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

AT THE RECENT WIA VK2 Conference of Clubs we were represented by Ted VK2FLB and Bernd VK2IA. Thanks go to these two for taking an active interest in WIA Club affairs on our behalf. We look forward to hearing what the `latest' issues are. The bi-monthly Volunteer Services Centre meetings (bringing together the RFS, SES, RVCP, CREST, the Caretakers and ourselves) which discuss common site issues are now being called only when there are items to discuss. I have put in a reminder that we want the main car park key changed to our keys and that we would like a key to the back gate (next to the BBQ) so we can get easy access to the back area so as to collect wood and work on aerials. This should happen soon.

WE'VE HAD some good lectures recently including the battery lecture (with some great detail prompting spirited discussions} and the LUSH lecture showing the entrepreneurial spirit at its best. Thanks to all who, month after month, continue to help us provide a consistently high standard of lectures. Great work.

WE'VE SEEN a lot of HF action with the AX2000 callsign from our club station recently. This is wonderful stuff, brushing the cobwebs off our gear and getting heard around the world. I don't hear that many club stations on the bands but I'm glad that we're one of them.

AN INTERESTING DX SITUATION. Recently I was travelling on business in the USA & having befriended some local New Jersey hams, I went to their shack during the night whilst they were underway in a phone contest. I used their packet equipment and "spotted" AX2000. Knowing that our club had the callsign for that weekend, we hunted them down and caught them on 15m. I heard Bernd VK2IA feverishly working Europe and realised that we were trying to get in the side of the beam with a dipole! My US friends got through, and then I had a go...

"VK2JNA portable W2"

"The VK station say again?"

"This is VK2JNA portable W2"

"DOM??? What are YOU doing THERE!"

It seems Bernd nearly fell out of his chair. Now that was a cool contact as far as I'm concerned. I promise I'll QSL soon.

IT IS WITH GREAT SADNESS that I learned of the recent passing of Colin Craigen VK2NJC. I was overseas and was particularly sad that I couldn't be here through that time. It is with great fondness that I will remember Colin: his pseudo obsequiousness when greeting me with a bow and a flourish every Wednesday evening as I arrived; the joy we shared having both passed our ham exams at MWRS together; his encouragement of our ham community, getting us to have a regular BBQ at the club. These and many other things will I remember about our friend Colin. We have had a kind donation of some of his radio gear & it is being put to use right now.

WE HAVE SPENT two full days hanging reconstructed aerials and repeater boxes and doing various tests. We are still nailing some of our repeater problems but have an ongoing plan to get all three voice repeaters operational again. Special thanks go to Steve VK2KFJ & Tim VK2ETJ for their work repairing our repeaters. Maybe the repeater committee could take on the unofficial motto "Onward & Upward". Somehow this seems appropriate.

AS A CLUB we recently purchased another safety harness and it has been a great addition to our gear. Thanks to Yves VK2AUJ for pursuing this.

IT IS THE END of another (financial) year with the AGM upon us. Thank you for the support from all society members and especially from the committee. We've had some great fun and helped out our community as well. With the annual "sacking" of the committee at the AGM I'll have completed two fun-filled years as your president which, constitutionally, is my maximum. I would simply like to say best wishes in electing a new committee and I thank you again for the opportunity to serve. 73 Dom.

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.

We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We have learned how to make a living, but not a life.

We have added years to life, not life to years.

We have been to the moon but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.

We have conquered outer space, but not inner space.

We have cleaned up the air but polluted the soul;
split the atom but not our prejudice.

We have higher incomes, but lower morals.

We have become long on quantity, but short on quality.

We live in times of tall men and short character; steep profits and shallow relationships.

We live in times of world peace but domestic warfare; more leisure but less fun; more kinds of food but less nutrition.

We live in times of two incomes but more divorce;
of fancier houses, but broken homes.

We live in a time when there is much in the shop window but nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this newsletter to you, a time when you can choose either to forward it to a friend or just hit delete. It is the paradox of our time.

It is with the deepest regret that the Manly-Warringah Radio Society records the passing of Col Craigen VK2NJC on March 18^th. He was 82. A man of distinguished appearance and possessed of a fine intellect, Col lent dignity to all our proceedings. Always regarded as "a gentleman of the old school", Col was liked by all and he carried with him a wealth of experience. Only when the weather was at its worst would Col fail to turn up at the regular weekly meetings.

First licensed in the UK in 1936, he spent his career in radio and television, his experience with television going back to the earliest days of the technology when mechanical scanning was in the experimental stage. At one point Col made a television appearance for Logie Baird and thus could justly claim to have been one of the first people ever televised.

Upon the outbreak of World War II Col joined the Royal Air Force. One day in the summer of 1940, just as the Battle of Britain was getting under way, Col was mystified to be posted to a derelict-looking factory in Watford, in southern England. There, to his intense surprise, he found himself in the company of eleven other radio amateurs all of whom had been selected by a young civilian called Dr R. V. Jones.

Dr Jones had been charged by the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to discover and thwart the German beam-bombing navigational system which was having a devastating effect. This system enabled the German aircrews to fly to a target and accurately to drop their bombs at a predetermined point. Dr Jones knew that to do this task he needed people of technical imagination and flair and he also knew that such people were best found among the radio amateurs of the day.

