Do yourselves a favour and take a gander at the Notorious, maybe not as big or well-known as the Bounty, but one of a kind up this neck of the woods.
23rd and 24th at the Laurieton United Services Club Jetty from 10am till 4pm.
Cheers
VK2FSTU
Notorious at Ulladulla July 2013 – Photo by Lisa Hardwick
‘NOTORIOUS’ is a recreation of a 1480’s caravel, researched, designed and constructed by Graeme Wylie. The ten year project used 300 tons of reclaimed timber. ‘NOTORIOUS’ was launched in February 2011 at Port Fairy.
Admission is $5 for Adults, $2 for Children (2-15 years old). Onboard and below deck, all are welcome. Children must be supervised by an accompanying adult.
In a Wollongong local court last week, Magistrate M Stoddart fined Dan Morris $1500 and ordered that his FM broadcast equipment be confiscated, after Morris pleaded guilty to operating a radiocommunications transmitter without authority.
Regulator ACMA brought the action after it discovered Morris was broadcasting a reggae station without a licence into the suburbs of Wollongong.
“The transmitter was operating on 99.4 MHz in the commercial FM broadcast band, with a transmitter output power in the order of 150W,” according to an ACMA spokesperson.
Morris acknowledges what he did was against the law, but says he was serving the needs of a specific community with his broadcasts.
After trying unsuccessfully to get involved with the local community station, then unsuccessfully applying to the ACMA for a licence, Morris took matters into his own hands, getting hold of a transmitter and going to air anyway.
He has told radioinfo about the day his station was raided:
On the day of the raid I really felt like it was more about protecting the financial investments of commercial license holders than a unlicensed transmission issue.
The Illawarra region won’t be issued any new licenses and the existing community license holder is not open for the community to access its services and does not program according to the whole demographic of the local region. I personally experienced this, which frustrated me and led me down the path I chose.
I truly believe that the youth and the multicultural diversity in our region is not being served at all sufficiently.
The government enforce and aid the control and monopoly over this so called valuable spectrum.
I understand the danger of unlicensed broadcasting in the sense of someone spreading hate fear propaganda or political religious beliefs or views. But c’mon its 2016 there’s the internet for that. In that regard I always kept the content ethical and there was no complaints from the ACMA about malicious content.
When the station was taken off air, Morris’ listeners and facebook fans threw a ‘pirate party’ to raise money for the court defence.
Despite the adverse judgement, Morris wants to keep his station on air one way or another.
I’m going to continue with IRIE FM online and campaign for the ACMA to allow our request to be heard. Stay tuned to the Facebook page for details on up coming IRIE FM events and updates on the campaign.
Morris has earned some noteriety for his broadcasting venture. Youth station triple j recently invited him in for a reggae guest spot with Lewi McKirdy and the local paper has also covered his activities.
Wollongong’s IRIE FM is modelled on the successful Jamaican radio station of the same name, based in Kingston town, but has no formal affiliations with the tropical island station in the home of Reggae.
Caution, many TAFLA’s (Three and Four Letter Acronyms) ahead! 🙂
VDSL (Very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line) is a technology used by Australia’s NBNCo in the rollout of the National Broadband Network. FTTN (Fibre-to-the-Node) Broadband rollouts see internet carrying optical fibre cable laid from the telephone exchange to cabinets located strategically around a neighbourhood (the cabinet being the ‘node’), and distribution from the cabinet to subscriber’s homes is then handled by VDSL technology over the existing Telstra copper phone lines.
VDSL is, simply put, a faster version of ADSL which Australia has used for internet access for many years. ADSL2+ speeds topped out at 24Mbp/s, whereas VDSL technology currently tops out at 100Mbp/s. This amazing performance comes at a price – VDSL only operates over short distances of around 1200 meters (hence the need for many localised nodes about the neighbourhood).
