Wednesday Social Meetings 9:30am - 11:30am at the Clubrooms

Note that Meetings are usually preceded by a social BBQ beginning around noon. Please check with the Secretary to confirm what's happening. There is NO General Meeting in January.

Wednesday 13th November, 2024 was the day the Club members got together to enjoy a Christmas Luncheon at Southside.

An enjoyable afternoon was had by all.

Congratulations to Bob - VK4MR who was awarded Life Membership to the Club for his years of dedication and leadership, especially in the early years of the Gympie Communications & Electronics Group. A Founding member of the Club, Bob was the elected President for many years.

It was great to see Bob able to receive the award in person at the 2024 Club Christmas Luncheon.

Digital Services:
The Club Echo-IRLP System is operational.
The DMR / D-Star digital "High-Powered" HotSpot is operational.

Repeater Status:
The 70cm Town Repeater VK4RGY is operational.
The Northern Mt. Kanigan Repeater VK4RGN is operational.
The Southern Mt. Boulder Repeater VK4RCM is operational.
The WBR02 Repeater is operational.

The status of all systems and repeaters can be monitored here on this news page. For more info, see each system's web page, found under the menu at left OPERATING...

Today was warm but fine and several members had fun trying out their newly built or acquired fox hunting gear!

More pictures and info on the Facebook page.

The Club Annual General Meeting was held on Saturday 14th of August 2021. A very good attendance from members confirmed the return of the previous year's MC.

The AGM was preceded by a general meeting at which Gavan VK4GAV was appointed as the Fox Hunt Coordinator - Many Thanks to Gav for taking on this role. Several members were keen to learn and get started on this fun part of our hobby and we look forward to some fun filled social BBQ outings followed by a hunt. If anyone is interested in joining us, just pop along to the Club on a Wednesday morning to chat with members or contact the secretary for more info. On the Wednesday prior to the meeting David VK4DC brought along a Radio Fox as well as several antennas with tracking devices... looks like there will be some serious hunts happening in the future!

Owen VK4FAAQ was awarded Life Membership for his dedication to the Club including especially his contribution to the rebuilding of the Clubroom. Thank you Owen.

When the Mary Valley Rattler restarted in 2018 their buildings had been repainted to a new lighter colour but they didn't include the Club building. By 2020 the Radio Clubroom was needing some exterior maintenance. A new length of gutter was put together and mounted and thanks to Will VK4WBX assisted by Graham, the building has also been painted in the new Rattler Station colour theme. The building now fits in with the others on the platform of the Old Gympie Railway Station and is looking very smart again. Thanks to all members that have assisted with the gutter and painting work.

This year it was Wednesday 22nd of July that had our Club up at the Glastonbury camping ground to assist with communications for the orienteering activities held by Aldridge State High School. Nine Club members participated this year and a huge thank you goes out to all that helped. We again set up our 2/70 cross-band repeater which worked well throughout the area. More info at Comms

Wednesday 22nd August again had our Club up at the Glastonbury camping ground to assist with communications for the orienteering activities held by Aldridge State High School. Twelve Club members participated this year and a huge thank you goes out to all that helped. A temporary 2/70 cross-band repeater was set up allowing for good comms throughout the area. More info at Comms

GCEG Members welcomed the steam train back to town and with the Clubrooms open, visitors were invited to meet members and chat about Amateur Radio. Our new sign was on display - Thank you to Colin and Cath for organising the sign in time for the steam train celebrations.

Track work is still progressing and we will see the Rattler running passenger operations again in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, our Club is assisting with radio communications equipment installations at the station and in locomotives.

The Wide Bay Repeater Association has passed on the UHF Channel 2 CB repeater to the Gympie Communications & Electronics Group. The repeater is located at Gunalda and has good coverage in all directions. We will be maintaining this repeater from now on thus providing the community with a long range CB repeater to the north of Gympie town. Thanks to the Wide Bay Repeater Association for their good work in the past and for passing on the repeater to our group.

Thanks to the members who opened the Club and stayed to look after things including demonstrating the old Railway Telegraph Display unit.

The day saw a lot of visitors in the morning with a steady decline throughout the day as the temperature warmed up. The steam train is set to start carrying passengers again during the Easter Holidays and the Club will be open for some of the train days.

The 2017 John Moyle Memorial Field Day Contest, held by our Club on Mt. Wolvi, brought us another certificate from the WIA contest manager.

This is the Club's third 1st Place certificate. We had some issues with our VHF/UHF radios and so as it turned out, that made it possible for us to slot into the 6 hour portable multi-operator, HF band, all mode operation category and shall we say, there was not too much competition... Still, we had fun and learnt a few more things which would help the Club if we ever had to operate in a portable situation during an emergency or disaster assistance situation.

