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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

Home page: http://www.mwrs.org.au

(From June 15, 1999 _Defence Science and Technology Organisation Lecture series, Melbourne, Australia, and staff reports. Item taken from Software Testing and Quality Engineering magazine, Volume 1, Issue 6, November/December 1999.)

The re-use of some object-oriented code had caused tactical headaches for Australia's armed forces. As virtual reality simulators assume larger roles in helicopter combat training, programmers have gone to great lengths to increase the realism of their scenarios, including detailed landscapes and -- in the case of the Northern Territory's Operation Phoenix -- herds of kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give away a helicopter's position).

The head of the Defence Science & Technology Organisation's Land Operations/Simulation instructed developers to model the local marsupials' movements and reactions to division reportedly helicopters. Being efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code originally used to model infantry detachment reactions under the same stimuli, changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the figures' speed of movement.

Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting American pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the virtual kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the visiting Americans nodded appreciatively. Then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of Stinger missiles at the helpless helicopter.

(Apparently the programmers had forgotten to remove THAT part of the infantry coding.)

The lesson? Objects are defined with certain attributes, and any new object defined in terms of an old one inherits all the attributes. The embarrassed programmers had learned to be careful when reusing object-oriented code, and the Yanks left with a newfound respect for Australian wildlife.

Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point onward have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were meant to!

Hello to you all and a Merry Christmas! And A Happy New Year too! (But not a Happy New Millennium lest I stir up that debate again!)

We had a clean-up in the club rooms a few weeks ago and whittled down the junk to the really useful stuff that Geoff might use in the next 20 years! All else went out the door. We even finally got rid of the last of those 19" racks by giving it away. We have all of our shack back at last.

The Volunteers Services Centre (VSC) is back to having regular meetings recently, bringing together the RFS, SES, RVCP, CREST, the Caretakers and ourselves to discuss common site issues. Worthy of note are car parking, restricted areas and appropriate use of facilities.

The new ‘Loading Zone’ that is marked in the car park. It is a loading zone during the day and during emergencies. At night we are free to use it like any other car park. The areas in Thompson Drive that have ‘No Standing’, or are marked in yellow as they are truck turning areas, should always be kept clear. Be aware that anyone can be booked for illegal parking and it might happen one day. There is extra parking ‘out the back’ accessible by driving through the first gate and out to the back left of the compound. This area, covered in Road Base, is available for parking. When we want to gain access to the area which is obviously the Caretakers backyard, it is appropriate for us to treat it like a neighbours backyard and ask permission first. We have access to the Main meeting room for filling of the kettle and washing up. Please use this and not the sinks in the toilet areas. Our key opens this room as well.

Our last three months of Lectures have been wide-ranging and very enjoyable. Phil Mathews with "The Electrophysiology of the Heart" had lots of great detail: Vim Ardom explained the ins and outs of the Rotterdam Metropolitan railway and Andrew Rodgers told of his amazing expedition down to the Titanic. Special thanks to those who helped get these lecturers.

We had another Saturday looking at repeater problems and we have removed the 70cm repeater unit and 6m aerial for overhaul. They are nearing completion, many thanks to Steve VK2KFJ, Tim VK2ETJ and Yves VK2AUJ and are due to be re-installed shortly. The current interference to our 2m repeater has been logged, tracked down and investigated by club members. We will be handing this info to the ACA presently to see what can be done about this. There was also an investigation by the ACA on the spectral purity of the output of our 2m voice repeater recently (due apparently to interference being received by one of our neighbours). We have heard that we have passed with flying colours.

We installed the ED52-C multi-band HF single-trap dipole (donated by James VK2JN). This has certainly improved our 80/40m performance. Thanks James. Also note that Geoff VK2BT has left his ED52-C up at the club and it may be borrowed for club activities. Thanks for making this available Geoff. Ted VK2FLB and myself recently attended the WIA Conference of Clubs where many and varied topics were talked about - some of the more interesting being "The ACA and the Olympics". We will make the minutes for this meeting available when we receive them.

Thanks to all who could come along to the Christmas Party. It was great to be able to bring the XYL's and have a laugh and a good meal together. Bernd VK2IA competed in the CQWW contest recently. There was some interference in and around the VSC during this, much of which was mitigated by some low-pass filtering. Remembering that the VSC is, from a radio point of view, a "congested site" we should always be aware that interference can result from any of the volunteer services radio operations. Our background in radio theory and practice puts us in the position where we might be able to help our neighbours look at these interference problems constructively.

