Nov 27:  Free SSTV online book: Martin, OK2MNM has made his new book "Image Communication on Short Waves" available free on the web.
You can either read it online or download the chapters in pdf format:
http://www.sstv-handbook.com/

Nov 13:  ZR5S updated the MARC Infrastructure & Frequency List.  Thank you Shaun!

Nov 5:  Shaun ZR5S went to Groenekloof with a professional tower climber.  First all old antennas were removed from the top pole.  Then a diamond antenna was fitted to the very top for our D-Star repeater for the rx side.  Amazing how he could shimmy up a smooth 50mm pipe...

Oct 20: ZS5CID and ZR5PDL got the Zwartbeg repeater up and running at the new site.  Well done guys - nice to be able to make contact with you again on 2m

Oct 15: Jamboree on air at the Scout Hall, Howick.  We had our well attended monthly meeting at 11h00.  This was followed by Jota in the hall.

Oct 8:  A handful of members pitched and moved the shack contents to a store room provided by Ian ZS5AZ.  Present were ZS5EL, ZS5AZ, ZS5DM and YL, ZR5SF and ZS5ML

Sep 17:  We held our AGM at Rural Metro, our first meeting at Rural Metro.  It was most successful, and all found the venue first class.  Thanks you Des, ZS5DDM for making this happen.  The meeting itself was well attended and painless.  The same committee was elected, with the addition of Evert, ZS5EFP.  The committee will be convening a meeting shortly to determine committee portfolios. 
In addition, it was decided to disband the HHN.  The current editor does not have the time to continue with it, and there are no volunteers to carry on with it.  If a volunteer steps forward, it can be continued again.
The following awards were handed out:
Cindy Cup: ZS5EFP, ZR5S, ZR5SF
HHN Cup: ZS5GEL
Robin Cup: ZS5EL
Bennett Cup: ZS5SF
Walter Reid Cup: ZS5JNB
Chairman's Cup: ZS5CU

Eric and Graham managed to secure the Richmond site at Burne Valley.  We will be installing a repeater here as soon as we have secured all equipment.

Sep 15:  Shaun ZR5S made a trip up the mountain and switched the repeater back on.

Sep 13:  Gilboa repeater went off air.  Tripped circuit breaker or blown power supply?

Aug 20:  MARC members helped with comms on the Capital Climb.  Another most enjoyable event for those who participated.  This was followed up by our monthly meeting at the Natal Carbineers.

Aug 13:  Went up to the Burn Valley repeater site.  A very nice site for a repeater!  We will now negotiate space and attend to the paperwork to send things into motion.

Aug 06:  The trip to Burn Valley for a site inspection for our new repeater site was postponed due to adverse weather conditions.

July 16: We held our monthly meeting at the Natal Carbineers.  David ZS5JNB held a fascinating talk on his balloon project.  Watch this space, there will still be a lot of interesting data on this project!

July 16:  The orbiting of ARISSat One has been delayed for a few weeks. According to ARISSat One Project Manager Gould Smith, WA4SXM, the former Suit-Sat will not make an appearance in space until sometime in August. In a news release, Smith said he and ARISS Hardware Engineer Lou McFadin, W5DID, participated in a teleconference call this week with NASA to review the Roscosmos spacewalk procedures for the release of ARISSat One during E-V-A 29. For those who never heard the term before, E-V-A is an acronym for Extra Vehicular Activity and is NASA-ese for describing a spacewalk. Smith now says the discussion centered on preparation procedures including the battery being charged and assembled into the satellite. Also discussed were the procedures to remove the protective quilts from the solar cells and turning on the safety switches prior to deployment. During a later teleconference Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, announced that the ARISSat One battery will be charged in late July and a test of the system will be conducted from the ISS from 30 July at 19:15 to about 12:00 or 14:00 UTC July 31. The standard ARISSat One 2 metre downlink band plan should be transmitted as well as the FM signal also down linked on 437,55 MHz.

July 9:  Had a great family day at World's View!  The work party was a great success, and was well attended.  Photos can be viewed here.

July 3: ZS5ML travelled to Greytown and switched the link back on.  Now the 145.775 Greytown repeater is linked to the rest of the network again.  Hilton is still unlinked, as as is Estcourt.

July 3: Our next work party will be at World’s View at 09h30 this coming Saturday, the 9^th of July. The necessary material has been supplied. This work party will hopefully finish the work to be done. The following is on the agenda - the shelving has to be installed. The existing electric plugs and cables will be replaced with new equipment. And the interior will be painted.

