Greetings! We hope you enjoyed your visit to the University of Sydney Open Day. Engineering is a fine discipline, and we hope you’ll consider pursuing engineering at the University of Sydney. Whether or not you do, you might find the hobby of Amateur Radio a great way to enjoy your spare time and to “tune up” your engineering skills!
Professor Philip Leong is a licensed Amateur Radio operator, and a member of the Manly-Warringah Radio Society at Terry Hills in northern Sydney. So Philip invited us to set up a portable radio station at the Open Day, to show off this great hobby!
From its earliest days, over a century ago, radio enthusiasts have used Amateur Radio as a way to communicate over long distances, using voice or Morse code.
These days, those modes are still very popular, but with modern microcomputers, software, and miniature electronic components. With Amateur Radio we can send and receive data and images as well, without depending on Internet or mobile phone services.
In times of emergency, such as natural disasters like fire and hurricanes, Amateur Radio can be used to bypass damaged infrastructure and get essential messages where they need to be.
Some Amateur Radio links to explore:
- – Our KiwiSDR web-connected shortwave receiver
- – How to use it, one of the many lectures from our YouTube channel, VK2MB-TV.
- – SolarHam, with amazing images and time-lapse videos of the Sun, exploring how solar activity influences radio communications here on Earth.
- – PSK Reporter, near real time map showing radio signals to and from the Sydney area and our club radio station, VK2MB.
- – Google Maps APRS – using the Automated Packet Reporting System (Amateur Radio with GPS) to track vehicles, weather stations, critical incidents, and more. APRS is also used to track high altitude balloons.
- – Radio clubs in New South Wales… including a few of the other clubs in Sydney:
- – Amateur Radio New South Wales, at Dural, the state-wide group representing Radio Amateurs
- – Waverley Amateur Radio Society at Rose Bay, the club nearest the university
- – Hornsby and District Amateur Radio Club, up the North Shore railway line
- – Manly-Warringah Radio Society at Terrey Hills – our club!