March Oxtales has been released!
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, but website copies of the current and past editions can always be found here.
Laurie Gordon, VK2GZ writes via the WIA Club Mailing List:
I am writing to ask for your help in promoting the Sydney Amateur Radio Ferry Contest which takes place on Sydney Harbour on Sunday March 13th from 10:00 to 16:00 local time. This unique new contest brings hams from all over the nation to Sydney Harbour and invites them to make VHF / UHF contacts from any of the system’s ferries and 36 wharves.
With all-day travel for just $2.50 using an Opal Card, this is a great way to spend a Sunday!
To add some fun, operation is restricted to hand-held radios (any mode) and can include repeater, simplex or “eyeball” (a handshake and an exchange of QSL cards) contacts. Contestants can obtain points multipliers by working multiple ferries and multiple wharves during the six hour contest. A number of awards, including the prestigious “Worked All Ferries” (or WAF Award), are available.
The event is being run by the Waverley Amateur Radio Society (VK2BV) and we will be running a club station at Rose Bay Ferry Wharf for the duration of the contest. We hope to eyeball as many contestants as we can during the day.
Please pass this email on to all of your members and encourage them to take part. If you have a club meeting, a net or other event between now and Sunday 13th March, we would appreciate a mention as well. Please consider promoting the contest through your website or Facebook page. (VK2ICQ notes: Done! 🙂 )
This is a fun contest for the amateur radio community but also a great way to promote amateur radio to the community at large. My personal thanks in advance for your support.
Full contest details are at here. If you have any questions prior to the event then please direct them to the Contest Managers – Rob Halliday VK2XRH (rob at hallidays.id.au) or Andy Mitchell VK2RM (amitch at iinet.com.au).
We’ve posted about this unique event before here. Here’s hoping some members will either be in Sydney at the time or be prepared to make the pilgrimage for what’s sure to be a great day (devoid of any seasickness)….
From the Raspberry Pi Blog, original post here.
VK2ICQ Notes: Pricing below is regular American pricing. The Raspberry Pi 3 is available from several resellers in Australia: Little Bird Electronics (in stock ATM!), Element 14 and RS Components. Prices start at $59AUD for the board alone plus shipping, and around $125AUD for a starter kit with case, PSU, SDCard, etc.
Exactly four years ago, on 29 February 2012, we unleashed the original 256MB Raspberry Pi Model B on a largely unsuspecting world. Since then, we’ve shipped over eight million units, including three million units of Raspberry Pi 2, making us the UK’s all-time best-selling computer. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has grown from a handful of volunteers to have over sixty full-time employees, including our new friends from Code Club. We’ve sent a Raspberry Pi to the International Space Station and are training teachers around the world through our Picademy program.
In celebration of our fourth birthday, we thought it would be fun to release something new. Accordingly, Raspberry Pi 3 is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Raspberry Pi 2), featuring:
For Raspberry Pi 3, Broadcom have supported us with a new SoC, BCM2837. This retains the same basic architecture as its predecessors BCM2835 and BCM2836, so all those projects and tutorials which rely on the precise details of the Raspberry Pi hardware will continue to work. The 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU complex has been replaced by a custom-hardened 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53. Combining a 33% increase in clock speed with various architectural enhancements, this provides a 50-60% increase in performance in 32-bit mode versus Raspberry Pi 2, or roughly a factor of ten over the original Raspberry Pi.
James Adams spent the second half of 2015 designing a series of prototypes, incorporating BCM2837 alongside the BCM43438 wireless “combo” chip. He was able to fit the wireless functionality into very nearly the same form-factor as the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B; the only change is to the position of the LEDs, which have moved to the other side of the SD card socket to make room for the antenna. Roger Thornton ran the extensive (and expensive) wireless conformance campaign, allowing us to launch in almost all countries simultaneously. Phil Elwell developed the wireless LAN and Bluetooth software.
All of the connectors are in the same place and have the same functionality, and the board can still be run from a 5V micro-USB power adapter. This time round, we’re recommending a 2.5A adapter if you want to connect power-hungry USB devices to the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi 3 is available to buy today from our partners element14 and RS Components, and other resellers. You’ll need a recent NOOBS or Raspbian image from our downloads page. At launch, we are using the same 32-bit Raspbian userland that we use on other Raspberry Pi devices; over the next few months we will investigate whether there is value in moving to 64-bit mode.
We’ll keep updating this list over the next couple of days, but here are a few to get you started.
Are you discontinuing earlier Raspberry Pi models?
No. We have a lot of industrial customers who will want to stick with Raspberry Pi 1 or 2 for the time being. We’ll keep building these models for as long as there’s demand. Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B will continue to sell for $25 and $35 respectively.
What about Model A+?
