Hi all

Hope you're well.

For those of you that might be interested in getting your Ham/Amateur Radio License, North Shore Radio Club will be holding a 2 day Ham-Cram course over the weekend of 22-23 of June.

The course goes over everything you need to know, concluding with the exam and some light refreshments on the Sunday afternoon. All going well you'll finish the course fully licensed with you're own callsign!

Once you've got your license you'll also be able to join AREC, the public service arm of NZART which provides support to LandSAR and Civil Defence operations.

Cost is $150, which includes a years membership to both North Shore Radio Club, and NZART (The national body) along with the exam and licensing fees to RSM.

Contact info@nsrc.nz to register your interest or find out more.

The course is run entirely by the clubs volunteers, and is open to anyone that might be interested.

Something that people on Geekzone may find interesting is the ability to use a tool called WinLink.

WinLink allows you to send email style messages via radio (and gateways can also forward messages out over SMTP/etc), in a very similar way to meshtastic, using just a radio and your computers sound card. Except by operating in the amateur band rather than ISM you're able to operate with a much higher power output, and in any band including HF, enabling over the horizon connections, rather than just line of sight.

A small team of us have been rather busy installing 5 UHF and VHF winlink gateways around Auckland, making the initial barrier to entry much easier as only a simple VHF/UHF radio such as a Motorola or Tait are able to connect!

If anyone outside of Auckland is interested, let me know and i'll see which branches around the country have upcoming courses.

Alas, hope you find this interesting, and I look forward to seeing a few of you at the course!