Well I’ve had this little radio thanks to Dino at Bettercom.
It’s a small dual band HT that’s fairly light and feels well built.
So far so good, the manual is interesting, but the radio sounds good. I’ve not really used it on air much as of yet.
DE VK3IVY
Well the last thing I expected to find there were Quansheng hand held radios. Ranging from their UHF CB radios, to their 2 metre and 70 cm hand held radios.
So I asked about them, and was promptly told that to buy the 2 & 70 Handheld one would need a license.
I promptly bought one for $150 which I thought was a good price.
Now when I got home even though the handheld had been fully charged. The charger didn’t work. I emailed Dino at Bettercom the seller of the radio, and then tonight he popped round and dropped off a new charger for me. Which is now properly working.
I just have to say it’s been wonderful dealing with Dino at Bettercom. Now his site isn’t finished as of yet. But here it is: www.bettercom.com.au
DE VK3IVY
whee, a good sunday spend doing some DX much thanks to:
IZ4DLR
FO5Jv
ON8VP
IW4EIQ
I4LEC
IZ2GAF
G4RIQ
S51ZZ
Much fun was had on 14.180MHz SSB.
Take care
DE VK3IVY
Oh I’m licensed again. I’d been silly and forgot to renew my license, but all sorted now.
~Ivy
Well it seems that propagation is improving finally. On 15 Metres 21.26MHz I can hear SX2IMA contesting. This is a station operating out of Greece for a field day. It’s faint but I can hear them from here.
Things seem to be on the up finally, this is the first time I’ve heard much in the way of DX on 15 Metres.
Well today is the 2010 VK trans tasman contest. Going to be fun for the club at the Sherbrooke community school. Starts at 8:00 UTC today =)
Lots of fun.
~Ivy
Been playing round with dash code, and have made a little mobile version of this blog. I will set up something to auto redirect mobile browsers to this later.
It’s now available here.
Well today ACMA released their white paper on the “400MHz band” Which covers 403MHz to 520MHz. As this covers the 70cm band we use (420MHz to 450MHz as a secondary service) this paper effects us as amateurs.
As the ACMA puts it “The The way ahead – Decisions and implementation options for the 400 MHz band consultation paper outlines a number of final decisions for the future use of the band and proposed implementation plans.”
In the original ACMA proposal was that for 403MHz to 430MHz was for the exclusive use of federal, state, and territory governments. This would mean for us amateurs that we would loose the bottom 10MHz of the 70cm band. Though this section of the band (420 to 430MHz) is restricted in some states. For example in the “Melbourne” area the excluded sections of the 70cm band are as follows:
While in the “Perth” area all of 420 to 430MHz is already disallowed.
These exclusions can be found on page 28 of the Radiocommunications Licence Conditions (Amateur Licence) Determination No. 1 of 1997.
So under this new ACMA paper, all of the 420 to 430MHz section of the 70cm band is lost to the amateurs who could use it.
From 430 to 440MHz this paper states that “The 430-440 MHz rage is used for defense purposes and by the amateur service, including amateur satellite, in line with internationally harmonised allocations.” And ” …hence there is currently limited scope for general use of these services in this band.”
So from 430 to 440MHz There will be no changes.
But for 440MHz to 450MHz there is no mention of amateur services, only the following:
“Spectrum in 440-450MHz will be made available in consultation with the Department of Defense on a temporary basis. Users in this part of the band in high and medium density areas will be required to relocate by 31 December 2012. Users outside of high and medium density areas will be required to relocate by 31 December 2013.”
Here there is no mention of amateurs at all. Which is worrying. But it may be that we are still able to use this section of the band as a secondary service as we do now.
Oddly unlike the minor mentions of the amateur service. There is an entire chapter of this paper dedicated to UHF CB radio.
Unfortunately this document doesn’t really tell us as amateurs what will be happening to the 440-450MHz part of the 70cm band at all.
Edit, just looked at one other part of this document, and it says the following, “Arrangements for the radiolocation and amateur services outside the scope of this plan.” So it looks like we may not lose any more than the bottom 10MHz of the 70cm band.
DE
VK3IVY
Well Hannah and Myself have moved to a new house in Pakenham. RF wise it’s reasonably quiet which is good.
All we need to do is get some proper antennas up. Right now there’s a 40m dipole (that really needs tuning correctly.) It works okay but really could do something better with it.
~de VK3IVY
The wia has a pdf of all of the repeaters in Australia. Unfortunately they don’t give this information in formats that might be useful when using a computer to program your radio.
Anyway I’ve now managed to get the data for the 6 metre, 2 metre and 70 centimetre repeaters into a csv file, and an excel spread sheet.
Anyway the excel file is here and the csv file is here. If there’s any errors pleas mention it.
de Vk3IVY