QNews for April 21st 2024

Q-News AR News from Queensland

VK4JDJ Dennis Bauer SK 12 April Dennis grew up in Northern Queensland and in his early years lived in a small community on the Palmerston Range where it rained nearly all year which made for interesting bus rides on the muddy road to school. Dennis led a life of various jobs on cattle properties, drilling camps, road maintenance work and hotel work and picked up a range of varied skills. On one occasion Dennis designed a full wave 80 meter horizontal loop antenna with support posts which was huge but certainly worked. Dennis was a regular on Rob VK4ARQ CW 0530 to 0630 net with hams from Darling Downs, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bowen, Townsville and atherton Tableland locations plus Cairns and occasionally others joined in. They got up to some high sending speeds. Dennis acquired a few different paddles from Italy and other countries. He also enjoyed QRP ops and building various projects to incorporate his station Usually a quiet bloke who “plugged away” at projects and learning. Many hams have similar attributes.

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

During the past week, I received an email from the ACMA seeking clients to complete a satisfaction survey. This is a good indication that pleasing the client base is a priority and I would suggest that we all take the opportunity of spending the 4 to 5 minutes this takes. With the introduction of the Class Licence, people have listed what they see as deficiencies in the material being made available and here is an opportunity to personally let the regulator know our thoughts.

“The times are a-changin” was the lyric in an old song and surely that is true. We amateurs do crazy things such as send each others post cards when the e-qsl routes aren’t quite what is needed. Now I am familiar with the extensive delays which happen with the volunteer run QSL bureaux but just to delay things a little more our not so beloved main carrier has introduced alternate day postal deliveries. This past week, the new regime started on Tuesday which means we had 2 lonely delivery days this week.

It is perhaps not so important that mail is delayed but the basic cost of a stamp to send a letter has risen to $1-50 which means that more and more business communications are going to be directed to electronic delivery.

This can raise many issues for those of us with physical impairments and regardless of rules about discrimination, some of these actions just cement the divides in the community.

Recently I had to find a supplier of a certain type of antenna mount and despite my best efforts I couldn’t track down what I needed from local vendors. It ended up being a choice between two of the big international on-line vendors. The deciding factor was that one would deliver free of postage and the other required me to sacrifice a vital internal organ to pay for delivery. Well the decision was easy and with the help of someone who had an account with the seller, the mount was bought and paid for.

Overseas vendors using major on-line sites are beset by advertised delivery prices that too often dissuade the prudent buyer from a sight unseen purchase.

Sadly for the local suppliers to our niche interest, the amateur radio fraternity is small and the cost of maintaining inventory often can’t be justified for the low return it provides. We do have some excellent small businesses dedicated to the amateur market and often their stocked prices are more competitive than the overseas megastores when freight and warranty costs are taken into account. It is perhaps the subject for an article in Amateur Radio magazine just to let us all know who is serving the market for us. I have been told that some vendors feel the cost of advertising is beyond their resources and a printout with product lines and contact details would be a service to the amateur community.

I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think….how about you?