G’day from Central Queensland.

I’m Mark VK4XMC, and along with the members and committee of the

Gladstone Amateur Radio Club we would like to invite you to our annual fundraiser BBQ Saturday 9th March at the beautiful and family-friendly East Shores Gladstone Harbour.

Come and see live demos of the latest ICOM radios and get involved in a foxhunt or two. It's a casual gathering with radios to raffle and a fast auction.

All inquiries to [email protected]

or find us on Facebook.

See you there!

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

Tomorrow is the day that license fees are no longer required as the Class Licence regime comes into force. There is still some confusion about how certain matters will be dealt with under this new framework but it seems that the ACMA has been quite assiduous in following up on detail. It remains to be seen if we will end up with the regulations spelled out in plain language for everyone to understand, not just public servants.

I have wondered about the rivalry that contests evoke. Some people seem to have a very competitive spirit akin to sporting rivalries whilst others enjoy the effort of just doing better than they did before. Short burst activities such as sprints offer a relative equality to people within a time zone perhaps but with things such as grey line propagation involved there can be both advantage and disadvantage for contestants at different ends of the continent. Similarly the application of time zones to the duration of the contests can impact the success of stations and this is without the considerations of space weather influences.

Recent flare activity on the Sun has resulted in noise and blackouts effecting some geographical areas and not others. For example, it is possible that Western Australia could suffer a strike whilst the eastern states are unaffected.

With all the forecast material available on the internet from multitudinous sources, it makes the life of the DX operator on HF much simpler but the immediate effects on contest operators can be frustrating periods of inactivity.

So here is the dilemma: conditions are variable and can favour some areas above others, the rules could be amended but who can referee the variations and adherence or it could be accepted that there will never be fairness and scores simply represent the results on a particular event. All of this seems very complicated except for the last solution and that would require a cosmic shift in attitude for some operators.

I would suggest that the current sense of competitiveness really is misplaced when there is no “level playing field”. Imagine if at the upcoming Olympics if some competitors were allowed to claim running records with wind assistance or swimmers no longer had to touch as they turned in their lanes. The hue and cry would be enormous as when football teams have an extra player on the field during substitutions. Surely the same ethical standards should apply when we amateur operators compete!

I suppose this would be too hot a potato to hold and we won’t see any practical response to suggestions like this. However, I believe we should all be striving for the best in our pursuit of excellence and ensuring fairness in what we do should be at the top of the priority list.

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