URGENT NOTICE TO ALL AMATEUR LICENSEES - ICASA has cancelled over 34 000 radio licenses that have remained unpaid for the past 365 days. This includes all amateur radio licenses that are unpaid. Check that you have paid your license and if you do not have a valid printed license or an official receipt call ICASA at 011 566 3313 or 011 566 3319 between 08:30 - 16:00 Monday - Friday. PLEASE HAVE YOUR LICENSE NUMBER HANDY. If your amateur license was cancelled call now and ICASA will re-instate it if you can prove payment. If you have not paid, do so now using the information and account number on your last license.

A YEAR OF THE MOON IN 2½ MINUTES - And a new on-line time lapse video of the Moon produced by the Goddard Space Flight Centre's Scientific Visualization Studio compresses one month into 12 seconds and one year into 2,5 minutes. Constructed, using data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, the video shows how the Moon wobbles in its orbit, the way that it changes in libration and axis tilt and its numerous phases. You will find the video at YouTube by taking the shortcut of tinyurl.com/3ffmhbe.

July 2:  ZS5EFP is making progress with the repeater set up, but the pin outs on the Motorola radios are different to the documented ones, and the repeater interface boards also need modifications, as they don't function as per documentation.  Thanks Evert for your hard work, especially since this is a lot more complicated that plug and play!

June 29: ZS5EFP made a long trek to Estcourt and switched off the repeater there.  All is quiet now.  The link radio will be replaced.  The faulty Hilton repeater is still in place and will only be replaced once ZS5EFP manages to set up one of the new repeaters.  The Hilton 145.6625 repeater will remain tone guarded in future due to the increased rf experienced.  We will also try and install an additional cavity filter.

June 28:  The lock ups are happening during the day as well now.  ZS5ML travelled to Greytown and switched off the link radio, removing the 145.775 from the equation.  In spite of that, the interference was still there, but we decided to keep it unlocked until we had resolved the matter.

June 23:  The rest of the repeater network is starting to lock up again especially at night.  As Hilton has been unlinked, it is something on the rest of the network. We are hoping that it is not the uhf link, as the uhf repeater at Gilboa is on a high site with lots of RF.  World's View is not suspected, as no input interference is heard.  The likely faulty repeaters are Estcourt, Greytown and then Alverstone.

June 21:  The repeater network has been locking up periodically for about 2 weeks, especially at night.  Hilton was suspected, as was Greytown.  We could not monitor Estcourt direct, but decided to switch them off one by one, starting at Hilton.  ZS5EFP then switched off the Hilton link, and all was quiet!  We can hear the Hilton repeater, no in stand alone mode, lock up from time to time.  It will be replaced with one of our new repeaters.

June 18:  We had our monthly meeting today.  It was great to meet one of our new members, Burl ZS5BRS, and 3 Hamnet members from Highway who came up for the digital presentation by Shaun ZR5SF.  Thanks Shaun for the wonderful demonstration, and for the documentation which you can download here, and here is the link to Ham Radio Delux

June 10:  The work party for World's View was cancelled because of the wet weather still experienced early Friday evening.  The walls would not dry up sufficiently by Saturday morning to enable them to be painted.  It will be reconvened after our monthly meeting.

June:  Membership subscriptions are due once again, as our financial year end is at the end of June.  Membership fees are unchanged, and stay at R150pa. Those who want printed copies of the HHN posted, please add R100 to your subscription.  The normal discount of 33.3% applies to pensioners.  Here is a breakdown of the complete list

5 June:  ZS5ML and ZS5GEL fetched the Greytown repeater from Pmb today and then installed it at our Greytown site. It seems to be working well.  Please test it (145.775, no tone) and send us your feedback.  A special thank you to Evert for having repaired it

29 May:  10 of our members helped as radio marshals in this great event.  It was a great day in the field as usual.  Thanks to all of you who helped!

More pictures can be viewed here

28 May:  A very well attended swopshop was held in Monteseel at the qth of ZS5JF.  Thanks to HARC for organising these events.

19 May: 9 students wrote the RAE in the new lecture room at Rural Metro - thanks Des for organising this.  Thanks also to Evert and Shaun for organising the RAE classes and exam.

14 May: Work party at World View - quite a bit was achieved.  Quote from Shaun ZR5SF: "we have scraped the whole building, painted the roof and tomorrow the fence will be done. so all that now remains is the painting inside and out and the electrics.  we had a great turn out ZS5AZ, ZS5PJ, ZU5DM, ZU5SAM , ZR5NC and myself all put hands to the grindstone."

17 April:  The 2011 SARL AGM was held.  More details can be found on their website

17 April:  Shaun uplifted the Estcourt repeater.  It is suspected that it has a dry joint - it was locking up the repeater network quite often.  Evert will be attending to it, as well as the Greytown repeater.

