March - April 2025
March - April 2025
 WIA Member Digital Edition Download
Editorial
UPDATE: "Deal" on 5 MHz band debunked by govt - see below
During my student days in Melbourne of the late 1960s, I recall the excited curiosity that spread across the local amateur radio community when a small team of university students revealed a proposal to build a satellite to operate on the amateur bands.
There was a degree of scepticism, too, as there was a general belief that space technology was the domain of “the professionals – engineers and scientists.” That may have been so, but then some radio amateurs were engineers and scientist. The unasked question was, “but . . . uni students?”
Mind you, that same small team of uni students managed to receive signals from one of the early orbiting weather satellites and print an image which they immediately took from Melbourne University to the Bureau of Meteorology headquarters – by taxi, no less – in the Melbourne CBD, beating the BoM’s engineers and scientists to the punch, so to speak, at taking advantage of the nascent satellite technology.
It’s incredible to look over the development and application of weather satellite technology and applications and marvel that it has become a fundamental component of daily life across the world, important in innumerable ways.
Members of that bunch of uni students who scooped the BoM went on to develop the Australis OSCAR-5 satellite and get involved in the development and launch of even more. As you would be aware, this story of the development of small satellites by Australian radio amateurs has been laid out in detail across the past two issues, completing in this issue, written by Rick Matthews VK5BGN with Jan King VK4GEY.
When a prototype beacon for AO-5 (as it was later known) was to be tested, the team organised a weather balloon flight – dubbed Bravo 5 – to carry a 29 MHz beacon aloft, encouraging reception reports from the Victorian radio amateur community.
On the appointed day, a palpable excitement propagated across on-air chat channels as those involved, and those just curious to sandbag, experienced the event on that day in May 1966. The hand-made recording of the beacon signal strength on my AR88 receiver across the two-hour flight is shown here. I realise it’s akin to string-&-sealing-wax science, but it was for me a formative experience.
It was but a few years later, in the 1970s, when microprocessors began finding application in amateur radio, that jokes were made that, one day, amateur rigs would ‘talk’ to one another without an operator’s involvement. That moment arrived a few years back. Printed QSLs are now a rarity, superceded by ubiquitous eQSLs and LotW. How far we have come.
Table Of Contents
Note: Errata & Corrections Issues 2 & 3 under Files For Download Link
General
 Notice of Annual General Meeting - WIA
AO-7 is the oldest man-made space object still working! - Rick Matthews VK5BGN, with Jan King VK4GEY, W3GEY
1968 – an auspicious April for amateurs in Australasia - David Wardlaw VK3ADW and Peter Wolfenden VK3RV
DX THEN & NOW - Roger Harrison VK2ZRH
Book Review - Applied Mathematics for Radio Amateurs- First edition - Fred Swainston (VK3DAC, VK4FE)
Declaration of Election of Directors - WIA
Technical
How to check your station for electromagnetic radiation safety compliance - Phil Wait VK2ASD
Portability on a budget, without fears or tears - Carmel Morris VK2NO
Product Review - 5760/432 MHz Transverter by SG Laboratory - Kevin Johnston VK4UH
Files For Download
Page Last Updated: Thursday, 28 Aug 2025 at 18:05 hours by Armag
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