M.A.R.S - Manawatu Amateur Radio Soc

November 2010

It has been a busy month with radio, the table sale at Longburn  had a full car park during the morning.  Pete has the final balance of how the trading went.

JOTA
This month also saw 4 branch members busy with the Feilding district scouts out at Grassmere on the Oroua river close to Colyton.  This was a weekend under canvas with the scouts,  cubs and guides from around the Feilding, Marton and Milson areas. It is to the credit of Mike ZL2UKW that this JOTA camp eventuated as Mike had spoken with the Feilding Scout District Commissioner much earlier in the year so planning could be effected.  In my mind a JOTA camp is wonderful idea as there is a captive audience and activity can continue into the evening as international propagation improves.  Contacts were made on 80 40 and 20 meters, with JOTA stations worked nationally and into Australia.  There were a couple of the young people that really took a shine to the technology, next time we need to be prepared with hand outs to give to those who are interested and we also need to have a method of follow up.  When the camp broke on Sunday afternoon the organisers are hoping next years JOTA at Grassmere it will include Scouts from a much larger area. 

On the Saturday morning of the JOTA weekend a number of the Feilding locals got together to bring Feilding Branch 70 out of recess. This enabled ZL2AMR to be used again as in historical years for the 3 JOTA stations on the weekend.  The idea of using the ZL2AMR callsign for the Feilding distict was to leave ZL2KO free for JOTA in the Manawatu if required. I did not hear if the Manawatu Scouts made an approach to us for JOTA.  Is JOTA something members want to do, and if it is would a weekend camp suit those wanting to work DX JOTA or is the club rooms better - I would love some feedback.

Pirates and the like.
There has been some concern recently with unlicensed people playing DTMF tones or triggering the repeater.  Some have even been able to connect to IRLP nodes with the DTMF sequences they have used.  As a person who works from home I usually listen to 7125.  Sometimes during the day when I hear un announced DTMF on 7125 or the repeater being triggered I  wonder if this could be another unlicensed person playing on the repeater or just a ham not using their callsign.  I often listen reverse when this happens.  Now, there is something we can all do to remove the guess work.  While our callsigns should never be used on every over, they should be used be used when we transmit the first over and when we sign out.  This includes identifying your station before keying DTMF tones - this is part of the discipline that is Amateur Radio which we are all proud of and set us apart from other radio services.  Also remember to leave a 3 second pause on a repeater after the tail has dropped, this is especially important if it is the national system or an IRLP node where infrastructure delays can mean your first word or 4 is not heard at the other end if you dont wait long enough.

Bob to the Committee
As president it is my pleasure to formally welcome Rob ZL2RMH to the committee.  Rob had been nominated before the AGM recently but was overlooked on the night.   Welcome Rob.

Website
The new branch website has now become an informative Internet address.  Hayden and Stu (ZL2SGA) are you web content people and are the ones you harass to get information included / corrected or removed on  http://zl2ko.org.nz

In the process of developing the new website we have migrated to a new providers plan which includes many email address and the option of having email alias’s.  Already the Branch officers which include President, Secretary, Treasure etc have an email address at ZL2KO.org.nz which redirects the email to the usual email address provided by the individual user.  Also configured is a ‘Members’ and ‘newsletter’ alias for group emails.  The new hosting service plan has come at an additional cost of $19.95 per year to the branch, however this has already been paid for by anonymous donation.

VHF Contest
Planning is already underway for the first weekend of December with a number of members involved, information is on the home page of the branch’s website.

All going well this years Beano will be my first, thanks to Pete for getting this organised.

Cheers

Richie ZL2KP / VK2IAX