QNews for May 18th 2025

Hi - I'm John VK4JPM, Secretary of the Darling Downs Radio Club. It's Sunday 18 May and here's the news for this coming week.

Tomorrow, Monday, I'll be at the BDARS tech/social night talking about home automation - expanding a bit on a chat I did last year. If you're wondering how this stuff can work for you, come along and find out. You don't need google, alexa or even a Linux server - although you could use any or all of those. In this case, the journey has been about integrating some very cheap options under a single app to do quite a lot of useful tasks with high reliability. I'll have a crate of toys with me, and we'll configure some IoT devices on the spot so that you can see how simple it is to get working.

If you're in Brisbane tomorrow night 19 May at 1900, drop in to the Redlands Coast Museum in Cleveland and join us. Details are at bdars.org.au; scroll down to the bottom of the home page and click on the Tech/Social night link.

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking.

Do you ever have one of those weeks where things just don’t pan out? I managed to have my week disrupted over the weekend and beyond when a change of medicine seems to have upset more than the apple-cart. Fortunately it was not happening before an approaching storm or flood and the supply of a necessary paper product has managed to be sufficient for the immediate issues.

What was annoying was that I managed to miss taking the news broadcast and my retreat has been to watching videos that I can no longer remember. Just to impress my simple mind, I didn’t have the concentration to turn on the rig and try and catch some of the signals on the waterfall.

I find that being able to tune into the world, that is amateur radio is a great diversion from some of the more frustrating and mundane life events. The fact that the head couldn’t accommodate this simple activity suggests that things might have been more distressing that just a lot of pain in the guts to put it in Aussie lingo.

Anyway the GP has lined me up with some good diagnostic tests so I expect to get an answer as to what has gone wrong, soon.

However, this is not to spread the word of my health issues but it is just to illustrate that for the majority of us, there will be times when issues impinge on our activities. That contest, that field operation may just have to be put aside until things are back to normal. As much as what we individually feel it is the knowledge that others of our bent will understand when we don’t make a sked or turn up at a club lunch.

Similarly, allowing for time, age, health and other factors the camaraderie that is part of amateur radio ensures that people are keeping an eye out for others.

Sadly there are the circumstances where duty to loved ones inhibits the ability to physically interact with others locally.

With all the tools at our disposal, the amateur radio world should and can be one most interconnected groups in the community.

This brings me to another opportunity and that is running safety nets.

Whether simplex or via repeater, or on what service it is possible to offer a community resource. A club or group can run such a for all sorts of situations such as storm watch and road closures. The contacts can be open to only members of the group, repeater users and what ever licences permit.

With voice and video streaming over the internet, radio can be fallback position and more targeted than a totally open group.

I think this sort of welfare can be a great help if only we can organise it.

I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and that's what I think, how about you?