Dear WARG Members and Friends

As you possibly know the June 2024 meeting of WARG happened on Monday June 10th. It was a Monthly Meeting preceded by a Pre-loved Equipment and Junk Sale.

I just wanted to update you’ll about the event which was held at the Bellevue Institute of Engineers Building home of the 1st Midland Scout Group, 10 Helen St. Bellevue. We opened up to let committee begin the set up at 5pm, before long we had tables set up in the greater hall and our Sellers were setting up. There was Colin with his sales and we also had Anthony with the gear from the deceased estates of Don VK6UT (SK) and from Jim VK6JP (SK). Buyers were welcomed in at 6:30pm, with a gold coin donation, and this was well attended.

During the Night, Mitch was aided capably — correction, Christine Mitch’s XYL was capably aided by Mitch 6XB in the Kitchen where they provided a Sausage Sizzle with or without onion and/or condiment; soft drinks, and cup cakes. Tea Coffee and biscuits were also as usual on offer…

There was a ‘chook’ raffle with a set of reasonable prizes including 1st prize of an ICOM HT. Clearly we want to thank ICOM Australia for their support for WARG.

The Raffle saw just shy of 70 tickets sold… and this, along with the other various income streams on the night has seen a reasonable addition to club coffers – Members may recall that we have recently paid the Repeater Licences for in most cases the next 5 years. A cost that we continually budget for and need to replenish from afterwards.

So we would like to congratulate to Dylan 6DYL on taking out first prize with the IC-T10, and also to the runner up Trevor 6MS taking out 2nd prize.

Starting a little late, the June meeting got underway with X folk still left in the room, while not the peak of participation for the night, still a number more folk than usually are at the 1PP hall. The meeting ran quickly, and was finished before 9pm, not too shy of 9pm but we were late starting so… that was a fast flowing meeting. The hall was then emptied and cleaned.

Of note, comments from those who attended were taken from Matt 6ML who asked about the hall and the travel time there as well as comparison timing to 1PP from their QTHR, and well… many found that a longer drive was still quicker; Trevor 6MS found it much of a muchness but also blamed this equal time on catching just about every set of lights on Canning Hwy. At the end of the meeting the meeting was asked for a decision on if WARG should seek to have one more meeting a standard WARG meeting without the extra incentive of a Junk Sale to see if people like the Bellevue option moving forward, this proposal was carried unanimously. That is to trial 1st Midland once more.

Another thing raised in the meeting was to look at the availability of 1PP for some contests that the club might set up a club station such as the VHF/UHF field day and the John Moyle. An option for the RD was knocked back as it is felt that the RD is a time for each operator to be on air sending in their own log. We will never rest the crown back for VK6 if we only put in a few logs… Ray 6ZRW was eloquent in his argument that since THEY changed the rules… every operator stolen by a club station’s single log from putting in their own personal log is a burning of resources better spent in the personal log space than the club log space.

Well that’s about it for the June wrap up… heads up that the July meeting is on the 1st of July. More on that coming up soon.