QNews for July 19th 2026

What this episode covers

From Toowoomba, centre of the universe, comes the Darling Downs Radio Club's contribution to QNEWS for Sunday 19 July. I'm John VK4JPM, and I've just reconfirmed why it's a bad idea to eat chocolate before you record the news. Thanks to all the people who sent positive feedback after last week's piece in National News. We now know what caused the Telstra outage: a clock that went backwards to the wrong epoch, and then told all the downstream servers they were wrong. Even though things can't possibly fail with networks, they do. That's why being a well-prepared amateur radio operator is so important - we won't go out when a server spits the dummy. The club meeting last Monday with Di Main VK4DI was wonderful, and Di was her usual high energy self. She provided some really good tips for contesting, and if there's interest we plan to run a weekend workshop on contesting at a future date. Also in the not too distant future, but dates not set, we are going to schedule some upgrade assessments for Foundation to Standard and Standard to Advanced - plus we're always available to help Foundation applicants to get to their first rung on the ladder. For both of those, drop us a line to [email protected] and we'll put your name into the planning list. Coming up in the next two weeks: the first national Ausalert test is at 1400 on Monday 27 July. This is going to send a text to every phone in the country to confirm that the system works, and will work in an emergency - provided there's no clock failure. One thing that is important: if you have a mobile phone that you don't want to be heard, ensure that it's off or silenced for the test. This is probably going to be a bit like those science fiction movies where the aliens ping everyone at the same time. If you see a spaceship during the test, it's probably a coincidence... but see if you can bounce signals off it while it's there. There's no truth to the rumour that aliens rely on 2m handhelds. The other important event is the Club's Annual General Meeting at the Guide Hut at 1800 on Thursday 30 July. All the details are different from last year, but the AGM packet has gone to all members of record. If you haven't renewed your membership, you have less than a week before we draw the line ahead of the meeting. And if you're a member and you didn't get the AGM packet, please send a note to [email protected], and we'll sort out why it didn't appear. Membership renewal is via the big red button on the home page, and we have proof that the process can take less than five minutes and is secure. Week 30 of the 52-week Ham Challenge starts tomorrow, and it's still antenna month. You can read about it at hamchallenge.org, where you'll find that the aim this week is to "Build the cheapest antenna you can, and make a QSO with it". My money, and I'm really cheap, is that an unbent dry cleaning hanger is the go if you can still find one. Would certainly work on 2m or 70cm, and you can practice tuning radials at the same time. Probably won't work so well on 20m, but worth having a try anyway. What could go wrong? Hoping that all the repeaters are working this week, and thanks for listening. I'm John VK4JPM for the Darling Downs Radio Club. This is Gareth VK4GED You would have heard in a recent WIA National News broadcast about the WICEN Nets that are held on HF every week from VK4 and every month from VK2. Let's not forget the Brisbane Area WICEN Group has also been running its VHF Net every Sunday evening for several decades: Commencing at 7.30 pm local time, the net has been on VK4RBN but is now on VK4RES; The repeater's output frequency is 147.225, the offset in your transceiver is 600 kHz up, with a tone of 91.5; Net Controller is Gary VK4ZGB who will welcome all newcomers.

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