QNews for November 24th 2024

Q-News AR News from Queensland

Hi - John VK4JPM Darling Downs Radio Club , pop Saturday 14 December in your diary. That's the planned date for our annual outdoor club lunch and barbecue, which will be held in the Toowoomba area. Our next club meeting tech session on Monday 9 December will take us into the exciting and very accessible topic of Software Defined Radios. Talk to us - the 2M club net on VK4RDD every Sunday at 1000, and the 80M net on Saturdays at 1930.

VK2ZRH - I’m here to remind you, patient listeners, that the Brisbane VHF Group is having a Showcase Day on everything about those mysterious upper bands, from VHF to microwaves, on the 8th of December! This Showcase day is happening at the well-appointed Redcliffe and District Radio Club facilities.

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking. There are lessons to be learned from activities on the internet and it is not only the phishing and other scams that we need to be aware of. In the last month or so, I have received bogus friend requests from at least three supposed amateurs. After checking the bona fides of the requests, I have done the appropriate thing and reported these actions. I am not surprised that the practical hypocrisy of the social media platform when they declined to remove the cloned accounts as they didn’t breach their amorphous community standards. The gargantuan video repository that provides a reasonable income to regular content creators has similar issues when it comes to ethics and standards. Anyone who has fallen foul of the anonymous and perhaps fictional “fact checkers” must ask what are the standards of behaviour that these platforms supposedly uphold? If we look back to the recent US elections and the posts that appeared on our screens, it was apparent that there were at least two worlds at war and the truth of what was proposed could not be reconciled between them on so many times. This is something that we have been seeing debated in our own Australian parliament with a bill presented to make media companies adhere to the truth. The question that many have is who decides what is true? When we think back to the COVID pandemic and what we were advised as matters of public health and compare that with the scientific studies that are being published now, it seems obvious that what we were told is being confronted by different outcomes today. So it it is that we electronics nerds use the tools at hand to improve our understanding of our subjects of interest. We turn to recognised authorities such as published handbooks and reliable internet resources to clarify points and settle points of confusion. This brings us back to the popular platforms which increase their bases of knowledge by unimaginable amounts each day. Years ago a new word was introduced to us, that is “wiki”. Here is a tool that is maintained by volunteers and which aims to provide correct and accurate detail on subjects which interest at least enough people to prepare and maintain posts on them. I see that these on-line sources of “fact” have largely replaced the weighty books called encyclopedias and their successors on digital media. Still errors occur in wiki posts and it depends on the knowledge of the editor to get corrections posted. Fortunately for most of us, amateur radio is a practical occupation where frequent debates as to theory can be left to the chemists, physicists and engineers and the benefits of their debates can inform us what best to do. All that I am suggesting is that we need to exercise the same amount of caution when using the internet for our learning as we do when we use the internet for sensitive things such as maintaining personal records and activities like banking. With words of caution in my ears, I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think….how about you?