Category Archives: Clubs & Events

2024 Tassie Ham Radio Conference

Over this past weekend (2-3 November 2024) I attended the Tassie Ham Conference that was held on the UTAS Campus.

The Biennial event has changed this year to be only presentations, where in previous years theres usually been a bit of an expo hall with the ability to buy equipment, along with a flea market between hams. While I appreciated the focus on the presentation, I did miss the opportunity to be able to purchase equipment (more on that later).

Presentation wise, things kicked off with a fantastic keynote from Dr Tamitha Skov (The Space Weather Woman) who spoke about Space Weather (surprise!), the recent solar cycle peak and how amateur radio is at the forefront of providing research and analysis of solar activity and how hobbyists have a part to play in informing both commercial businesses and the public.

What followed was a series of fantastic talks over two days, both technical and more general, with even some humour thrown in.

  • Dr Tamitha Skov WX6SWW – Space Weather
  • Rex Moncur VK7MO – Novel propagation – Lightning Scatter
  • Martin Luther VK7GN – The Future of Contesting
  • Andy Perryman NOAPX – World Radio League
  • Murray Southwell VK7ZMS – If it works it’s not Stupid
  • Kyle Krieg AAOZ – Remote Ham Radio (Flex Radio & NodeRed)
  • Keynote 2: Dr Justin Thurley – Amateur Radio: an innovation perspective
  • David Minchin VK5KK – 122/ 134/ 241 GHz Communications
  • Marcus Berg VK3TST – Amateur radio and cybersecurity on the modern internet
  • Phil Wait VK2ASD – EME/EMF/EMC/High Power Education
  • Keynote 3: Kristen McIntyre, K6WX – Ground is a Myth
  • Marty Nelson VK4KC – POTA
  • Adam K6ARK – Quest for Miniaturisation
  • Dr. Paris Buttfield-Addison VK7SYN – Al/Machine Learning & Radio
  • Panel / Discussion Forum – The Secret to Energising Ham Radio

All these presentations were recorded and will be available over at Hayden VK7HH’s youtube channel, Ham Radio DX, in the coming days/weeks. (post will be updated with playlist when it becomes available

A couple of other happy things happened over this weekend, with the discovery that the PacComm TNC 320 I have been hunting for, for the last 6 months and assumed I had lent it out and lost it, was returned to me at the conference. I am ridiculously happy to get it back, and already it is back on air:

Also, a little bit of an impulse buy, but with the intent to help getting on air with POTA easier was the Mad Dog Coil 80m edition. This will allow me to mount a large vertical whip (5.6m/18.5′) on a camera tripod and be able to tune and transmit on 80m-10m.

This will have huge advantages as many of the portable locations I wish to operate typically are not great locations to run a long wire antenna. this set up will allow an almost zero horizontal footprint, with rapid set up and pack away. Having ordered the whip, I will have an update on this when I am ready to use.

So that was the weekend. Really good time, looking forward to the next one in 2025

Where the Heck is VK7BEN?

It’s been quite a while between posts, and in fact this is only my second post since January. It’s not because I have been slacking off though. So I’ll try and give a bit of an update as to whats been going on.

Pa posing for the camera, Huon River

A couple of weeks after my last post, my Grandfather died 🙁 It was for reasons known about to family, but it always happens sooner than you would like and the loss has been immense. I was particularly close to my grandfather and even 3 months later the thought that I can no longer see him is very raw and hard to deal with.

“Pa’s” influence on me has certainly be that of love for Tasmania’s vast wilderness. When I am not playing with amateur radio, I love taking photography of a wild Tasmania, of which you can see many of these photos over on Flickr.

Pa also encouraged my technical abilities and was fascinated by the things I was doing in the radio space, from who I contacted via DX, to how light could be modulated with audio along to being able to broadcast Television. As I said, I’ll miss my conversations with him.

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The LCA 2017 Open Radio Mini Conference

Looking out over the Derwent River from the LCA2017 Conference held at Wrest Point

Looking out over the Derwent River from the LCA2017 Conference held at Wrest Point

This week I had the pleasure of attending Linux Conference Australia, the largest Free & Open Source Software Community event in Australia. As part of the conference there were a series of mini conferences held in the first two days and I was lucky enough to be asked to be involved with the Open Radio Mini Conference.

Scott VK7LXX Presenting on SatNOGS

Scott VK7LXX Presenting on SatNOGS

There were a number of fantastic talks at the event on Satellites, Getting into Amateur Radio, HPSDR, 10GHZ EME, Hamlib along with a panel discussion. One of the fantastic things about LCA was that all the sessions have been recorded and placed on Youtube, so I can just link to them below:

Also at the conference was Steve Conklin AI4QR who presented as part of the main conference on the Phase 4 Geosynchronous Satellite Efforts in progress with AMSAT. This was a fascinating presentation and can be found by following this link.

LCA2018 is going to be held on the UTS Campus in Sydney next year, and hopefully there will be another Open Radio Miniconference!

Festival of Bright Ideas 2016

REAST FOBI Stand 2016

I recently had the pleasure of helping my radio club host a stand as part of the Festival of Bright Ideas in Hobart, held has part of National Science Week. This has been one of the first public events that the club has been involved with for some time, and has it turned out, it was a great success!

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