Today, on the 11th March 2017, a team of dedicated Gympie Club members worked tirelessly from early morning until late afternoon to install the new Northern Gympie 2m Repeater. Located on Mt. Kanigan, this repeater should give good coverage to the north of town and the shaded areas that the southern repeater has trouble with to the north and far east near Tin Can Bay. Reports are welcome. The frequency is 146.775 MHz, neg. offset and a 91.5 tone is required. Many, many thanks to the team - Lachlan VK4FLCM, Colin VK4CAR, Cath VK4FLCR, Geoff VK4ZGF, Rhonda VK4NRD and Roger VK4BNQ.

The 2016 John Moyle Memorial Field Day Contest, despite being cut slightly short by an electrical storm, was well attended by members and last week the official certificate from the WIA was received.

This year's John Moyle Memorial Field Day Competition was held once again atop Mt. Wolvi and our Club had a particularly well equipped setup. Thanks to all who attended. The final score will no doubt be excellent despite the antennas having to be disconnected about 90 mins before the end of the selected 6 hour time frame due to the approaching thunderstorm. More pics in the Gallery

The Gympie Repeaters survived the Friday evening storms that even took out commercial television for the Noosa area but unfortunately Mt. Boulder must have been hit very severely on Saturday 30th Jan causing the shutdown of our main 2m repeater.

UPDATE 16/2/16: A crew again went to the repeater site on Tuesday 16th Feb. The good news for the Club is that the solar panels did survive, although they have some strange patterning through them, looks like some of the fine tracks are burnt but we were able to repair faults in both feed circuits and the repeater is now back on-air with all systems including the telemetry and APRS beacon working OK. The batteries are floating nicely on 13.8V during the day with sun and appear to be OK.

The 70cm Repeater at the Club is working OK while AC power is available.

Lightening Ridge visitors Chuck VK2FCEP and Peter VK2STO travelled to the recent SCARC SunFest and then up to visit our Clubrooms at Gympie. After visiting GCEG a BBQ was put on by Tony VK5WC & XYL Carol at the Woodworks Museum where GCEG Secretary Geoff VK4ZGF presented them with a donated 2m Repeater.

GCEG had earlier helped the Lightening Ridge Men's Shed to establish their own Amateur Radio Club by providing Foundation Licence training, technical assistance and a HF Transceiver. The Group is waiting on the WIA to assist with their new repeater call-sign and frequency allocations.

Monday 24th August had our Group up at the Glastonbury camping ground to assist with communications for the orienteering activities held by Aldridge State High School. About ten Club members participated including Noel VK4NL who had travelled up from the Sunshine Coast to help out. A temporary 2/70 crossband repeater was set up allowing for perfect comms throughout the area. The event was deemed a success and the school officials and students thanked GCEG indicating that we would be invited back again next year. More at Comms

Thursday 10th September was the first Club general meeting run by the new committee and everything went very well. The President, in his report, thanked the previous committee for their work. Projects and other matters were discussed, one of them being the setting of a start date for the component tester kit construction sessions. The first will begin at 2pm on Saturday 26th Sept. It will not be the only day, so if you cannot make it for that day, come to the next. Please see Club dates below for other upcoming events.

We now have our Pre-Meeting Dinner BBQ on the platform at our Clubroom commencing at around 5:30pm. The first BBQ we had in April was a success and so we're making this a regular event. The General Meetings start at 7pm.

BYO anything special you�d like to eat or drink, such as a salad etc. If the weather is damp, we can move under the platform roofing but if very wet or stormy, it may be cancelled - please check via phone or radio.

The weekend of the 21st and 22nd of March is the annual John Moyle Field Day Contest. This year our Club will again operate portable from Mt. Wolvi. Setup will be from 8am onwards and a few will camp the night although we will only enter the 6 hour category. Everyone is welcome to come along to see what our Club does. This is a competition but it's also a social event. This year we are respectfully calling it the John Moyle - Erik Sundstrup Memorial Field Day. RIP our much loved member, Erik VK4AES-SK.

Other dates to note for March and April are:
Sun Mar 29th - Bunnings Fundraiser Sausage Sizzle
Thur April 9th - General Meeting at the Clubhouse.

Note that general meetings are preceded by a social dinner commencing at 6pm at the Iron Horse Cafe at the Old Gympie Railway Station.

This year's John Moyle Memorial Field Day Contest, again had our members up at our favourite spot on Mt. Wolvi. The contest has many categories and we entered and achieved first place in the Portable, 6 Hour, Multi Operator, All Mode, All Band category. Well done and congratulations to all members involved in the event.

The next Club meeting is on Thursday June 12th at 7:30pm and will be preceded by a dinner at the café from about 5:50pm. All welcome!

The next Saturday Electronics afternoon will be on June 21st. This will be followed by the Rattler Twilight Markets. The Club will be open from around 3pm and we usually have a table of bargains for sale set up at the Clubhouse from about 5pm.

Members please note, the next fund-raiser sausage sizzle is on Saturday 14th June at Mitre 10. Please contact Graham or Barry if you can assist.

