QNEWS - AUGUST 20 2023 - VK4 ON AIR

Hi, This is Alan VK4SN, Remembrance Day contest manager.

The last day for log submission is Sunday the 26th at 0300z.

My internet service provider sometimes thinks that logs coming to me is spam and are blocked.

Please make sure that if you've sent a log, that your callsign is showing in the submitted logs link on vklogchecker.com

If not, please email me. Details on the WIA RD page.

I type up paper and attached logs to email, and submit to vklogchecker.com. All operators will get an automated acknowledgment when submitted. Success or failure is shown on screen when the log is submitted.

Good luck This is Alan VK4SN

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking.

I hope that the people out and playing radios for the contests are getting many contacts and the spirits are holding up.

One of the issues that gets thrown up from time to time is the growing amount of e-waste that our consumer society generates. There was a time when much of what is regarded as rubbish such as broken white goods and non-working electronics were sort for parts that could be repurposed into other projects. There was many an electric motor from an old washing machine that found a new life driving a concrete mixer or wood working machinery. It hardly needs to be said that the larger components from electronics were popular, too. Tuning capacitors from broadcast radios were scavenged and put into crystal sets or if they were from valve equipment, home constructors looked at re-using them in receivers, transmitters and antenna matching units, for instance.

I know that there is still a cadre of enthusiastic builders who keep up the tradition and especially those lucky enough to live in a local government area that conducts kerbside collections every year or two. I see posts to groups and pictures too of valuable pieces of gear from computing, industrial and home entertainment prior lives that have been saved from the recycler’s skips. There is one YouTube creator who has a few years of presentations on items that he has rescued from the skips in the building where he works.

Locally I see volunteer groups with collection points for items which carry a bounty like glass bottles and aluminium cans and these groups not only make funds to sustain them but contribute to the cleanliness of the local areas in which they operate. My question then becomes, what can we radio and electronics enthusiasts do to re-purpose e-waste?

When you consider the ubiquity of home computers and 20 year old audio gear there is a source of gold and other metals, if you want to go that route, or components and equipment that can be used as training and teaching aids. One of the big issues these days is that it is possible to come into amateur radio with simply a book learning background. Like many adult learners, I feel that when I construct something and apply the formulae and consider the design principles, the theory put into practice fixes the lessons in the memory. The teaching becomes learned knowledge and the satisfaction comes with an item that was made and which works.

From the humble wall wart, the computer power supply to the old sub woofer with a good audio amplifier there are things that can be learned by taking them apart, modifying them as needed and putting the result to use in the shack. How much more exciting is the club class when the learner has a physical reward as well as completing a lesson on the whiteboard?

What I am suggesting is that for groups that have the basic resources of space to collect and sort e-waste there are opportunities to enhance the things that they already do, save some good gear and make some money from the leftover, if possible.

I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think....how about you?