Weekly news from the WIA:
MP3 edition of news available at:
http://www.wia-files.com/podcast/wianews-2024-02-04.mp3 Text edition:

2024 FEBRUARY 4 VK NATIONAL NEWS BROADCAST ON VK1WIA
------------------------------------------------------------*

THE BEST NEWS YOU'LL GET ALL WEEK

THIS LINK IS A VIDEO VERSION OF NEWS COMPILED BY VK5BD BEVAN
tinyurl.com/WIA-News-Videos

------------------------------------------------------------*

NATIONAL NEWS FOR WEEK COMMENCING FEBRUARY 4 2024
IN OUR 29th YEAR OF NON STOP NEWS

THIS WEEK:-

WIA's Editor-in-Chief of Amateur Radio magazine Roger VK2ZRH. -

WIA Board Member Chris VK3FY

WIA's 2020 Technical Excellence Award winner Roger VK3KYY and the
OpenGD77 radio firmware project.
PLUS MUCH MUCH MORE IN THIS EDITION OF NEWS FROM THE
WIRELESS INSTITUTE OF AUSTRALIA.

I'M EDITOR GRAHAM VK4BB

WIA

JOIN THE WIA
tinyurl.com/yyj87b9y
This is Chris Dimitrijevic VK3FY on behalf of the Board of the
Wireless Institute of Australia for VK1WIA National News.

Today's Topics

1. ACMA Assessor Accreditations are currently being sent out
2. A reminder that the WIA AGM for 2024
3. WIA Directors Club Visits
4. WIA Merit Awards Nominations

Topic 1
On the 29th of January 2024, the Australian Communications and Media
Authority or ACMA has begun issuing its Accreditations for the ACMA
Assessor Accreditation. Those assessors who have previously applied to
the ACMA should have begun to receive their notifications.

Topic 2
A friendly reminder that WIA AGM will be held on weekend of May 4th
to 5th 2024 in Bundaberg Queensland. Those wishing to attend can look
up details on the WIA website.
wia.org.au/newsevents/news/2023/20231117-1/index.php

Topic 3
The WIA Board of Directors are happy to try and arrange Club visits
either in person when they are in the area or virtually via a video
conference. Clubs wishing to participate are urged to contact the
WIA Secretary Peter Clee VK8ZZ.

Topic 4
Its time to submit your nominations for this year's WIA Merit Awards.
Nominations close 31st March 2024 with the WIA Award recipients being
announced at this years WIA AGM in May.

This has been Chris VK3FY on behalf of the Board of the Wireless
Institute of Australia for WIA National National News.

This is Editor-in-Chief of Amateur Radio magazine, Roger Harrison VK2ZRH.

For once, I have to speak to you seriously.

For the two weeks leading up to last Monday, those involved in the production
of the magazine worked industriously to prepare the pages of Amateur Radio
Issue 1 to load to the printers computer server on deadline.

The issues cover had been printed the previous week and lay awaiting for the
guts to be printed.

But. A hiccup, an unforeseen circumstance . . . blocked the way.

So, it came to pass that . . . diligent efforts on Tuesday last averted,
diverted, or inverted the threat and Issue 1 of Amateur Radio magazine rolled
off the press on Wednesday, on time and ready for trucking to the mailing
house and the newsagent distributors.

This was achieved by . . . you may have guessed . . . working together.

Talking about working together this issue, I must introduce to you someone
new, whose role is to prepare the photographs for each issue, to balance the
colours and clean up the images to achieve the best presentation.

Phil White VK3 Mike Bravo, knowing that things could be better, stepped
forward and volunteered to do this pre-press image processing for the
magazine. After all, thats his day job! Give him a round of applause.

We look forward to working together over 2024.

So. This issues features focus on Pioneers of the past and Marketing the
hobby.

The technical feature is a transverter for the 134 gigahertz band from Andrew
Anderson VK3 C V. Actually, it covers both 122 and 134 gigahertz! He invites
you to join the action on the 2mm bands. You can build the system yourself. I
am reliably informed that kits will be available thanks to the efforts of Tim
Tuck VK2XAX and his XYL.

How about that, another great example of Working Together

More next week. Keep your eye out for:
Amateur Radio magazine, Volume 92, Issue Number 1 for 2024.More guts. Less
gab.

