of sounding maudlin, I must record that I am honestly very proud to be associated with the MWRS. From my perception, there are two major areas which set us above most other organisations; firstly, we are free of any of the petty politics and extended egos which ultimately (I am sad to observe) are the destructive forces behind many other volunteer organisations. Secondly, it is the willingness by all members to "roll up the sleeves" and help the Society (and ultimately each other). Our greatest asset is the diverse skillset our membership composes, and I am humbled by the selflessness displayed by you (the members) towards assisting each other, the community, and this Society. All too often it is found that only a few key people are the driving force behind a given organisation, with the rest of the membership composed of "talkers" (or worse still, "knockers"). Not so with the MWRS! So whether it is assisting in a community communications exercise, JOTA etc; volunteering to serve on the committee; helping a fellow member practice CW; providing technical advice and support to others; assisting on a working bee; sourcing hardware/software for a Society project; refurbishing, constructing or erecting antennas; providing a lecture; etc, etc, there are always volunteers, and not just the same old faces over again! This signifies a vigorous and healthy Society, and is a good indicator for a long and sound future. You must all accept my sincere thanks for making the Society what it is today. I would like to finish off with a final personal thought; when I look around on any Wednesday night at the Society's meetings what do I see? I see people having FUN! And isn't this what Amateur Radio is all about?! Thank you ALL again for your assistance over the past couple of years, and I wish all my best to the incoming President, and to the new committee . BCNU.Tim Jensen VK2ETJ NEW MEMBERS A VERY WARM WELCOME to Bernd Langer, VK2IA, of Balmain; Greg Roberts of Newport; and Bob Tomkins, VK2DOG, of Harboard, who all joined during the last quarter. Bernt has already awed us with a spectacular contest performance in which he logged over a thousand QSOs in 30 hours, and hopefully will be able to tell us something about contest skills in the July lecture, Greg is studying for his ticket and Bob is the proprietor of Peninsula Homebrewing Supplies (Harbord Village Centre) and his XYL is VK2AA. For the August lecture Bob's going to talk to us about beer in all its facets. Good to have you all aboard. ACTIVITIES Dominic (VK2YAK) and Tim (VK2ETJ) have been busy trying the fathom out our 2-metre problem - not the ragged propagation pattern one but the "now -we-have-it-now-we-don't" one. They've realigned the cavities, clim bed up the mast, renewed this, burnished that but still the dreaded greml in lurks. Phil (VK2BDF) is joining in now with his elegant test equipment but the results won't be known now until after UTS has gone to press. Yves (VK2AUJ), Dominic (VK2YAT) and Connie (VK2CON have met with the Nort h Side Cross Country Riding Club to maximise benefits brought by the serv ices of the MWRS. Report next issue. Bernt (VK2IA) astonished all by a marathon contest session in which he br ought up all his own gear and thundered onto the air. He was going great guns until his PA packed up 30 hours into the 48-hour contest. Neverthele ss he latched up over a 1000 QSOs recorded on his PC. He brought in a sle eping bag too. CW operators can only bow low with the deepest respect. Be rnt is a veteran DXer and, hopefully, will tell us about it in the July l ecture. JUNE LECTURE Automatic Global Positioning Systems Darryl Smith VK2TDS Darryl is coming up all the way from near Campbelltown and will be bringing demo equipment with him. This lecture promises to be a sizzler. OUR FIRST COMPUTER NEW COMMITTEE POSITION A donated bugless 386 with a 12" monitor appeared at the club in April and we were faced with the problem of who would look after it, feed it and make sure it was tucked up in bed at night. A classic answer was found - appoint someone. So Horst Leykam, VK2HL, was unanimously elected to carry out these duties with the title Computer Secretary. This is a new committee position, the first ever of its nature in the Society, and a harbinger of things to come. It was only in May, 1997, that we couldn't make up our minds if the Internet and so forth was part of ham radio. Now we are poised to absorb our conqueror. ACCESS DENIED James Nelson VK2LJN At a recent