A seminar on APRS will be held in Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) on 7 March 2009. Details of the talk as follows:

Name: Art Takahashi
Academic Qualification: Satellite Microwave System Engineer
Expert Field: Satellite communication engineer & Hamradio
Experiences: Hamradio licence holder about 40 years

Holder Radio Callsigns
PA0HMW,F0DKS,VK3PAT,VK3BFM,VK6MX,VK3EO,
P29EO,VK6MX,VK4GO,VK4GO/BD,JA1OGS
Working for NEC Japan Yokohama & Australia Papua New-Guinia

Professional Bodies Membership:
Rens & Rens , Stedehouwer NERG
The Netherland , Australia Japan

Title: A.P.R.S (Automatic Position Report System)

Synopsis:
Explain what is all about APRS, how it works and what do with it.
Main reason about my second visit is to Malaysia is to help radio amateurs in this country, to understand a other side of hobby. So they start building digital electronics project for the radio amateur hobby. (APRS)

Date: 7 march 2009
Time: 10:30 am ~ 1:30 pm the length from the seminar is depends about visitors interest.

Vanue: Lecture Hall, UniMAP Kuala Perlis.

Info Direction QRV: 9M2RMK 147.9800Mhz Shift -0.600 Tone 203.5
Info Direction on :
a) Wikimapia
b) Google Maps

Those interested to learn more about APRS technology are invited to join in the seminar. It’s free of charge!

Tags: amateur radio, aprs, ham, Ham Radio, hamradio, malaysia, radio, radio amatur, satellite, seminar, unimap

I’ve been searching for information regarding the radiation angle and the gain of slim jim antenna, but found none of it. So I decided to build the model of the antenna inside the ever useful MMANA-GAL software to get the information I needed myself.

From what I can surmise, the slim jim has a slightly lower radiation angle than vertical dipole antenna and is easier to mount, thus it is suitable to use for point-to-point communication VHF-UHF operation. It has a gain of about 2.8dBi-3.2dBi in free space and 4.8-5.8dBi when mounted at about 30feet from the ground. Here’s the result of MMANA-GAL :

Tags: Add new tag, amateur radio, antenna, Ham Radio, hamradio, homebrew, slim jim, slimjim

MCMC has released Radio Amateur Examination (RAE 2008-1) form and notice on its official website. Those who are interested to take the exam should download the form and submit it to the nearest MCMC office right away.

Details as follows :
Application closing date : 25 April 2008
Examination date : 24 June 2008
Venue : will be announced later

Please do not forget to enclose a copy of your identity card or passport together with application.

Download RAE 2008 documents here :

• RAE 2008 Form
• RAE 2008 Notice

Finally, good luck to all candidates!

Original source : MCMC website

Tags: amateur radio, exam, examination, Ham Radio, hamradio, malaysia, radio

Here are the photos of my homebrew 2 meter VHF antennas. One is 6 element OWA yagi and another is a 2 meter Slim Jim for omnidirectional operation

The homebrew slim jim antenna was previously featured on my blog as well as its plan. The OWA Yagi 6 element antenna plan can be obtained from this post : 6 Element OWA Yagi Antenna for 2 Meter band plan

Tags: amateur, amateur radio, antenna, Ham Radio, hamradio, Hobbies, photos, slim jim, slimjim, yagi

Here are some of the photos taken during Kota Setar Amateur Radio Club (Kelab Alor Setar) Family Day on 8 March 2008. Below are the repeater maintenance activity taken on top of Gunung Keriang Hill during that day.

Btw, the guy in the blue shirt maintaining the repeater is 9W2USF, Handle: Amiruddin.

Gunung Keriang Repeater Team

You can get the rest of the photos here – RGK Repeater Gunung Keriang Photos, all of the photos taken from 9W2DOT website

Tags: amateur radio, Ham Radio, hamradio, Hobbies, hobby, repeater

Here is a guide to modify your PC power supply unit to power up your mobile rig. If its done correctly you can have a cheap (regulated) VDC power supply solution for your mobile rig to operate at home.

Step I

First get a ATX PC power supply from the nearest computer store. Price is around RM30-70.

