Tag Archives: Tasmania

Justin VK7TW Interviewed on ABC Radio Evenings Program

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On Wednesday evening, ABC Radio Hobart contacted us through our Facebook page wanting to know if someone would like to talk about the experimenters night and what happens at REAST.

Justin VK7TW made a detour from his regular sojourn to the club rooms to visit the ABC studios and give an interview on the things that have been happening recently on Joel Rheinberger’s Evening’s show.

With permission from ABC, we can share the audio of the interview below.

Audio of Interview

Congratulations Justin on the great interview!

New Digital Repeater To Increase Digital Coverage

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Yaesu DR-1X Repeater
On Wednesday, REAST repeater officer Damien Styles VK7SD commissioned the new Yaesu DR-1X digital repeater much to the excitement of the gathering of people at the Wednesday evening experimenters group. While the repeater was purchased some time ago, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that frequencies have been allocated by the ACMA for it’s usage.

The Yaesu DR-1X is capable of both analogue and C4FM digital voice and automatically switching between the two modes. Soon an additional module will be acquired to provide DMR, DSTAR and p25 digital voice capabilities.

This repeater is on air right now, with an output frequency 438.675Mhz with a 7Mhz negative offset for the input on 431.675Mhz.

Our repeater officer would be most interested to hear signal reports from you. If you are able to access the repeater, please let Damian know by emailing repeaterofficer@reast.asn.au!

Interest in Satellites is Blasting Off!

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20161124004318-5ff90c6cIn recent months an interesting phenomena has been occurring on Wednesday evenings at the REAST clubrooms. More and more you see one or more members huddled around a radios while pointing Yagi antennas at the sky and gently bobbing the antennas around as if they were fly fishing. Irrespective of the mean comments that these members may have gone a bit batty, there is indeed increased interest in making contacts via a number of orbiting satellites as they orbit the Earth.

Interest started growing around August with Larry VK7WLH bringing allow his hand held Arrow Antenna for Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This piqued the interest of several members and soon saw the purchase of more LEO type Yagis to work the Satellites. Wednesday nights have been largely spent trying to work out the optimum passes for the most well known satellites and then trying to hear the Beacon, or more recently establish a 2-way contact with other operators through the satellite. Below we have a video of Justin VK7TW listening for satellite beacons:

Are you interested is working the ‘birds? got to get some satellite satisfaction? Why not come up to one of our Wednesday night meetings to find out more, or visit the AMSAT Australia website for even more information and signing up to their mail list.