In preparation for our own connection with the International Space Station (ISS) over the Easter period, Greg VK4GDW recorded a recent ARISS contact with the Australian Air League - South Australia Wing

Click on the link to play the MP3 file: ARISS QSO 21-2-2014

GCEG will participate at the Easter Scouting Event - KiWi Woggle, where our Club will have a working Amateur Radio Station setup including a scheduled contact with the NASA International Space Station. Project manager is Tony VK5WC/p4.

February 13 saw us have our first general meeting for 2014. Once again well attended and with the new projector screen location getting the approval, work is in progress to mount the projector from the ceiling etc. Thanks to Bob VK4MR and Owen VK4FAAQ for their work on this. The Club is in good shape and no major issues are worrying us - the minutes will be soon published for members to check through.

We continue with the 3rd Saturday of the month opening to do some radio/electronic work to be followed by the Rattler markets. The markets are a bit quiet now but we always sell a few little items to make it worthwhile. Note that we have a couple of old computers for sale, if you are interested, please contact secretary@gceginc.org.au

The Club wishes all our members that are not currently in perfect health all the very best and we hope that you'll all be OK again soon to join in at the Clubhouse meetings and events.

We also extend a warm welcome to Pamela who recently joined our Club and will be working towards her F-call.

The next Club meeting is on Thursday March 13th and that will be followed by the John Moyle Memorial Field Day weekend. Weather permitting, we'll be operating from our usual spot at the lookout on Mt. Wolvi. As that weekend falls on the same weekend as the next Twilight Markets, we probably wont be open for those unless Bad WX "Plan B" comes into operation... Keep an eye on this website and an ear on our 2m repeater.

The Rattler Santa Shuttles ran this season and our Club found a Santa to decorate our wall with. Naturally, he was issued with a HT to look the part. The shuttles ran northwards to the Gympie Yard stop limit.

The December meeting was again well attended with 13 members present. The Christmas BBQ lunch was also a good day followed by the Twilight market effort.

There will be no meeting in January but the Wednesday mornings will go ahead except perhaps Christmas day and New Year’s Day which both fall on a Wednesday. The Monday evening Radio Nets will continue. The next general meeting is set for Thursday, February 13th.

The Club will open early afternoon on the Rattler Twilight Market Saturdays for an Electronics/Radio Project building and/or maintenance arvo. These afternoons will be a regular event through 2014 on the 3rd Saturday of each month. The first one is on Saturday 18th January. Contact the Secretary for further details.

It was great to see Alan VK4EAB finally getting along to the new clubrooms at the Railway Station. Thanks to Bob VK4MR for looking after Alan and transporting him safely from and back to the nursing home.

Alan enjoyed a chat, a test run on the cw paddle and a cuppa and then we had one more surprise for him - He was presented with a certificate of Life Membership of the Radio Club. Congratulations to Alan.

After the move to the Clubhouse, the repeater needed a little tweek to bring everything onto frequency. Paul VK4YPM and Roger VK4BNQ performed an alignment on both receive and transmit frequencies and checked sensitivity and power out, which was good at 20W.

Last week Ed, Graham and Bob were joined by John VK4FXLO and they moved the entire Club library into the Clubroom from John's place. Thanks to John for putting the library together. There are a few pics in the Photo Gallery.

We welcome two new members to the Gympie Club this week - Welcome to Chris VK4BX and Bill VK4AYM, great to have you aboard.

The 70cm repeater antenna was mounted on the Club's new building mast today by Bob VK4MR, Barry VK4KKN and Roger VK4BNQ. They also mounted the grid-pack dish antenna which will bring in the Internet for the Club. In the later afternoon Roger moved the 70cm repeater to the rack in the Clubroom and it is now on-air from there.

At Wed 27th Feb morning most roads in and out of town are flooded and all major bridges are closed. The Mary River peaked overnight at 18.44m.

Members of GCEG are monitoring our VHF 2m repeater on Mt. Boulder. Please check the Flood Info page for good links and general Gympie flood information.

Our next Club meeting will be on Thursday 14th March at 7:30pm. Work and social get togethers continue on Wednesday mornings. Thanks also to Ted at Cooloola Tiles for a donation of tiles for our kitchen sink area.

Work continues on the building repair of the new GCEGinc Clubroom at Old Gympie Railway Station. The ceiling required extensive repairs. Thanks must go especially to Owen, Graham, Bob and all the helpers. Wood for the wall bearers has been cut and is being installed. Soon we can pour the new concrete floor. After a coat of paint to everything, we are about ready to use the building and can begin building the radio console and workbench. Check the Photo Gallery for new pictures.

Today a group of Club members including, Ed VK4ABX, Barry VK4KKN, Bob VK4MR, Roger VK4BNQ and Owen VK4FAAQ met with Rattler General Manager Jim Walker to finalise our agreement to take occupation of our selected building at the Old Gympie Railway Station, being for our use as the GCEGinc. Club room. The first working bee which will be a clean out session will commence at 10am on Wednesday 29th August. The plan is then to start the repair work and continue every Wednesday but with ample "smoko" time to also enjoy a cuppa and a chat as has become the tradition on Wednesdays. More updates as we progress.