Amateur Radio Antennas and Masts in NSW

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From 22 February 2014, amateurs across NSW will have the freedom to put up masts, antennas and dishes unfettered by development restrictions previously imposed by local councils, which varied widely across the state.

On 19 December 2013, the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, the Hon Brad Hazzard MP, announced a range of changes to the State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) on exempt and complying development, which enables minor developments that meet set standards to proceed without having to get development approvals passed through local councils.

The changes of interest to amateurs concerns aerials, antennas and communication dishes that can be put up as ‘exempt development’.

  • If your property is not subject to certain environmental or heritage restrictions, you can erect up to three aerials, antennae and communication dishes on a lot.

  • A ground mounted aerial or antenna can be attached to a mast that is no more than 10m in height and located at least 5m from a side or rear boundary.

  • Any mast must be no more than 100mm in diameter, or an open lattice frame 500mm in diameter.

Any ground mounted aerial or antenna, including masts, must be located at the rear of the lot, except if in a rural zone or R5 residential zone.

Certain requirements of the Building Code of Australia may apply. Antennas, dishes and masts “. . . must be structurally adequate and installed in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications, if applicable.”

Amateurs wanting to erect masts and antennas outside the parameters of exempt development will be able to proceed through a streamlined, low-cost ‘complying development’ process, which we understand will become available later.

More details on the announcement are on the NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure website - http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/exemptandcomplying

The Department has published a series of Information Sheets on exempt development, which are online-  http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/exemptdevelopment

The Information Sheet of interest is “2.1 Aerials, antennae and communications dishes”, which you can download from http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/Portals/0/BuildingInNSW/EC/EC_POLICY_2_1_AERIALS.pdf

Unfortunately, the Information Sheet appears in places to be open to ambiguous interpretation (and that includes the diagram reproduced here). However, we expect to sort this out in time.

Once again, I must congratulate and thank everyone – individual amateurs and radio clubs alike – who went to the effort of making a submission during all the phases of the NSW Planning System Review over the past few years and also writing to your local members last year. All the effort has paid off.

Many thanks to Ed Durrant - VK2JI for forwarding this story to the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast

School to launch 434 MHz balloon

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Wirral Grammar School for Girls hope to launch a 434 MHz balloon on Wednesday 2 October 2013 from Middleton Hill near Welshpool

The payload will consist of a camera and the following trackers, lifted by a 1200g Hwoyee:

  • WGGS1 : 50 baud 7n2 ASCII RTTY on 434.3 MHz, 10 mW, 470 Hz shift
  • WGGS1-B : 50 baud 7n2 ASCII RTTY on 869.8 MHz, 5 mW, 320 Hz shift

The 869.8 MHz tracker is intended as a spare/experiment, it's antenna is a dipole attached to the side of the payload, so may not give a very uniform radiation pattern from it. Polarisation is vertical.

Wirral Grammar School for Girls - http://www.wirralgirls.co.uk/

Real-time balloon tracker - http://www.spacenear.us/tracker

Beginners Guide to Tracking using dl-fldigi - http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

New UK 76GHz distance record

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A new distance record of 102km was achieved on 76 GHz Saturday 14th September 2013, a contact between Batcombe Hill, Dorset (IO80RT59) and Eglwysilan Mountain, Gwent (IO81IO36). This is also believed to be the first 76 GHz contact between Wales and England.

Operating on three mm-bands, 24, 47 and 76 GHz, were Chris Towns G8BKE and John Hazell G8ACE at Batcombe Hill and also on the three bands at Eglwysilan was Ian Lamb GW8KQW, and with the valuable assistance from Keith Winnard GW3TKH who was also operational on 24GHz.

All three bands were worked using NBFM with full duplex operation on 76GHz between GW8KQW and G8ACE with one way FM between G8BKE and G8KQW. Signals on 76GHz were exchanged for over two hours with a very gradual increase in average signal strength after some QSB initially.

Both Tx and Rx were locked using RDDS PLLs at G8ACE and the GW8KQW Tx RDDS1 locked. This was the first time RDDS locking was used at both ends and meant the 76GHz signal was acquired within seconds due to the highly accurate frequency control therefore no tuning required. References used for the PLLs were 10MHz double oven OCXOs which are readily available on ebay.

It has been very difficult to improve on the previous record distances primarily due to the earth being curved. So far if the path is not optical then it doesn't work, none of this K=1.33 stuff on 76GHz with the relatively low power levels used.

This tremendous success is a result of continual innovation and systematic improvements and testing of the equipment built and used by the Wessex microwave enthusiasts with support from other microwave radio enthusiasts in UK and Germany.

By calculating the link budget and path loss of this path it was possible to predict what environmental conditions would potentially give sufficient margin for success. The 7 day weather forecasts (specifically the dew-point temperature) have been analyzed for several weeks whilst waiting for the optimum conditions to materialise.

We are indebted to Keith GW3TKH for the suggestion of this path which is LOS and for his assistance in guiding Ian G8KQW up the Welsh mountain, without Keith’s suggestion and support this would not have been possible.