Members and visitors socialising and playing radio in the dim light…

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”, goes the motto of the United States Postal Service.

The same could be said of the Manly-Warringah Radio Society. Well, we don’t deliver mail , but last night (27-Nov-2024) we did experience some minor disruption due to high winds impacting much of southeast Australia. Nevertheless, it was meeting night, and the show had to go on!

The high winds caused power blackouts over much of Sydney, including the Terrey Hills area where our club rooms are located:

Ausgrid map of the power blackouts around Terrey Hills

Out popular VK2MB KiwiSDR was unavailable for a while, as was our repeater audio streaming service, but both are back online now.

We had a few students visiting from Sydney University, who we expect to see again this Saturday at the University’s Open Day. Our club station VK2MB/p will be active there to tempt both prospective and current students into the hobby of Amateur Radio (Philip VK2APL is a member of the club and Director of the University’s Computer Engineering Laboratory).

Improvised lighting using a flashlight and the bottom of the club projector
Simon VK2YU and Colin VK2JCC computing by candlelight
Some mystery comms gear near the candle…

Unfortunately, we didn’t have battery backup for the club HF station (put this on the club TODO list!) so VK2MB was not active during the blackout. The antennas still look pretty good though…

The moodily lit club TH-3 antenna and friends

Fortunately, the clubs repeaters are located off-site, where they still had access to reliable power, so we still had solid voice communications on VHF and UHF.

Emmanuel VK2EMM checking the repeaters

Thanks to Mike VK2MDBP, Richard VK2ARH, and Yu Qiu BG6VCU (aka VK2/AK6CU) for the photos.