Make sure it could supply sufficient current. Look at the label. We need at least 10-17amp at 12V for a sufficient operation of mobile rig. Lower Ampere rating means that your mobile rig cant transmit with a typical HiGH setting (50w).

Step 2

Look for ATX power connector. It should look like this.

Look for black and green wire at the ATX connector. The wire position is 4th from the top left side of the connector and 4th from the bottom right side from the connector as pictured above.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: amateur radio, diy, Ham Radio, hamradio, Hobbies, hobby

Berikut merupakan fail PDF yang mengandungi Panduan berQSO yang diterjemahkan kedalam bahasa melayu oleh 9w2ssl.

Antara informasi yang boleh dijadikan panduan semasa mengendalikan komunikasi radio di udara termasuklah komunikasi simpleks, panduan penggunaan pancar-ulang dan kaedah mengendalikan roundtable

Download file tersebut – Amateur Radio Standard Operating Procedure berbahasa melayu

Tags: amateur radio, Ham Radio, hamradio, malaysia, slimjim

Today I want to share with you a great Yagi Uda Antenna modeling software for amateur radio operator and enthusiast.

The most interesting part of the software is, it can help you to improve your design by projecting the antenna radiation pattern and estimating the radiation resistance (impudence) at any given frequency.

The application is created for the venerable DOS environment, thus some of the operating system might not be able to run it natively. However I found out that I can run the application successfully using DOSBox DOS emulator software under Ubuntu Linux. For your information, DOSBox is also available for Windows operating system too.

YagiMAX Screenshots

Here’s a couple of YagiMAX screenshot taken from my computer (running Linux, Ubuntu Gutsy). The antenna shown here is a 6 Element OWA Yagi for 2 Meter amateur radio band, scaled from its 6 meter counterpart, the design was taken from L.B Cebik website

Download YagiMAX

Here is a download link to YagiMAX 3.11. Hope that will help you in your work !

Tags: amateur radio, antenna, Ham Radio, hamradio, yagi

Here are the plan I use for constructing and experimenting with Slim Jim antenna on 2 Meter VHF Amateur band. The measurement used are designed to center around 144-148 MHz radio frequency, which is used by amateur radio world wide.

FYI this is the plan that I use to construct my first ham radio antenna using PVC pipe and aluminium tube.

Credit to Pak Halim and Azmeer for giving this plan and showing me how to construct a proper antenna.

2 Meter Slim Jim using 300 Ohm tv cable (Ribbon Antenna)
Here’s the plan that I use for constructing Slim Jim antenna for portable radio (ICOM V8).

Both design are meant to be fed with 50-Ohm impedance coax feed line (RG-58/RG-8/RG-213) to obtain the most optimized results

Tags: amateur radio, antenna, diy, Ham Radio, hamradio, slimjim

I haven’t attended paper based examination for quite some time now, especially when it involve me answering hundreds of objective questions. To be honest, I’m not that confident with this examination.

Don’t get me wrong. it is not that I doubt my electronic and radio communication skills, but its more to my self doubt when confronted with a bunch of objective questions, especially when I studied a lot of questions (but with confusing answers) regarding the examination tomorrow.

I’ve been preparing for a couple of weeks for this exam, it will be attended by a lot of candidates, and I suspect that the venue would be filled with amateur radio old-timers or ham radio rig sellers that would try to persuade candidates to buy them.

For those who are new to this, amateur radio examination is a must for those who are interested to operate an amateur radio station. The examination will determine if you are qualified to earn a license to communicate with other amateur radio operator (hams).

Although radio communication is considered an “old fashioned” way to communicate since we already have internet and mobile phones, ham radio is still favored by enthusiast as a way to meet new friends and organise activities over the radio. Currently, Malaysia has at least 4,000 licensed ham radio operator across the country.

Please refer to wikipedia page for more information about Amateur Radio in general, and MARTS website for Malaysian ham radio-specific information.

p/s: Ham radio operator is not a paid job, its a hobby. Any body can participate as long as they are licensed.

Tags: amateur radio, Ham Radio, hobby, malaysia, radio