Enjoyed the Radio Old Timers Club lunch in Melbourne

Always a pleasure to attend these lunches. An efficient annual general meeting (I've joined the committee). Lovely to catch up with many old friends.

The multi-talented VK3YE was on tonight's ABC TV news

Watching the local TV news tonight and was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face, home brew hero, Peter, VK3YE:

Seeing him described as "Bus Expert" leaves too much unsaid. Here's my touched-up version:

The story showed a chart of expendature on buses by each state with Victoria coming last.

I'm told that VK3YE was also active on 774kHz AM in the morning running very high power.

Great stuff Peter.

 

Morning walk in the Australian bush with a DJI Neo drone

Almost every morning I go for a walk in the state forest opposite my house. It's very peaceful. This week, I purchased a little drone for antenna hanging activities and it turns out to have a "follow" mode where it will fly along behind you recording video. 

Later in the day I got my 40m dipole suspended higher in the trees. I tied flourescent bricklayer's string around the drone and flew it right over a near by tree and used it to pull a heavier rope over.

The Neo drone is better for this than my normal drone as the propellers have guards around them so the string doesn't get caught up when decending on the other side of the tree.

Installing FreeDV on Linux

In this video I walk through downloading, installing, running and doing the initial configuration of FreeDV on Linux. In this case I'm using Ubuntu 22.04 but it will be similar on derived distributions and I know it also works on Fedora based distributions.

FreeDV Sunday net - 19 stations

The biggest Sunday morning south east Australia FreeDV net so far this morning with 19 stations. Not everyone could transmit but I'm counting them anyway.

VK2DWG, VK2KNC, VK3AWA, VK3JF, VK3KR, VK3KEZ, VK3PCC, VK3SRC, VK3YV, VK1EJ, VK5LN, VK4BAP, VK5RM, ZL2TJM, VK2BLQ, VK3KVA, VK7DIK, VK3IK.

Great to talk with everyone and sorry I'm such a clutz at running the net. I need to figure out a better to run it than working through a changing list.

Installing FreeDV on macOS

To help newcomers I've made a video showing download, install and initial configuration of FreeDV on macOS.

My plan is to make a similar video for Linux but it would be wonderful if someone else could make the equivalent video for Windows users.

Tech Talk on ABC Radio

Atlassian is a hugely successful Australian software company that makes tools for software teams. Last week they surprised everyone by announcing the purchase of "The Browser Company" for almost one billion Australian dollars. 

Founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar financed the startup of Atlassian with $10,000 of credit card debt. Today, their market capitalisation is $45 billion US dollars. 

Peter Marks is a software developer and technology commentator from Access Informatics, joined Philip Clark on Nightlife to discuss the acquisition and other tech news. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/tech-talk-with-peter-marks/105755424 

This morning, after the Apple announcements I had several requests for comment including ABC Radio Darwin. My bit starts at 1hour and 6 minutes here. Host Adam Steer is a bit of a skeptic and has nostalgia for his old Nokia tradie's phone.

FreeDV Sunday net - 14 stations

The weekly FreeDV net on 40m in South Eastern Australia was excellent this morning despite wet weather here. Mark, VK5QI had planned a balloon launch that had to be delayed for the same reason.

7177 was busy so we moved to 7197 which caused a bit of confusion for a few minutes.

Stations on the frequency included VK2ATW, VK2TTL, VK3AWA, VK3BRT, VK3KEZ, VK3SRC, VK3YV, VK5GY, VK3KVA, VK5LN, VK5QI, VK5RM and ZL2TJM just listening but said "hi".

Thanks everyone for participating.