March 1999

Quarterly newsletter of the

Manly-Warringah Radio Society, VK2MB.
Editor Bob Hawksley VK2GRY

PO Box 186, Brookvale NSW 2100

Tel: 61 2 9450 1746

Meetings every Wednesday from 7.30 p.m. at the Manly-Warringah Volunteer Services Centre, Thompson Drive off Kamber Road, Terrey Hills, NSW 2084

VK2RMB (Repeaters):
6m: 53.675/52.675, 2 m: 146.875/146.275,
70 cm: 438.175/433.175,
Packet: 144.800,
MWRS 80m net: Daily 0630 on 3.5900 MHz

Internet: http://www.zeta.org/~ richardm/RadioClubs/mwrs/newsletter.html

Home Page:ttp://www.zeta.org. au/~richardm/RadioClubs/mwrs/

Dom’s discourse, stuff on Packet, more on RMS Titanic, good value from Dollar Bill, a magic trick, epitaph on CW, next Wednesday’s Lecture on the Sydney-Hobart race by Val Prentice who sailed She’s Apples Two (NOT TO BE MISSED) and a touch of net browsing. Last, but not least, a Very Happy New Year to all my readers! Ed

WE WENT UP to the Central Coast Club’s Field Day at Wyong in force this year. Not only were plenty of people driving up & convincing old ham friends (and encouraging new possibilities as well ) to join them but four of our clan decided to FLY up. Phil BDF & Phil Matthews were sharing the flying while Colin XXE & Richard SKY ‘piloted’ the HT from the back seat! Bob RL, Stuart KZX and I had a contact with them around 11:45 a.m. when they circled the racecourse thrice (& I look forward to seeing their photograph of the Field Day from on high). Apparently Yves AUJ & Connie CON picked them up from nearby Wanervale airport. When I was driving home around 3 p.m. I had almost unbroken contact with our aeronauts all the way down the freeway and am expecting a very hip QSL card from them, especially from someone with an appropriate callsign like SKY! We had a list of items to purchase at Wyong for the Club but were only successful with the High Power Low-Pass filter, the Ham World Map and a female LDF-450 connector. We left behind a $600 Bird Wattmeter, a worn-out harness and we couldn’t find any 40m traps or Male LDF-450 connectors for sale. The harness we will get new and we still have to work out what to do about the other items.

We have had a visitor from England to our Club for some weeks now. Brian Collinge G7NYD (see Note) and he has a local callsign VK2TPG. Brian gave us our February Lecture on RAENET & RARE in `G’ land which was quite eye opening. Although he has gone home now, Brian is planning on spending half the year down under from now on so I’m sure we’ll see more of him.

We are planning to get our own internet connection for club use. Russell BYN looked into it & we are in the midst of setting it up. This will be a great resource for looking for ham information but also simply for the edification of club members. It will also be somewhere we can host our MWRS homepage & many thanks go to Richard SKY for hosting it on his private account for so long already. Steve KFJ has been doing a lot of work to get our RMB packet server gear useful again including rebuilding PC’s. We are thankful for his persistence and look forward to it all working as planned. Our next Communications exercise supporting the North Side Riding Club cross-country event is pencilled in for Sunday, 9^th May. Keep this aside if you are interested in partaking and put your name on the blackboard at the club.

I’ve had a thought. We’ve had many people visit us over the last year & I can’t always remember who they were. If we had a visitors book this would give us a point of reference to go back to. Sound good? When I started this report, I thought it had been a quiet year so far... wow, wrong again. 73 DOM BRAGGE VK2YAK

Note: Brian Collinge G7NYD, 6 Wyresdale Caravan Park, Kiln Lane, Hambleton, Lancashire FY6DZ UK.

Packet: G7NYD@GB7FYL

AT 2359 HOURS on January 31^st 1999 Morse ceased to be used on commercial bands. But listen today on the elite portions of the ham bands and you’ll find that Morse is alive and well. For those of us who, in our salad days, listened with awe at the what the wild waves were saying, Morse was the way to the stars. And, who knows, it still may be!

VAL PRENTICE, navigator and radio operator aboard She’s Apples Two, will give us her first hand account of what happened in the last Sydney-to-Hobart race. She will show the safety clothing she wore, the beacons she had, make-up of the crew and tell the story as it happened. If there’s time, Val will also comment of the ABC Four-Corners programme of the event. Of the over 120 boats which started, 42 finally made it into Hobart. Val’s was the 29^th..

AS FROM 28TH FEB. you can now do AX25 connections to VK2RMB packet server. Terry KTJ sorted out the configuration problems, once connected, you only get a one line prompt, just issue a ? followed by the ENTER key to give you a brief help menu. some examples:

m 4800 Does Mheard of 4800 bps port m 1200 does Mheard of 1200 bps port

u to list users connected

n to list the Netrom nodes known

conv connects to a Converser Bridge server (currently set for VK3WRM in Mildura)

call connects to a callbook server somewhere (I haven’t tried it yet)

f does a finger enquiry to another host e.g. f @44.136.9.18 or f @44.136.11.1 (leave a space between f and the @ )

pi 44.136.8.1 does a ping test to node 44.136.8.1 , you can ping any known IP address to test the network path to it. Try the example for 44.136.8.1 first, as it is the gateway to the rest of the amateur packet radio network. The local ethernet port is also configured and you can then do a telnet to the old NOS based PC, which is now address 44.136.9.18. To do that, just enter the following:

t 44.136.9.18 <CR>

The other available addresses are .19 to .22 (four more PC’s). We can add ethernet cards to the other club PC’s and make them accessible from packet.

