Q-News AR News from Queensland

Good morning, good evening, or g'day - depending on when you're listening to QNEWS and from where. I'm John VK4JPM, Secretary of the Darling Downs Radio Club, and this week we're brought to you by the letter "S" for "solstice". It's half-past 2026 already and from here the days get longer and the sun gets higher. Good news for anyone who bought a solar system a few months back and is wondering where all the energy went. The big news from the club is our next meeting. The topic is "contesting", which is a major thrust in Amateur Radio and one of the tools we have to keep the hobby relevant and very much alive. Make sure you put 13 July in your diary, and plan to attend either in person or by telepresence. Why? Our special guest, who will be with us in person for the evening, is Diane Main. Di is one of Australia's most prominent contesters. [She is] A contesting machine. Di brings organisation, passion, and a relentless focus on bringing MORE operators into field radio." You can expect lots of helpful information, encouragement and tips. Check the website for more information and details of the location. www.ddrci.org.au Now something slightly different, and here's an invitation from a sector adjacent to ham radio. Once upon a time pretty much every broadcast engineer had their ham ticket as well, and was active in the hobby. We all know that broadcast radio is a technology business, and community radio especially - without the mostly volunteer techs that keep stations running then nothing would happen. Technorama is the peak body for community radio technologists, and on 25 July Technorama will be running the Queensland leg of this year's roadshow in Broadbeach - intriguingly titled "Crisis Averted". It's a day of information, how-to sessions, discussions on how to avoid disaster, and a heap of social networking. The cost of attendance is so low that you're going to have to check the site because you won't believe me - less than $90 even if you're not a member of Technorama but cheaper if you are. Hams can play a very important part in running radio stations, and where else would be allowed to play with transmitters ranging to 10kW or more? And you probably have, or could learn, lots of skills that are really useful. Check out their website at technorama.org.au and follow the dots. What do you have to lose? 24-26 July, in the heart of the Gold Coast, and lots of fun. Check technorama.org.au for all the detail on that. This week's challenge in the 52 week ham challenge is so challenging that I wonder what they were thinking. It reads "Open a repeater... without using dedicated features of your radio for opening repeaters". The most important dedicated feature is the transmit button, and I assume you are allowed to use that. The hint shows emojis for a megaphone and someone whistling. OK, that's weird. Even with a megaphone, I don't know anyone who could whistle at 91.5Hz. But... maybe they want you to find or build an external CTCSS generator, and that could be very useful both as a project and as a way of rejuvenating an older transmitter that doesn't support access tones. Have a go. And speaking of which: the club's repeater VK4RDD will require a 91.5Hz tone from 7 July - that's soon; it's just a bit over two weeks. We've updated all the documentation to say that a tone is required, so don't get caught out if you're a regular user of the repeater. 91.5Hz CTCSS needed on VK4RDD from Tuesday 7 July. For all info in this bulletin, and many things not mentioned, your moment of truth is at ddrci.org.au and look for interesting entries on the scroller at the top of the page. That's it for this week. Club 2m net coming up on VK4RDD at 1000 on Sunday mornings, and dead silence in the evenings. I'm John VK4JPM, and I'll be back next week with more from the Darling Downs Radio Club. See you then!