Yet again, another busy three months. 73 Dom VK2JNA

When Andrew Rogers gave us his lecture in October he held his audience enthralled. He told of his 11-hour trip in a special Russian submarine which went down for a look at the wreck of the RMS Titanic. We’ve had a lot of Titanic stuff this year not least from this journal and the latest film. (There’s bound to be an opera or ballet soon – the subject simply won’t go away!) A torrent of new information has now poured into UTS and through Andrew’s friend, Dave Gittins, masses concerning the Cape Race operator who received the CQD message. With thanks to Andrew and Dave, below are some random extracts of this info.

In 1912 radio at sea was only just past the novelty stage. This was in spite of the fact that the first distress call made by radio dated from 1899, when the Goodwin Sands lightship summoned help after being run down. Of 23,217 registered powered ships, about 1,000 (400 of them British) were fitted with radio and these were mostly ships on the busy North Atlantic route. The California was fitted with radio as late as January, 1912. Still commonly called wireless telegraph, the apparatus was made mainly by Marconi, Telefunken and De Forest. All used spark transmitters, which were very wasteful of power. A Bill to make radio compulsory on British ships was introduced in 1910, but was voted down by supporters of the shipping companies. The matter dragged on for years and it was not until 1933 before radio was required on all passenger ships and freighters of more than 1,600 gross registered tons.

Titanic's Marconi set used 5 kW, of which about 500 W actually reached the aerial. It operated on wavelengths from 100 m to 2,500 m, requiring very long aerials, such as could be strung between Titanic's masts. The normal wavelength was 600 m. The range varied a lot: by day it was a guaranteed to 250 miles but at night much larger ranges were reached. During trials in British waters, Titanic communicated with Port Said, over 3,000 miles away. For this reason, much work was done at night. The California's lone operator used to have a siesta during the afternoon in order to be ready for another session of work lasting till around 11. 00 p.m. On ships with two operators, it was usual for the pair to share the work by private arrangement.

On Marconi ships the time of each message was recorded in GMT, when east of 40°W and in New York time when to the west. The radio operators were responsible for maintaining clocks showing these times. The operators were formally part of the ship's crew. They signed Ship's Articles and received a nominal wage of as little as one shilling per month from the ship's owner. Their real pay came from the radio company which provided them and was around four pounds per month. (An Able Seaman got five pounds.) A well-known picture of John Phillips of Titanic shows that his cap bears a Marconi emblem, not a White Star badge.

On the Titanic there was no direct communication with the bridge, which was about forty feet away. Messages for the captain were delivered by hand when an operator had time. After the disaster this was rectified by fitting the Olympic and Britannic (sister ships of the Titanic) with a speaking tube to the bridge. Urgent warnings for the Captain were supposed to be prefixed with the letters MSG, for Masters' Service Gram, but this was not always done. Phillips' famous dismissal of the Californian's final ice warning was largely due to the fact that it was not prefixed with MSG. He was used to receiving unofficial chatter from other ships and on the face of it, this was just more gossip from an operator with time on his hands. Other ice warnings from the Amerika and Mesaba were dutifully relayed as requested but appear to have never been taken to the Titanic's bridge as they were not marked MSG.

How well the operators understood the navigational details contained in messages is debatable. There is no evidence that Phillips or Bride regarded the ice warnings received by Titanic as exceptionally important and they appear to have lacked initiative when dealing with them. There was no excuse for this sort of thing. On the Carpathia, Captain Rostron and his operator, Harold Cottam, worked well together and all navigational warnings promptly reached the bridge, where they were much valued by the progressive captain.

In 1899, when my father was thirteen years old, he bought a kit of parts that included an induction coil, spark gap, electric bell, coherer, switch, Leclanché cells and copper wire. In the house he set up the induction coil, arranged the spark gap and attached a length of wire to one end of it.

Then into the garden he took the electric bell, coherer and Leclanché cell and wired them in series. (It is likely that the coherer was part of a relay circuit.) To the coherer he attached another length of wire. When all was ready he went back into the house and switched on. The induction coil duly buzzed and the spark glittered across the two spheres of the spark gap. Out in the garden the bell began to ring.

My father then went back into the garden again and tapped the coherer. For a moment the bell stopped ringing and then began again because the induction coil was still on and the coherer had done its stuff. He went back into the house and switched off the induction coil and then back into the garden again and tapped the coherer whereupon the bell stopped ringing altogether.

At this point my father lost interest. As he told me later, "Since I could not see a connection between the induction coil in the house and the electric bell in the garden I could not understand how it worked." How slender hangs the thread of opportunity! Had someone been there to point out to him that when one has excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, who knows what might have become of him? But nobody was there and in the event he became an instrument maker and made microscopes instead.

