Broadcast - 17 May 2026
t’s start this week with some good news. Adam, VK7AJP, has successfully upgraded his amateur radio qualification. He sat the advanced theory and regulations exams on Monday evening at the clubrooms and, by the sound of it, passed with distinction. He plans to keep the VK7AJP call sign, and he’ll also be applying for a two-letter call. Adam has been very active on the HF bands over the past year or so, and I’m sure he’s now looking forward to making use of the extra bands and privileges that come with the upgrade.
Last Wednesday evening, the NTARC clubrooms hosted the fortnightly Technical Night, which included a live presentation on the REAST YouTube channel titled “Our New Band Plans.” Around a dozen members arrived well before 7:30, grabbed a drink, picked up a slice of cake or two, and settled in for the session. It turned out to be a very informative evening, with Justin, VK7TW delivering an excellent overview of the proposed band-plan changes along with a valuable refresher on the current usage structure.
Thanks go to REAST for providing the feed for the forum. If you missed it, it’s well worth a visit to their YouTube channel for a catch up.
Andrew VK7DW, brought along a striking collection of printed Slow Scan TV images he received from the International Space Station as part of the ARISS Series 32 transmissions. The pictures were neatly presented on a laminated A3 display sheet and looked fantastic.
He also shared a confirmation from the Sakha Science Academy for a QSO with the RS18S CubeSat, with the successful decode verified via an eQSL card from Andrei, R0QAV.
All of the images were of impressive quality; no doubt the noise floor was helped by Andrew’s computer controlled, auto-tracking, quad-bay Yagi array.
Just for interest, this little RS18S CubeSat is the first satellite of the Sakha Republic, which if your geography is a little rusty like mine, is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean. They are currently heading into summer leaving its regular winter averages of below -35 °C behind them!
It was launched just after Christmas last year and didn’t begin SSTV transmissions until mid-February this year. The “1U” CubeSat was built around SPUTNIX Orbicraft-Pro bus. Its payload includes a cluster of 12 Arduino compatible microcontrollers, a scintillation gamma spectrometer, a camera, and a set of sun sensors for an experimental coarse attitude determination algorithm. Remember all this is packed into a 100 mm x 100 mm x 100 mm cube - the entire “1U” form factor in action.
The really great thing is school students of the Republic will be able to upload firmware to the payload Arduino microcontrollers to conduct their own experiments. Now that’s pretty cool!
As usual pictures will be available on the NTARC Web site under “Blogs” for this broadcast. NTARC Blogs
UPCOMING EVENTS
On Air Test and Technical Net session - Every Wednesday night, Test-Net and CW course on 3.580 MHz from 7 pm, then a Technical Net on 3.567 MHz from 7.30 pm till 8.30 pm. Your host for the evening is Nic, VK7WW.
Club Room Technical night - The next session will be Wednesday the 27th May and will commence at the usual time of 6.30 pm at the Club Room Archer Street, Rocherlea.
Coffee Morning - Held every Friday in the NTARC Club rooms. Time is from 10 am to noon.
Finally - If you have any items of news please email them to the Secretary at the following address news@ntarc.net all items to be received no later than 5 pm on the Friday prior to the Broadcast.
That’s all folks,
73, Stefan VK7ZSB.
