Hi - I'm John VK4JPM Darling Downs Radio Club Secretary with the club update for Sunday 15th of December. Nice and quick this week, and as we move towards the end of the year our scheduled regular club activities take a break until the beginning of February. But don't lose track of the dates: Saturday 8 February for our next club lunch social, and Monday 10 February for the member's meeting and tech topic. More details on those in the coming weeks. Speaking of tech topics, we had a great session with John VK4JBE discussing Software Defined Radios. John gave us a cheat sheet to help with SDR selection and has kindly provided some follow-up materials to help get started. That info will be on the website in a bit. Not taking a break: the weekly club nets will continue: 2m on VK4RDD at 1000 local on Sundays, and 80m on Saturday evenings. Check out our website at www.ddrci.org.au, 73 from John VK4JPM at the Darling Downs Radio Club.

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking. Many of the things that I remember from my childhood are still part of the items that are still common today. The events are still followed but the things that are used have been modernised. I can remember a genuine tree being cut and mounted in the house and then adorned with suitable decorations. These days there is the convenience of store-bought manufactured trees and trinkets which aren’t necessarily valuable enough to wrap in tissue paper and store until the next year. When I first caught the bug of radio, I made my first logbook. It was nothing more than a school exercise book that I ruled up and labelled the columns for the date, time call signs etcetera. These days, a quick internet search will bring you many styles of logging from apps to printable styles, from records you can save on your electronic device to creating a permanent paper memento. That brought me to thinking about how we can make available stored information for use both within the shack, out in the field portable of course, and in our club activities too. Certainly, a printed form of reference is preferred by many of us but the convenience of electronic memory has a lot to recommend it. The amount of storage that is now cheaply available on memory cards and USB sticks is growing each year. When we think back to the now-lost WIA Callbook, there was so much material to guide operating in its pages; from frequencies of band segments to QSL bureau details and so much more made the pages. With the more precise division of bands as new modes are introduced, having a reference which can specify the correct details to use for a particular mode is handy both at home or portable. For clubs, a drive containing details of the club as well as linking to regulations, band plans awards, could be a great tool for new as well experienced amateurs. With PDF apps for free download, compiling and collating so much of the information can be done straight from the internet. Just be aware that a lot of material is subject to copyright ownership and permission must be obtained to publish it. This would apply to material from the ACMA and WIA, for instance. There will be those who don’t like the idea of electronic resources preferring paper-based material. However, the portability of a small drive overcomes the problems of poor internet services in an area and if designed properly it could be updated by the user or through a central data service. There have been problems previously when the material was distributed on disks and pen drives when piracy was a common practice for many and ownership of material was viewed as a commercial necessity. These days we don’t have a simple handbook or a callbook to help and it is sensible to remember that “when all else fails, there is amateur radio.” We just need to make it more convenient, at times. I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think….how about you?