Impressive NSW Home Brew meeting

We had the bi-monthly meeting at Dural on Sunday where the largest ever item brought for "show n tell" was supplied by Peter Stuart, VK2BEU - a 2002 Holden Combo XC he has skilfully converted to all electric drive.

Peter spoke about some of the things that re required to get a vehicle like this approved for road use. The batteries must be well anchored so they can't move (or fly) around.

There must be a functional window de-mister and he had to purchase heating elements to warm the air to meet this requirement.

This car is front wheel drive and the motor used is a 9" 22Kw, 120V device that draws a peak of 500A.

He's using Trojan wet cell batteries (16kWhrs) that allow him to drive to and from work - a daily commute of 35Kms with a 4.5 hour recharge time at each end.

It's been on the road since February 2008 and has travelled 10,000Kms.

The charger is built in so, as you see in the top photo, the car simply needs to be plugged in to the mains to recharge.

The main presentation of the day was a continuation of the "using valves" series by Stephen Lowing VK2BLQ.

On show were some more projects by Stephen and also a run through of the useful components that can be stripped from radio and TV chassis that can be sometime found on the curb during council cleanups.

This valve talk has prompted me to retrieve a "Panda Cub" transmitter I purchased many years ago that got left behind in Melbourne many years ago. I'm off to collect it next week and hope to get on air with a valve rig very soon.

Thanks to Dave VK3ASE and Dallas VK3EB for taking care of it! I last saw Dallas setting up a 160 portable station in a park.