club meeting James may have been overheard saying that he'd had "some difficulties" during his last visit to the Phillipines. His account is a cautionary tale of woe we all should heed. BEING fairly new to amateur radio one of the novelty joys would have to be taking one's radio to various places to see if contact can be made from there. In my case short notice was received from my wife who had a family transaction to complete involving the settlement on a small piece of land in the Philippines. Whilst simple in principal here, not quite so simple over there so our attendance was necessary. Initial thoughts were "Oh no! Not that hot place again! But wait a minute! I can play with my radios so things won't be quite so boring this time!" So, via the net on Email, I set about to contact PARA - the Philippine Amateur Radio Association, (their version of the WIA if you like). After a few days & still some three weeks before departure there was no reply so my wife made a phone call to PARA speaking the native lingo and was reassured that a local temporary permit would be OK..."Just send 170 pesos and a couple of photos together with your Australian licence details and we will take care of the rest!". Groovy HUH ? Now I was happy to go. I sent the things by International Express Post and a few days later we phoned PARA to see if everything had arrived. "Yes. No problem. All is here. The permit will be processed upon your arrival. If we cannot get your permit to the airport could you please pick it up from PARA the day after you arrive as it is busy here and the elections are on as well." I thought "Wow wee! Fantastic!" This will be fun ! So after hearing th is good news I went down to see Horst (VK2HL) to buy a couple of hefty Gel Acid Batteries capable of a bit of HF CW or SSB work and packed my HF Alinco & Dual Band Yaesu handheld carefully looking forward to the HOT adv enture! For those who don't know the Philippines is not just tropical but EQUATORIAL! In other words stinking bloody hot even at 4.00 a.m. in the morning. We arrived on Tuesday evening, May 5, and I checked at customs to see if there was a permit from the NTC (their version of the ACA) that may have been processed by PARA and was waiting there for me. Not so lucky but I was happy to leave my radios in the hands of the smiling customs man s o that I could return the next day with my permit. Didn't seem to be a worry. Strange how everyone else's baggage never even got a look at whe n they walked through customs but we were happy (suckers) to do the right thing but it did cross our minds later that perhaps in this case honesty was NOT the best policy here .....Hmmmm The following day (Wednesday) we headed off to PARA located at Pasig city, some two and a half hours from Muntinlupa, in the extreme pollution, heat & traffic that makes our worst traffic nightmare seem like an express way. I thought about taking up smoking because my theory was that the cig arette smoke was probably cleaner than the air I was breathing. If your c ar has no air-con a towel wrapped around your face is a good idea (the ro ad workers do that to survive). If that is what the air is like when the pollution indicator freeway light displays "Good" I guess your still alive. If it is displays "Bad" you probably won't see it anyhow bec ause you'd dead! Anyway upon arrival at PARA and a self-introduction it was explained tha t some office staff had been sick and that the permit would be processed first thing the next morning which was Thursday and we would receive a ph one call to pick it up at the airport (a one-way two-hour traffic debacle from where we were staying!).... Come midday no phone call so a call to PARA "Oh sorry! The NTC have to ld us there is no permit or reciprocal agreement available" "How can that be?" we ask. This was followed with a vague reply about recommending a visit to the Australian embassy and that, anyhow, that due to the presidential elections over that long weekend processing of the permit would take some time. After this marvellous example of assistance to overseas visitors we decided that in the four days remaining to us that further negotiations for the permit would be totally futile so we went about our other business until our departure on Tuesday, May 12. We got to the airport early to allow time to pick up the radios from customs but were then informed that unless we could produce the NTC permit the radios would stay locked up despite the fact that we were