16 April:  Had our monthly meeting.  It was a pleasure to meet Ruth, ZS2QK, who joined us.  We will be holding the next work party at World's View on 7 May.  All are invited - there is quite a bit of work to be done (electrics, shelving, painting etc)

2 April: The work party at World's View was a success:  The grass was cut, fence repaired and the building was pressure cleaned.  Those who helped were Shaun ZR5SF, Neville ZR5NC, Des ZU5DM and Gwen and Mike ZS5ML.  David, thanks for popping by.  Here are two before and after pics:

More can be viewed here

1 April:  The new radio regulations have been published in the Government Gazette.  They are effective from today, 1 April 2011.  They are available from the member's section on the SARL website
Please have a look at them and post comments to artoday@sarl.org.za, or on the SARL forum.  They contain errors, but basically they contain two major changes - ZR and ZS will be on even footing, Class A, and the ZU (Class B) hf band plan will be restricted to 40m and 80m while only candidates younger than 20 years will be allowed to sit the exams, and they will have to convert to a Class A licence before the age of 25. 

20 March:  Gilboa is up again.  We replaced the power supplies there this morning.  This means that the World's View, Hilton and Estcourt repeaters are linked again.  We tested the antennas, and they passed with flying colours.

I uplifted the Greytown repeater so that it can be seen to, at least the tx on the link radio.

The Underberg link is still sick.  Phillip and Craig were hoping that the bad link was due to a deaf Gilboa - unfortunately this is not the case.  Phillip, please check the swr on the uhf antenna at Underberg when you fetch the radio.  I remember that you came through shortly after installing the repeater.  It was a bit scratchy, but not too bad.  It got scratchier with the next overs until you were not triggering Gilboa anymore.  Hopefully the repair will be simple and cheap

The Alverstone 600 repeater sounds like it has gone faulty

Please let me know if you can hear ZS5SIX on 50.321MHz  When it was at Shaun's ZR5SF qth, I could not hear it here - not sure how long the skip distances are with 6m (Joost, do you know?)  Bob could just hear it in the early hours of the morning today.  Hopefully it will be heard from stations further afield.

13 March:  Evert ZS5EFP repaired the Estcourt repeater by replacing the uhf link radio.  It is working very well, as confirmed by Tony in Estcourt and Ronnie and Rod in Ladysmith.  Thanks Evert!

Good news is that Ruth, ZS2QK, has moved to Pietermaritzburg.  Shaun lent her his hand held, and we heard her on air.  He will install her own radios this week, so listen out for Ruth.

Bert ZS5MQ was in his shack at Baynesfield on the open day today.  I know that many went there today, and I trust that Bert had a great day.

If you have anything of interest to post here, please email the info to zs5ml@marc.org.za

Ham Bulletin Readers
28 January - ZS5AZ
05 February - ZS5SF
12 February - ZS5V *
19 February - ZS5ML
26 February - ZS5AZ *
04 March - ZS5SF
11 March - ZS5V
18 March - ZS5ML
25 March - ZS5AZ

* ZS5V and ZS5AZ will swap.  Hope you have a great trip, Marjoke!

For a cool national repeater frequency map, click here.  Mike ZS6TAF kindly compiled this map

Try 3D APRS tracking here.  Enter the APRS station you want to follow and press "Track".  Thanks ZR5S, for this link

• Display a list of on-line Echo-Link stations with node numbers
• Here is another good weather site
• SA Weather and disaster information service

Active regional APRS map link

New - every member with an existing email address can be allocated a personalised email forwarder, where your email address is your
call-sign@marc.org.za.  This way you can email any club member with an existing email address, without needing the original email address - you just have to remember the call sign :-).

Also on offer is a full POP3 email address to members who do not have email addresses at the moment.  You will need an internet connection however to access these, and this can be done a number of ways, like connecting to the internet using your cell phone as a modem, connecting directly with your cell phone, using internet cafes etc.

Please contact the webmaster directly if you are interested and/or need more information (contact details are found in the "contact" link at the top of the page)

New APRS maps of Namibia and Botswana have been uploaded to our map download section.  They have been calibrated, and the calibration files are included in the compressed files.

6. The Amateur is Patriotic...
His knowledge and his station are always ready for the service of his country and his community.

Views expressed on this website do not necessarily echo those of MARC's members, in general

You can read some older history published here

Our sponsors, who make this site possible:
EdelNet and PmbNet:   Broadband solutions and networking.    Providing us with the domain name, web space and bandwidth, Echo-Link, E-QSO, APRS I-Gate, D-Star etc.