Proudly produced and printed in Australia. Also available online.
Always published to a schedule, never random.
Im Roger Harrison VK2ZRH for VK1WIA News.
------------------------------------------------------------*
INTERNATIONAL NEWS With thanks to IARU, RSGB, RAC,
ARRL, NZART, eHam, AMATEUR RADIO NEWSLINE, eHam,
Radioworld.com Hackaday and the World Wide sources of the WIA.

DONT USE REGIONS FROM HERE ON IN
In an effort to engage young hams, the ARRL board has approved two new
initiatives. Full-time students aged 21 and younger are now eligible
for a free membership. ARRL will also establish a Student Coding
Competition in which students aged 21 and under will design software
applications with awards up to $25,000.

In addition ARRL approved a number of other items, including The
reintroduction of ARRL Life Membership and 70+ Life Membership
The creator of the protocol that eventually came to govern
synchronized timekeeping on billions of devices around the planet
has become a Silent Key.

Computer scientist and unstoppable tinkerer Dave Mills, W3HCF, was a
professor at the University of Delaware when he first tackled the
question of how to synchronize the time on billions of devices around
the world, including computers, switches, satellites, servers and
clocks. He ultimately addressed this question through the development
of Network Time Protocol, or NTP, which he introduced to the world as
the internet began emerging as a global force.

Dave became a Silent Key on the 17th of January.
Radio and TV broadcasting, mobile communications and other elements of
the so-called wireless revolution can have all their roots traced back
to amateur radio, according to a recent article in the IEEE Xplore
written by Theodore Rappaport, N 9 NB.

Communications Magazine, IEEE Xplore's article, which is in Volume 61,
Issue 11, credits amateur radio inventiveness that was incubated in
the earliest amateur radio clubs growing on college campuses in the
early 20th Century. It singles out the Wireless Telegraph Club on
Columbia University's New York City campus, noting the student
members' propensity for wireless experimentation -- and singles out
one club member, Edwin Howard Armstrong, considered the father of
FM radio.

At the same time wireless enthusiasts were being born in Australia,
the UK and elsewhere in the world.

The article traces how the advent of FM led to the development of
mobile phones and how amateurs' bottomless curiosity continues to be
the driving spirit behind more and more inventive ways of
communicating.
To help fight pirate radio, the Federal Communications Commission
hired four full-time people in fiscal 2023 and is in the process of
hiring more.

The FCC has also ordered six vehicles to support the hires with mobile
direction-finding equipment. These six vehicles will be outfitted in
the 2024 and 2025 calendar years and will include specialized
hardware and software for the detection for pirate radio operators.

The Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement or PIRATE Act,
increased the maximum monetary penalties for pirate operators,
those caps now are $119,000 per day and $2.4 million total.

bit.ly/3Sc14B8
Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane possibly detected by sonar
16,000 feet underwater. This story sourced to CBS News America.

Amelia Earhart's disappearance over the central Pacific Ocean 87 years ago
remains one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history. Countless theories
about her fate have emerged in the decades since, but now a deep-sea
exploration team searching for the wreckage of her small plane has provided
another potential clue including a new video released Monday.

Deep Sea Vision, a Charleston, South Carolina-based team, said this weekend
that it had captured a sonar image in the Pacific Ocean that "appears to be
Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra" aircraft.

The company, which says it scanned over 5,200 square miles of the ocean floor
starting in September, posted sonar images on social media that appear to
show a plane-shaped object resting at the bottom of the sea. The 16-member
team, which used a state-of-the-art underwater drone during the search, also
released a new video of the expedition

showing the team reviewing images taken by a submersible.

"After an extensive deep-water search, a talented group of underwater
archaeologists and marine robotics experts have unveiled a sonar image that
may answer the greatest modern mystery the disappearance of Amelia Earhart,"
Deep Sea Vision wrote on Instagram.

Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, while flying
over the Pacific Ocean during Earhart's attempt to become the first female
aviator to circle the globe. They vanished without a trace, spurring the
largest and most expensive search and rescue effort by the U.S. Navy and
Coast Guard in American history. Earhart and Noonan were declared dead two
years later.

Multiple deep-sea searches using high-tech equipment have tried but failed
over the years to find Earhart's plane.