Within weeks Dr Jones and his team built special transmitters which had the effect of corrupting the beams and confusing the German aircrews so much so that they were sent off course. In the parlance of the day Dr Jones was popularly credited with having "bent" the beams and once the Germans realised that they abandoned the system.

In the RAF Col met and became a personal friend of Arthur C Clarke who was serving at the same time with him and together they worked upon the development of radar. Recently Colin recounted to the club how Clarke had explained to him his idea using manned geostationary satellites for radio communication, a theory which Clarke then published in Wireless World in 1945.

In 1947 Col migrated to Australia and worked for AWA until his retirement, one of his major involvements being the broadcasting and telecasting of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. After retiring Col renewed his interest in ham radio and, like many amateurs, he loved to tinker, especially with VHF gear. Most recently, and in order to keep in touch with his nephew in UK, he was working to get active on packet radio but sadly Col passed away before matters were complete.

To Moira, Col’'s wife, and family, the Society offers its deepest sympathy. He will be sadly missed by all his friends in Amateur Radio.

SETI IS SURELY the next frontier for the ham. The net is stiff with references and suggestions for equipment and within a few years there may well be a SETI-dedicated dish at the club.

There’'s absolutely no question that there are millions of worlds out "there". It has been suggested that there are at least 10,000 planets like ours in our galaxy alone. In their 1993 book "Is Anyone Out There?" Frank Drake and Dava Sobel stated that our power to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, through computer technology, doubles about every thirty-four weeks. Must be even less than that now. But in all the talk about about "getting a message" one wonders why anybody with half a brain would want to send a "message". And, if they did, what would it say? "Hi?"

Today much has been listened to, some of what has been heard remains unexplained but nothing so far has been identified as being truly artificial in origin. No "Hi!" has yet been received or should that be "noticed"? But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. SETI has created useful spinoffs such as cunning multichannel receivers, ingenious antennas and the harnessing of many of the world’'s PCs worldwide. Maybe it will be up to a humble ham to stumble on something that is out "there". After all, hams have stumbled on pretty well everything else.

August , 1981. In mid-April, about 200 representatives from the European press, and from radio and television converged on Salzburg, in Austria. The occasion was an official presentation of the Philips compact audio disc – a format which is likely to succeed the present day LP and which offers a variety of advantages.

THE COUNTDOWN to the World Radio Team Championships (WRTC-2000) in Slovenia is under-way. Fifty-three of the world’'s top contest teams will meet on a "level playing field" in Slovenia to compete in this event. Selection of each team was based on results in previous contests over the past 4 years. All stations will be identical: 100 W to a tribander and a wire antenna, both at 12m above ground. This will ensure that operator skills will be the most important to distinguish the best from the better.

During the event each team will be using a special S5 call (S5<number<number<one-letter suffix) which will be assigned only a few minutes before the contest starts. Logs will be checked immediately after the end of the competition, i.e. the winner will be known only a few hours after the radios will be switched off.

The organising committee invited me to participate as a referee. There will be 53 referees, one for each team. The contest begins 1200 UTC Saturday. 8 July, and ends 1200 UTC Sunday, 9 July 2000 and will be part of the IARU (International Amateur Radio Union) HF championship.

WRTC 2000 will be officially opened on 5 July and will end on 11 July 2000. Official WRTC 2000 web site: http://wrtc2000.bit.si

PLUG-IN PEST FREE gadgets. They’'ve been around for some years now. They’'re mains driven and they generate frequencies which spread around the ring main. Resident cockies and other multilegged creatures are alleged to get upset and go elsewhere. But what are these frequencies?

Recently somebody plugged in one of these gadgets and immediately felt very peculiar. When the gadget was switched off their wellbeing returned. A case for alarm bells to ring.

Will somebody lend a spectrum analyser to the club so that we can all have a look at this gadget’'s output? I’'ll donate mine so we can do an autopsy and have a look at its innards.

IN THE CLUB’'S May lecture Andrew Gerrie, Financial Director of LUSH, told how, in four and a half years, LUSH has grown from one shop in London’s Covent Garden to seventy-six shops world wide. LUSH originated the Bath Bomb. The nearest LUSH shop to the club is in Warringah Mall. Other LUSH shops are in the Sydney area the QVB, Pitt Street Mall and the International Terminal at Mascot.

AN EPIDIASCOPE (or episcope) is a projection lantern which is used for throwing on a screen an enlarged image of a brilliantly illuminated opaque object. Bob VK2GRY has just acquired a monster one which has a 120 mm aperture and a 1 kW lamp. Over a distance of 5 metres a 100 mm x 140 mm postcard is
930 mm x 1300 mm. The minimum projection distance is 2 metres at which the same postcard is 270 mm x 380 mm

The maximum area of the projection chamber is 255 mm x 255 mm. Over a distance of 5 metres this gives an image area of 2300 mm square. Books up to 55 mm thick can also be accepted, a heavy glass plate resting on the page to be projected. As well, pictures can be wound through the projection chamber and there is an arrangement whereby a sharply defined white-light arrow image can be moved around the screen. Such a magnificent instrument should be kept in a stable environment. especially one where lectures are a common feature.

Bob will bring this item to the club for all to see, admire, be amazed at and ultimately treasure. It’'s even likely that he could be persuaded to leave it there. He’s like that. Generous to a fault. It’s extremely heavy...