Suburban Clubs

VK3BEZ is the licensed club call sign for the Eastern Zone Amateur Radio Club Inc. Established in May 1938, the club has provided many years of service to the Amateur Radio Community locally and throughout Australia.

Of recent times, the Club is best known for its annual GippsTech technical conference, held in early July.

Meetings

The Eastern Zone Amateur Radio Club meets on the 1st Thursday of every month (except in January) at 1930 hrs at its new club rooms located on Tramway Road, Hazelwood South, in the Hazelwood South Hall, Latrobe Valley Vic. The hall is on the edge of the Churchill township. For further information on the location of the club rooms or club activities, it can be obtained by calling VK3BEZ on VK3RLV (146.800 MHz) on the 1st Thursday of each month or by sending an email to vk3bez@vk3bez.org

The next Club meeting will be on Thursday 3rd April 2008 where we will be discussing EMR (electromagnet radiation) - something that every amateur needs to know about. We will also be discussing a forthcoming project to make wire antennas.

Club Activities & Events

Each Sunday evening at 2000 hrs local time, a 2 metre net is conducted on VK3RLV (146.8 MHz) which is located on Mt Tassie, south of Traralgon. The net is open to all Club members and anyone else who would like to check in. The net controller duty rotates around a number of Club members from week to week.

The members of the club have a diverse interest in the many different modes within Amateur Radio and these are,

* HF Radio operation on all bands from 1.8 MHz thru to 30 MHz & 50 MHz
* VHF & UHF operation on SSB using Voice, Digital Modes, Aircraft enhancement & EME modes, also FM voice
* SHF operation on 1296 MHz, 2400 MHz, 3500 MHz, 5700 MHz, 10 GHz, 24 GHz
* APRS (Automatic Position Reckoning System)
* Amateur Satellite Operation
* Home Brew manufacture of equipment
* WICEN operation (Wireless Institute Civil Emergency Network)
* Echolink (There is currently an Echolink node operational in Traralgon. The Node number is 326982, Callsign is VK3BBB-L & is operational 24/7 on 146.475MHz)

The club runs several repeaters (VK3RLV, VK3RGU, VK3RWG, VK3RWD) and beacons (VK3RGI on 2 m, 70 cm, 23 cm & 13 cm).