The wormhole gateway (VK2KTJ 44.136.8.1) is suffering some radio troubles, so it may come and go while KTJ is trying to fix it.

I also have a 4 way video/keyboard/mouse switchbox, which I will be connecting to four PC’s mounted in the cabinet, leaving just the VGA monitor, keyboard & mouse on the benchtop.

There are a few people on packet who are not on email, such as Tom HUZ, Eric EKA, Brett KYB please let them know about this, if you should speak with them, or any other club members on packet that I have missed.

I have also cleared out two of those old 386 PC’s that we do not require, they now have a new home at the Central Coast ARC. The other two PC’s have been donated to AAPRA for their ROSE network expansion. If anyone should come across any modem isolation units (these are the isolators that fit between a computer and a telephone modem - they usually have a few LEDs on their front panels) please GRAB THEM for the club so as to provide DC isolation between the PCs and the packet radio modems. It reduces the RF noise getting into the radios. STEVE BLANCHE VK2KFJ

SEAN MCLOUGHLIN who, last year, gave us a talk on Communicating with the Japanese (and had almighty strife getting his PC going having bought it from a shonky outfit) writes:

It’s fun. The kids will love it. Ed

DOES ANYONE KNOW of someone (locally?) who replaces cells in battery packs so they are as good-as-new? I have two rechargeable packs for my FT-530 that are essentially cactus! 73 Dom VK2YAK

In case it does not work (which was my case) just use: www.qsl.at and then when the page is open, ask for Titanic.

This information was given in CQ DL 2/99 which I’ve just purchased. Also, in the CQ, it says you can obtain a copy of the key which was used on the Titanic and probably also on all Marconi stations at that time, from:

Alpha Delta Communications Inc.

P.O. Box 620 Manchester

KY 40962 U.S.A.

The key, in fact, is manufactured by R.A. Kent Keys from UK which you may know. It is supplied with a certificate of authenticity and seems to be a nice piece of antics, so if I can, I shall certainly try to get one, but I should think it could be obtained from the manufacturer if I can put my hand on his address! All the best to you and 73. DAN BISCHOFF F1SVE 26/02/99

Would someone please locate the address of R. A. Kent Keys?. And perhaps the club would consider supporting the purchase of this key? Ed

FOR THOSE THAT have been following the all ords & Wall St that is about to crack the 10,000 barrier finding anything at the right price now is NOT real easy, fine 12 months or so ago but now??. Many stocks at there current price (especially blue chips) are yielding dividends around the two or three percent level that leaves one wondering if the stock market is the right place to invest! For example (not that it’s my cup of tea) residential real estate is providing something in the order of six to seven percent. So this indicates a timely warning to apply extra diligence when investing concerning stock purchase price. "But how so?" you ask !

Like all investing commonsense rules must apply but your imagination is still a vital facet to recognise opportunity. Lets look at some old investing tips worth refreshing at this time;

• Look for companies with a strong growth history that have had a slightly disappointing profit result caused by an abnormal (one off) condition such as higher than expected capital expenditure growing pains. (Woolworths WOW is one such company).
• Avoid buying overheated sectors (i.e: telco’s & banks) unless their is a sudden market correction, checking the Dow every morning on the early news bulletins is a good way to grab bargains when Wall St sneezes. As we usually mirror the Wall St trend you can grab great bargains on those negative doom & gloom sentiment days from the other suckers.....I mean sheep.
• It could be time to reduce some of your overvalued stocks on those positive sentiment days in favour of other currently "out of vogue" stocks however take into account CGT very carefully. See Dollar Bill or your accountant about this nasty little animal if you haven’t been introduced.

So even when there seems little opportunity in an overheated market, judicious observation and decision making can still yield enormous opportunity even if the going seems tough!

Are you stacked with DOS old fashioned programs(NOS)? Are you afraid to use other operating systems (LINUX)? The nightmare of configuring the software!

AGW Packet Engine now lets you use all the WIN95 and WIN98 Internet available software. Thousands of programs from which to choose. And is easy to configure it and even easier to use it. There are two drivers available now.

The first is for use under WIN95 and the second under WIN98. You can now work over radio using your phone/modem internet connection. You can run any program you like Web Browsers, FTP, IRC, ICQ, email, telnet. etc. You can also run servers like email, web, ftp etc. It is also very easy to set-up an Internet Gateway in just a few minutes. The drivers are not free and you need to register. The registration fee is $US28. Please be careful because you only need to register the tcpip drivers. All other packet operations are free.

73 TERRY PAGE VK2JTP