This is very curious

[Matt. K]

Check this out...whilst we citizens are being hasseled by underpaid, under trained security personell for taking photographs of our National icons...this Japenese boat...probably a whale slaughtering machine, glides out of our beautiful harbour


written in english on the side says, "Fisheries Inspection...government of Japan" (anyone for sushi?)

And can anyone tell me what this is? Looks like a sophisticated listening attennae. Has a radiation warning on it and lots of insulaters



Then there is this guy taking photographs of the navel vessels moored at Garden Island



So next time someone hassels you for taking pics of the Manly Ferry...get very angry.

All pics taken with the marvelous 80-400VR

[avkomp]

I cant see all of it in the photo but the antenna and red thingy
appears to be the antenna tuner and high frequency/medium frequency radio antenna. The fact that radhaz stickers are on the tuner box suggests that this is a transmitting and or receiving antenna. There would be no radiation hazard from a receiving only antenna.

Whereas lots of vessels have satellite communications arrangements,
the old fashioned high frequency is quite common.

Steve

[Matt. K]

Thanks avkomp
The wiring for this this goes up pretty high and spreads pretty wide. I thought maybe they were scanning the Navel base as they went by. And why wouldn't they?

[BBJ]

Not bad shots Matt. but yeh big long wire antenna's hell a good atnenna tuner and you can tune any piece of wire for most frequencies, i used to be into my radios many years ago and yeh we used to fire up just using a peice of wire weighted 1 end and thrown up over a tree branch then tune it in for a chat. I used to run a couple of Ham sets, Kenwood and Yaesu but used to have fun with slow scan television, rity etc.. morse code which i could read on my computer after making a decoder hooked up to radio and ran through the computer and tuned into it and could read stuff like world news all on the computer, but internet changed all that.

[avkomp]

hi bbj

I used to be in radio/electronics. I actually am an electronics and communications engineer and I used to play with radios and stuff as a kid.
Used to work on radio and then radar at garden island for 13.5 years too.
I still have the ham radio gear although I havent flashed it up in years.
I used to love morse code and that was all I used to use on the radio.
These days I hardly do anything electronic. everything is kinda throw away these days. oh well.......
My partner is from around mt gambier also.
seems a small world
Steve

[sirhc55]

Pretty big searchlights too Nice, provocative pics Matt

[BBJ]

Hi Steve, ok yeh well i was a cber at the age of 8 and all went from there of course i never did sit the exam, but stuck to my 11 mtr band but sand bagged on other bands. I had big beams up and UHF beams i made many years ago and had a lot of fun in those days chatting all over the world but as computers was more of an in thing back then with the old commodore 64's and so on it all went down hill. Skip dropped out so then the www came about and made it easier to contact friends in the states and so on that the radios were packed away. I met my partner via cb's as well, and i still love it and well near brought myself Yaesu 757gx at last convention here but yeh, camera gear was in.LOL
I still have a 50 ft tower in the back yard, some cybernet radio's and a 50amp power supply i made.LOL Who knows oneday.
Cheers
John

[avkomp]

hi John
sounds like you and I went nearly down the same paths.
I had the yagi and the tower.
Around 1978 or so you could contact the whole world on 10 and 11 metres
then it died out and then computers came in and now you can www your friends.
We moved house around 1985 and I never ever put the tower up at the new place. Still have the tower and the antennae but they probably wont go up again. shame really.
Still have the transceivers too. old kenwood ts820s amongst them. I sometimes turn it on and listen to the cw for old times sake.
my username comes from my callsign vk2avk.
Steve

[BBJ]

Cool Steve, yeh well might put 1 up oneday but all i have setup inside here is a uhf that never gets turned on, and well at Lisa's mums place they still have a 5 element wener wulf beam up,her dad id dead now he used to be the towns uhm let me say if you wanted lots of channels on your cb, he was the man to do it. But yeh i love it still and look back on my old QSL cards time to time, brings back memories and it too is a bit like this, never ending amount of money you can spend at times.LOL
Oh well all fun

[robboh]

BBJ and Guys,
the old man is still at me to get my ham license so I can join in on his regular 80m sched with a few others round the country. Have paced out mine (and my partners sisters next door) and should be able to get up a fairly good piece of wet string
He got into building puters with the ham guys around NZ in the late 70's, motorola 6809's. I remember helping him building wire-wrap boards. kinda how I got into my present industry really, grew up with it I guess...
So yeah, its not a dieing interest by any means and I reckon it will gain a bit of a renaissance... bit like film really

[BBJ]

Hi Robboh, well as far as i know now it is a lot easier to get into now with the doing away of morse, so i think it would be good i have always loved it but am no good at maths and stuff like that pluss i read something and forget it 5 mins later. So i was never taught formular's and all that crap i know it was a big thing but i think that is ok for people that want to do that type of thing in elelctronics, build there own stuff which is ok but a lot of buy there gear. Anyhow if my brain was better i would do it, but well my veiw was why do all that when i can do it on 11 mtrs,only dif is when the skip drops we was out and Ham bands was ok.
Anyhow sorry Matt for pinching your thread lol.

[robboh]

 LOL. Well, not really hijacking. Just re-directing. In a lot of situations where countries have been made ex-communicado, the ham's have been the ones who have kept the comms up.