NOTE: The italicised portion above is a quotation from The Beryl Coronet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was one of the maxims of Sherlock Holmes.

To Bernd VK2IA the CQ World Wide DX contest is a sport in every sense of the word! It’s the equivalent of the CW Olympics if there was one. For 48 hours over the last weekend in November our CW Olympian notched up around 2,000 QSOs in the "single operator, all band [10, 15,20 7 40 m] low power [100 watts]" class. He set up shop with his sleeping bag beside him and at zero hour, 11.00 a.m. on Saturday 27th Nov., lit his afterburners and thundered onto the air. With but shortish kips he stayed Titanic-like at the key until 11.00 a.m. on Monday 29th Nov. Sustained with nourishing food lovingly prepared by XYL Claudia, Oceania quailed before his onslaught.

Nothing is more musical to a CW ear than a crisp and efficient 35 w.p.m. and to have such a champion in our midst is something that, perhaps, other clubs in Australia can only envy. Bernd’s strategy was based on a serious study of the predicted propagation conditions and previous experience in this sport. Just before 11.00 a.m. on the Friday the bans were desultory. The odd contact was being made but they all had the impression of a sleepy country town in the noonday sun. Then Crash! At 11.00 a.m. there tumbled into the air a legion of Bernds and Hell stayed loose for the next 48 hours.

Bernds score will probably place him in the first five (modesty always) of those contestants in Oceania but we won’t know the final results until they are published in CQ magazine next September or October and in this journal at the end of the 20^th Century! Now that there is more room in the club because it has been tidied up, we should construct a bunk bed. The shack floor is a touch hard.

It never fails! The annual Christmas rally is underway and to my thinking there is no better time to reflect on profits during this calendar year as champagne corks pop. Before taking a glance at the highlights I have heard modulation around that a few more members have become active in the market which is simply great news.

All too often you here around the nets negative based lethargic comments such as "Well it would have been good if I'd have invested earlier" or "Maybe the first float was OK but I don't think there is any headroom left now" or "I've got a spare thousand but I don't think it would be worthwhile" or, even worse, "Not sure how to connect with a discount broker" or "I'm too old now so what’s the point?"

I'm afraid for these stations there will never be an opportunity simply because they just didn't want to make it happen. THE FACT IS THAT THIS FINANCIAL MIRACLE OF OUR MARKETS HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF CENTURIES ! So why would it not continue into the millennium ? For example "Telstra 2" was simply just one of this years hundreds of success stories. So lets see a few more investment resolutions as we enter Y2K and share in the wealth, there is heaps out there and if you don't want it don't worry because it won't served on your dinner plate! YOU have do something about that !. DB's already scheming up how to raise funds for Telstra 3.

Glance below at a few conservative blue chips selected at random - nothing special, and see the propagation? Yet again we see some amazing gains except for one and no prizes for guessing which stock is bargain basement (long term) buying. It's over to you for the new millennium.

See what I mean? 73 de Dollar Bill.

There’'s no formal meeting in January. The next one will on the second Wednesday in February, Feb. 9^th, 2000.

There’'s no lecture this month but on Wednesday, January 19^th , 2000, we kick off with David Burger’s inaugural talk to the club on antennas. David’s house in Frenchs Forest is a glitter of cunning arrays.

We’'re working on the February lecture.

And the March one.

The year 2000 will be a leap year.

We haven’'t forgotten about the 1950s shack but it’'s now a mid-twentieth century shack.

The G3TPW CobWebb antenna, featured in September, costs about $450 to import.

The front page of Wireless Weekly, Vol 11, No 10, Friday, Dec. 30^th 1927 has a large picture of two men in suits by equipment with the within-picture caption of TRANS-ATLANTIC TELEVISION APPARATUS. In the foreground is a front panel on which is inscribed THE BAIRD TELEVISOR. On the back wall of the room are things that look very much like QSL cards of which 8DCW, 2G and 2WR can be easily read.

In the issue for Friday, 9^th September, 1927, Page 17, there is this report with the headline:

2FC BROADCASTS TO THE WORLD

It will go down in history. The first Australian station to be rebroadcast in England, Canada, India, South Africa, and in the United States of America.

Between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Monday last [5^th Sept, 1927] the most famous musicians, singers and statesmen in Australia gathered together in the studio 2FC to transmit the finest programme ever compiled in Australia. The transmission took place on a special low wavelength through the short wave transmitting station attached to 2FC, and was picked up by the short wave stations of the Marconi Company in India, South Africa, and England, and by the stations of the Radio Corporation of America in Canada and the United States.