Model A+ continues to be the $20 entry-level Raspberry Pi for the time being. We do expect to produce a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A, with the Model A+ form factor, during 2016.
What about the Compute Module?
We expect to introduce a BCM2837-based Compute Module 3 in the next few months. We’ll be demoing Compute Module 3 at our partners’ launch events this morning.
Are you still using VideoCore?
Yes. VideoCore IV 3D is the only publicly documented 3D graphics core for ARM-based SoCs, and we want to make Raspberry Pi more open over time, not less. BCM2837 runs most of the VideoCore IV subsystem at 400MHz and the 3D core at 300MHz (versus 250MHz for earlier devices).
Where does the “10x performance” figure come from?
10x is a typical figure for a multi-threaded CPU benchmark like SysBench. Real-world applications will see a performance increase of between 2.5x (for single-threaded applications) and >20x (for NEON-enabled video codecs).
Via HackADay, original post here by Jenny List.
Sputnik. The first artificial satellite, the launch of which precipitated the space race. Without the frenetic pace of technological advancement as the USA and the USSR vied with each other during the decade following its launch it is safe to say that we might not yet have many of the tools and components we take for granted as electronics enthusiasts and makers today.
[Frank Waarsenburg PA3CNO] has taken on the interesting task of recreating one of the Sputnik radio transmitters using a set of the original Russian tubes.
Sputnik itself was an astounding achievement for the team of engineers and scientists who put it into orbit, but the drive to beat the USA to the post within the 1957 International Geophysical Year meant that it was a surprisingly simple device. A sphere pressurised with nitrogen and with those iconic whip antennas mounted on its outside, containing a battery, 20 and 40 MHz tube radio transmitters, and a fan cooling system. Its design was a Soviet state secret, but in 2013 [Oleg, RV3GM] located the schematic used for the transmitter.
The tubes are slightly unusual, being a wire-ended design with all electrodes mounted on rods the length of the glass envelope. This design feature gave them a resistance to acceleration and vibration, making them suitable for use in aircraft, missiles, and rockets.
[Frank] faced one or two hurdles during his construction, including the development of a suitable power supply and finding an unfortunate bug in the Russian schematic. If you speak Dutch or are prepared to use a translation tool his full write-up can be found in the Dutch language RAZzies magazine, December issue featuring the power supply (PDF, Dutch), and January issue featuring the transmitter (PDF, Dutch).
The Sputnik satellite has not appeared on its own in these pages before, but we have recently featured the early OSCAR amateur radio satellites and the revival of a piece of space-race-era Soviet rocket technology.
Via [Stefan, HB9TWS], whose English-language coverage of the transmitter was of great help.
From the ARRL, original post here. 02/23/2016
It took nearly 20 years, but AMSAT Vice President of Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, finally qualified for Satellite DXCC. Glasbrenner submitted the requisite number of QSLs for checking at the Orlando HamCation February 12-14, and ARRL Media and Public Relations Manager Sean Kutzko, KX9X, verified KO4MA’s achievement.
“It’s been a long process getting to satellite DXCC,” said Glasbrenner, who got into satellite operating around 1993, and was only on RS-12 (Mode K) for a long time. “This was the Russian satellite payload that used 15 meters up, and 10 meters down,” he explained.
His activity stagnated for a long time during and after his college years, but in 1999 he got involved in working the LEO satellites, such as UO-14 and AO-27, “then FO-20 and FO-29 for a little more distance, and then on the perigee passes of AO-10, when it was still semi-usable,” he added.
“When AO-40 was launched into a high-Earth orbit, I dove into Mode U/S with gusto,” Glasbrenner recounted. During the 3 years that AO-40 was active, he spent many late nights and early mornings looking for the next new one. “Eventually I was using a 3 foot solid dish with preamp and downconverter for the Mode S downlink, and this is when some of my most exciting contacts came.”
Highlights included working VU2MKP at a few degrees of elevation to the east, right after the satellite came up, and working KH2GR in the other direction, “while the satellite was off-pointing and the spin fades were horrendous, and timing each call during peaks.”
When AO-40 went silent, Glasbrenner said he was about a dozen short of DXCC, and he realized that he’d have to be proactive to finish up with just LEO satellites. Many of his new ones came from operators who went the extra mile to operate from places like the Caribbean and Greenland.
“The absence of operational HEO satellites makes satellite DXCC nearly impossible for newer operators,” he said, “but I’m confident that continued membership and support of AMSAT by any operator interested in satellites will result in the successful return to high orbit by one of the several opportunities currently being pursued by the organization. Strike while the iron is hot!”
Bernhard Dobler, DJ5MN, has been at the top of the DXCC-Satellite standings since 2000, and has 274 entities confirmed.