The WIA 2018 Radio and Electronics Convention is taking place on Saturday 19th May at Sea World Resort, and the organising group are particluraly excitted about two planned speakers.

David Rowe VK5DGR will be talking about his creation of FreeDV. David was first licensed at age 14 in 1981, operating a converted CB on 10m.

Through the 1980's and high school he progressed to a "full call" license and a TS-520S. In 2009 he became interested in the problem of closed source codecs and digital voice, and started working on FreeDV.

David works part time as a senior engineer for a defence signal processing company, and is Dad to three children. He writes a popular blog that is read by 70,000 people each month, drives a home-brew Electric Car, and also enjoys bike riding and sailing (both with a 70cm HT).

Tim VK5ZT will present his experiments in optical communication or “nanowires” as our English friends refer to 474 terahertz (i.e. light).

What is easiest to build, what will work and what is the current ‘state of the art’. He will look at what can be achieved and prospective future projects.

Tim was first licensed in 1971 as VK5ZTD while still a PMG department trainee. He has had a varied career in the private sector and as a public servant, mostly in defence electronics in technical and managerial roles. He is a keen experimenter in many areas of amateur radio and mostly on frequencies above two metres.

The Gold Coast Amateur Radio Society and organising committee of the WIA 2018 Radio and Electronics convention is looking forward to seeing you on the weekend of the 18th and 19th of May, 2018.

More Information - http://wia.org.au/joinwia/wia/2018agm/