Fun fact: In the UK ‘Fibre to the Node’ (FTTN) is arguably more correctly referred to as ‘Fibre to the Cabinet” (FTTC). Pictured: FTTN Cabinet / FTTC Node. 🙂
Unfortunately, VDSL also appears to cause HF interference. Don Beattie G3BJ reports the number of instances of interference from VDSL has increased over the last couple of years in the UK – on the IARU Region 1 websitehe says:
The number of instances of interference from VDSL has increased over the last couple of years in the UK. To help amateurs to detect interference from VDSL the RSGB has drawn up a leaflet, the 15th in a series of EMC leaflets which the RSGB EMCC has produced.
The leaflet has been uploaded to this site by G4JKS in response to an action agreed at the first EMC Committee meeting at the Interim Meeting or Permanent Committees in Vienna on 16th to 17th April 2016.
The ABC will apologise to its viewers and review its science program Catalyst after an independent investigation found a controversial episode on the potential health risks of Wi-Fi that went to air earlier this year breached its editorial standards.
The damning finding – which will see reporter Maryanne Demasi suspended from on-air assignments until at least September – comes two years after a similar investigation slammed a Catalyst program questioning the use of cholesterol-reducing medications.
As with the earlier program on cholesterol, the Wi-Fi episode will be removed from the internet.
Prominent scientists attacked the February program at the time as scare-mongering and unscientific for questioning the links between Wi-Fi and brain tumours.
Now an investigation by the ABC’s Audience and Consumer Affairs Unit has found it breached the broadcaster’s standards.
“While accepting the importance of investigating public health issues relating to safety of technology, A&CA concluded that the episode breached the ABC’s editorial policies standards on accuracy and impartiality,” ABC director of television Richard Finlayson said.
“The ABC accepts the findings and acknowledges that errors were made in the preparation and ultimate approval of the program.”
The review found “a number of inaccuracies within the program that had favoured the unorthodox view that mobile phones and Wi-Fi caused health impacts including brain tumours”.
Mr Finlayson said the ABC would:
Make an announcement about the findings on Tuesday night’s Catalyst.
Remove the episode, titled Wi-Fried?, from the Catalyst website.
Publish information about the findings on the Catalyst website and ABC Corrections page.
More broadly, the ABC will review the strategy and direction for the popular program. Until that review is completed in September, Dr Demasi, who also fronted the cholesterol program, will not be part of any on-air assignments.
Rodney Croft, a global authority on the health effects of radiation and professor of public health psychology at the University of Wollongong, said at the time that the program had given weight to “a fringe position that is not supported by science”.
“I was particularly disappointed to see Wi-Fried aired yesterday in the guise of science journalism,” he said.
“Given that radiofrequency emissions are one of the most heavily researched agents that science has ever assessed, and given that (contrary to Catalyst’s claims) no substantiated health effects have emerged, we can be very confident that the emissions are indeed safe,” Professor Croft said.
In 2013, ABC health specialist Norman Swan launched an extraordinary attack on Catalyst, saying two broadcasts on cholesterol and heart attacks might cause people to die if they went off their medications.
In May 2014, the ABC removed both episodes from the Catalyst website after an investigation found one program had breached the broadcaster’s editorial standards.
Our regular thanks to John VK2AYQ and Trevor VK2TT for another excellent read – and thank you to all contributors.
Members should now have received their copy by email (several days ago actually), but website copies of the current and past editions can always be found here.
Note that attached to this emailed edition were Notices regarding the upcoming AGM which is to be held on August 6th. Info on the event is here.
Morris acknowledges what he did was against the law, but says he was serving the needs of a specific community with his broadcasts.
VDSL is, simply put, a faster version of ADSL which Australia has used for internet access for many years. ADSL2+ speeds topped out at 24Mbp/s, whereas VDSL technology currently tops out at 100Mbp/s. This amazing performance comes at a price – VDSL only operates over short distances of around 1200 meters (hence the need for many localised nodes about the neighbourhood).