leaving. After every explanation concerning the difficulty in obtaining the permit it appeared that the smiling customs people had an acute case of deaf ears and not until after a virtual yelling match did we manage to extract the name of a customs' official with whom we could negotiate. Luckily, after some quite expensive taxi rides to the customs bureau, and some good old fashioned pleading and begging to the chief at the customs bureau, my radios were finally released with conditions imposed that we were to be escorted to the boarding officer when the radios were handed over. Pheewwww! What an epic! The moral of this story is "Don't think about taking your radios overseas unless the permit for that country is IN YOUR HAND!" Its a shame that we were unable to receive the same courtesy there that Australia offers to visiting amateurs here. Maybe we were the odd ones out but we sure felt unwelcome. (PARA please copy. Ed.) THE AMATEUR'S BUCK by Dollar Bill. VK2$$$ WELCOME to a new corner exclusively for Up The Stick people tuned to the money frequency. With all the recent problems in Jakarta affecting BHP steel mills one can only think a little deeper. A long term view now shows an all time low price ($13.60) that would make a great entry point for first time portfolio builders. Whatever you do, don't miss out on TAB offer. It closes on Friday, June 12. In fact I have heard that John Smith and John J Smith and John J J Smith are subscribing including the family dog in a desperate attempt to get a slice so try not to miss out. Orica (formerly ICI) have just introduced a dividend reinvestment plan (shares issued instead of cash dividend) recognising the desires of longer "Blue Chip" investors. At $10.80 this would also be a good entry point seeing that the British parent company float sold last year at $11.50 as a privilege to existing shareholders. Yet another good buy-in opportunity for portfolio building. NOTE: The Amateur's Buck is not the opinion of the Manly-Warringah Radio Society but simply a contribution of opinion to assist members in the art of investing. No liability of information accuracy/forecasting is guaranteed. EMAIL NEWS Woes: Our friend of the last two issues has learnt that the guarantee for which he paid $500 is now worthless. The firm from whom he bought the stuff is now in the hands of a receiver. Luckily for him, he jumped up and down so vigorously when his stuff didn't work that he got it fixed before that particular empire of operators collapsed. Publicity: If you do a bit of reading of the popular computer magazines or the likes of TV Week, you may have found the name of a web site appearing all over the place - Sevenmag. This web site is an "e-zine" or, el ectronic magazine. You'll find it at http://www.sevenmag.com.au. Adelong Computers: Are you in the market for a new computer system at the moment? Or maybe you're after a faster modem? Adelong Computers have just about everything. You can find Adelong by going to http://www.adelong.com.au. Their web site is still being reconstructed, but soon you'll be able to order online. Eudora. A new Eudora is being highly thought of..."Stable, reliable and relatively bug-free. can handle large file attachments without timing out, creates filters so it can automatically sort your mail into different mail boxes as it's received (very handy feature if you receive a lot of Email and some of it's really important) and so on and so forth. You can download Eudora from http://www.eudora.com and it's available for a variety of operating systems. The free version is approximately 4MB and takes about 20 minutes to download. TECHNOLOGY TIP Watch TV From Your PC Aimed for the end of the year, Channel 7 are planning to release a television service you can watch from your PC. You'll need to install a tuner card into your PC. Further details will emerge in due course. UP THE STICK, June 1998. Quarterly newsletter of the Manly-Warringah Radio Society, VK2MB. Editor Bob Hawksley VK2GRY. PO Box 186, Brookvale NSW 2100 Tel: 61 2 9450 1746 Manly-Warringah Volunteer Services Centre, Thompson Drive off Kamber Road, Terrey Hills, NSW 2084 Meetings every Wednesday from 7.30 p.m. http://www.zeta.org/~richardm/RadioClubs/mwrs/newsletter.html VK2RMB (Repeaters): 6m: 53.675/52.675, 2 m: 146.875/146.275 70 cm: 438.175/433.175, Packet: 144.800 Home Page http://www.zeta.org.au/~richardm/RadioClubs/mwrs/ MWRS Members and Ex-members 80 m net: Daily 0630 on 3.5900 MHz Sorry, no space for cartoon. Ed.