News of a Silent Key, Ian Browne VK4DB Sad news received from Denise/VK4FCDB, board of control of Ian/VK4DB that Ian went Silent Key on Wednesday 26th November at Townsville University Hospital following complications caused by lung cancer. Ian was farewelled at a private funeral Tuesday 2nd December in Townsville attended by close family members.

Only four sleeps to go, which means it's either time to congratulate you on ordering early enough to receive the helical-long-wire-gamma-matcher with the auto-resonating-anti-SWR-digital-gumble-snergler, or... you missed out and the package will arrive on 2 January just before you have to go back to work. Either way, this is QNEWS coming to you from the Darling Downs Radio Club where we know how to toss up an antenna or two. I'm John VK4JPM, Club Secretary. Speaking of antennas: that's still one of the frontiers of ham radio endeavour and we've been thinking about how much we know... and don't know... about getting antennas to work effectively. In the past it was a matter of putting up an antenna, testing it on your rig, matching for minimum SWR, and then... well, you had to ask people how good is the reception and guess. Nowadays we can be much more clever, and one of the reasons that we've focused a bit on Software Defined Radios is that you can use an SDR to test the antenna for yourself. Especially when the SDR under your control could be a few kilometres away, or right across the country, and you can listen to your own signal to test for improvements. Very cute. So we've been tossing around what the club can do to help you build your antenna skills. Watch out for a possible meeting in February where we kick off a series of sessions. If that's of interest to you, tell us. If you think we should be talking about something else, tell us that too. Send a note to secretary@ddrci.org.au with your thoughts. Last week we had our end-of-year BBQ and natter at Webb Park and this year the skies smiled. Perfect weather, and at least one of the hotplates worked well enough to do lunch for everyone. Lots of discussion, especially about repeaters and whether we could be improving 2m coverage across the Downs. And thanks to Bruce VK4MQ we capped off lunch with a bit of fox-hunting, much to the delight of the kids who had joined us. There will be photos on the website by the time you hear this, and you can check those out at ddrci.org.au.

VK4 - Redfest - Deception Bay North State School 9am April 11. (vk4ble) The Redcliffe and Districts Radio Club will be holding Redfest 2026 on the 11th of April 2026 at the Deception Bay North State School, 49 Old Bay Road, Deception Bay starting at 9am. For further information contact the Club Secretary, secretary@redclifferadioclub.org.au