Yeah, I hear you regards the formula's etc.
Not sure about NZ regs, I think they have dropped the morse requirements and also the grades to get up to HF. Mind you, I was always better at morse than the old man was, he cant keep a beat to save himself

By the way Chris, nice pics and definitely show's what the 80-400 is capable of. Do people really get shite for taking pics of the manly ferry??!! I was over there a couple of years ago on a Citrix conference, partying in the wharf buildings, watching the ferry's go in and out!!

[johndec]

MattK, sorry about stealing the topic but...

BBJ, avcomp and Robboh, gee it's a small world in some ways. Guess it's not suprising that radio people may end up in cameras.. it's a technogeek thing maybe

I'm old enough to have caught the tail end of the CB craze of the 70's. Let it go for a long time but got back into it a few years ago and actually studied for a ham licence, did the test and passed but never got a licence as I moved house and never got around to setting up the gear,antennas, etc (blame new house renovations !! ).

Still got a heap of gear here. For UHF a Philips 8030 and a Tait 2020. For HF a Yeasu FT-840 and a Kenwood TS-440S plus a Uniden Grant. The Tait and the Uniden live in my 4WD, the rest are rotting in a cupboard

Also, got various antennas. A 17 element UHF yagi, a 11m Stationmaster vertical, plus various dipoles. Buried under all the rubbish in my shed is the bits of an 11m 3 element quad I built, just need somewhere to hang it.

Maybe one day when the skip is running, we should all fire up this gear and have a chat? Avcomp is easy for me, but talking to SA and NZ at the same time might be a trick with the quad, being in opposite directions and all Although I used to get NZ easy with the Stationmaster when skip was running.. Hmm, point the quad and the Kenwood at BBJ and the Stationdisaster and Yaesu at avcomp, that'll work

[BBJ]

Hey John, it can be good at times i used to get a lot of stations of the back of my beam even off to the side a bit, it was that we couldn't talk to Adelaide being to close but at times i could turn the beam and make the distance. My beam is all chopped up and stuffed, got a station master laying on the fence out back and have been tempted to get another antenna up one day, i might put the tower behind the shed but not all the way up and set up in the shed. Dont like having the power supply i made many years ago where kids can touch it as it is all open and mounted on a chassis, the tranny is the size of a car battery, so yeh 50amps continues.
Oneday John.

[johndec]

Oneday John.

I'll hold you to that Give me a month and I'll get the stationmaster and a dipole up. If we can't hook up on 11m, we'll do a sneaky and use our tuners and sneak a quick chat just above or below the 80m HAM band or even better just below the 40m band, where all the international broadcast station are.

[robboh]

 LOL. I gotta get my tail into gear and get a license by the sounds of things!! I just sorta grew up with this stuff with the old man, though i do have an NZART exam manual sitting here by the 'puter. Not sure if I can do anything down to that wavelength, think I will have probs just getting down to 80m to work the old man.

[Matt. K]

Looks like I opened a door here. Maybe should start a new post called, "How many forum members are into HAM radio?"

[Greg B]

At the risk of staying vaguely on topic (only joking fellas ), The GLW and I went on a cruise a couple of years back, and everyone was taking numerous photos from the ship coming up the harbour and under the bridge. Trying to stop anybody from taking photos anywhere is just plain idiocy.

And, Japan and their scientific research whaling (lying bastards) is a disgrace, and a japanese ship with anything to do with fisheries should be declined access. I would be less pissed off (although only a bit) if they were honest about it, but they're not.

Good photos and very interesting Matt.

[Matt. K]

Greg...Maybe they are checking out OUR fishing grounds. Perhaps they have heard we get a few whales in the harbour. But what the hell is a 7LOY?

[johndec]

7Loy = Saveloy in Engrish

Just telling you how they like their whale served

[Matt. K]

johndec
Of course! I must have been blind!

[sirhc55]

Japan has 2 ships registered for Fisheries Protection. They are the Kyoshin Maru and Kyoshin Maru No.2.

The signal letters for KM2 are JFHR - radio installations not listed but carries Gc, Ap, Gps, Rdr, Arpa and Ds navigation systems.

The KM’s signal letters are 8KOC - again no radio installations listed but carries Gc, Ap, Rdr and Ds navigation systems.

Both built in the 80’s - would think that these ships do a little more than just fishery protection

[Matt. K]

Chris
You gotta come and work with me. The company loves guys like you. Good work.
By the way, it's real purpose here in Sydney is the illegal netting of savaloys. It's time we went to the media and exposed this whole disgusting affair and the complicity of the Howard government in the exploitation and destruction of our savaloy stocks in Sydney Harbour.

[sirhc55]

Kyoshin Maru No2 was in the area of a whaling mother ship (Nisshin Maru) at 130°E - 170°W and 145°W - 170°W between 12/11/04 and 31/3/05 where 440 Minke whales were taken (read that as killed).

Personally I would not like to see this ship in our waters again, let alone Sydney harbour

[sirhc55]

Matt - back in the late 60’s I did work for the ”Company” but not the Australian one or the British - I will leave you to guess who

[rjlhughes]

Matt you can add me to the list of (former) amateur radio operators.

Somehow in the familiar story from these pages, the internet took over. It's been a while since anyone asked me and "how's the weather at your QTH....?"

Then there was the time when I asked on 10m: how come it's called wireless and I've got wires all over the room?

And some kind soul spent 15 minutes explaining.