Sydney Owen Abrahams VK4SOA

Syd became active in Amateur Radio after retirement in 1992.

He grew up in Brisbane after being born on 11th May 1927, and had various jobs in Brisbane, Coolangatta and more. With an interest in radio and strong church connections he met Evelyn and they raised two daughters and a son. He became an ordained minister in the Methodist Church then after 1977 in the Uniting Church. There were strong links to each community he served and even after retirement he made a huge contribution to Drought Relief in Central Western Queensland on behalf of Lifeline.

In retirement he was an active member of Bayside District Amateur Radio Society, where he was secretary for 4 years, and was a regular broadcaster on FM 101 Community Radio in Logan. Before moving into Nandeebie Retirement Village he was a regular on a local CW group in SE Queensland. His community life was curtailed by poor mobility after a fall in 2019 and Syd lost his wife Evelyn last year and we lost him on 18th August 2023.

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

Whether it is for personal use or for the benefit of others, these days the forecasts of a generation ago have come true. The internet has become the well spring of instant information as well as the dumping ground for fakes, frauds and scams. With social media platforms grabbing instant responses and publishing instant reports of varying quality, video sharing sites accumulating more than one person’s possible lifetime viewing each day and the world wide web stolidly accumulating information, propaganda and records of journeys placed in the public domain, it is not surprising that this surfeit of information is very much the chaff when all we need is the grain.

Of course what I am speaking about is the publicly available parts of the net, not the dark web or the private domains of military and commerce. What we seek to use has to be recalled easily and quickly and that makes it so much easier for the

fraudulent operator to get away with their bad intent if we aren’t savvy in our own behaviours.

I am old enough to have suffered the traps set for the seeker, the

student, where a site presents worthwhile material on a subject only to reveal a trap of viruses and or porn when you clicked on the next page. There is nothing like trying to clean your computer of viciously deposited malware when deadlines for a project is running down. These days it is the phishing scams that are played, particularly on social media with counterfeit accounts and innocent looking posts that seek personal information which can be used to hack a person’s privacy that we seem to encounter the most.

So what I am getting at is that we all need to use a level of caution and build our knowledge of the habits and ways of the internet and those users we encounter. This, to my mind, is an extremely good topic to follow up in our club structures. Perhaps

articles in newsletters and talks at meetings will help. Many of us with grey or thinning hair have joined the personal computing age without the level of cynicism that many newer devotees display. The experts want parents to educate their off spring in safe ways of the internet and I really think it is a matter all of us

should take on board.

In the manner that marked amateur radio of old, here is an opportunity to share information and experience for the benefit of all members.

No doubt as Spring envelopes us we are planning our activities for the summer months and into next year. How does talking about getting new members or running support sessions for members wanting to learn new skills fit into those plans?

There is no time like now to get stuck into planning and the better the planning the better the outcome.

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