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Volunteers, the WIA Board and to the many stakeholders that the WIA engage
with all around the World, we wish you all and your families a very Merry
Christmas, prosperous and safe 2025.


To Graham VK4BB, on behalf of everyone at the WIA, thank you for your
tireless work in bringing us this broadcast every week without fail.

I look forward to the year ahead and this has been Scott Williams, WIA
President .


Merry Christmas to all.

I'm Pete Cherry VK2LP, the Returning Officer of the Wireless Institute of
Australia.


Election of Directors for the WIA

In early November I announced that nominations to become a director of the
WIA were open.


There are 4 positions up for election this time around.

Nominations for position of WIA Director closed at 2.30pm on 16 December
2024.


At the conclusion of the period allowed for nomination there were 5
nominations.


Accordingly, an election will be held by Ballot.

Details of the nominees will be emailed to all members and published in the
January/February edition of Amateur Radio magazine.


Members must be financial as at 31 December 2024 in order to vote in this
election.


Election material will be sent by email to all members, so please check the
membership portal to ensure that your correct email address is recorded.


This year the election will be held electronically with an option for a
postal vote.


Application for a postal vote was printed on the reverse side of the Amateur
Radio Magazines November / December issues address label.


An application for a postal vote is also available for download from the WIA
web site.


A link is in the text edition of this broadcast.

Registration for a Postal Vote have been open since November and will close
at 2.30pm on Tuesday 24 December 2024.


An Application for a postal vote may be posted to the WIA post office box or
delivered to the National Office or sent by email to the returning officer.


Details of which are on the application for a postal vote form.

This announcement has been spoken and authorised by Pete Cherry VK2LP, the
Returning Officer of the Wireless Institute of Australia.


Now back to the special ALARA edition of the WIA National News.

AUSTRALIANA

Researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) have
developed an innovative night-time navigation system for drones
by combining celestial navigation with vision-based technology.

Designed for environments where GPS is unreliable or unavailable,
the system identifies stars in images captured by the drone and
comparing them to a database, achieving positioning within 4 km
during tests on a fixed-wing drone.

Unlike traditional star-based navigation systems, UniSAs solution
is lightweight, cost-effective, and does not require stabilisation
hardware, making it suitable for smaller drones.

(vk7news)

Australia's competition watchdog said there was a need to revisit
efforts to ensure greater choice for internet users, citing Google's
dominant search engine market share and its competitors' failure to
capitalise on the artificial intelligence boom.

Australia has intensified the spotlight on the tech giants, which are
mostly domiciled in the US. It was the first country to make social
media platforms pay media outlets royalties for sharing their content
and last month, it passed a law that banned social media for children
aged under 16, and has proposed a law that could impose fines of up to
$50 million on tech giants if they suppress competition and prevent
consumers from switching between services.

These proposed measures have been agreed to in principle by the
government, ACCC said, and it will close its enquiry by next March.

(itnews.com.au)

EDUCATION.

North East Radio Group (NERG) Training Courses

NERG have 3 accredited assessors and conduct regular in person training
at their Briar Hill club rooms. In person training provides students a
more interactive environment to learn, ask questions and meet
likeminded people.   Over the last year NERG has successfully trained
and guided 18 Foundation and 5 Advanced students to get their
certificates and gained 20 new members for the club.

NERG will continue in person training in 2025

Foundation Training and Exams:  One day training and exam session
the 4th Saturday of the month starting February

Standard and Advanced Exams:  From 2:00pm ALSO 4th Saturday of
the month.

Advanced Training sessions Tuesday nights from 7:30 over 12 to 14
week period commencing Tuesday 11th February.

Everyone interested in attending one of these sessions should contact
NERG via email at training@nerg.asn.au or visit the NERG
website

nerg.asn.au

(sourced to VK3BOY)
------------------------------------------------------------*
INTERNATIONAL NEWS is with thanks to ARRL, DX-WORLD, eHam, Hackaday,
IARU, ICQPodcast, IRTS, NEWSLINE, NZART, RAC, Radioworld.com, RSGB,
SARL and the World Wide sources of the WIA.

The IARU Monitoring System has released a log with accompanying video
of hundreds of examples of non-amateur transmissions taking place
across the amateur radio HF bands during 2024.

Examples include DRM broadcasts from Communications University of
China, SuperDARN radars from across the globe, CODAR, British,
over-the-horizon-radar, as well as CBers and pirate radio operators.

All these hundreds of non-amateur transmissions - the majority of them,
long-lasting - are a big annoyance for we amateur radio operators
that try to enjoy our hobby in the bands that are allocated to us for
that purpose, as they drastically reduce the usable spectrum in these
bands.

Click through to the PDF to see YouTube videos of SDR recordings of
many of these instances of non-amateur transmissions.

tinyurl.com/373b6hc2

Graduation day came early for a group of students at Staten Island
Technical High School in the USA, an ARRL Education Model School that
grew out of the league's Teachers Institute on Wireless Technology.

One hundred and fifty-nine students, that's correct 159, took and
PASSED their FCC licensing exams - 18 of them upgrading to General
and Amateur Extra.

The program is overseen at the school by teacher Everton Henriques
KD 2 ZZT.

The students received congratulations from the league's Education and
Learning Manager Steve Goodgame, K5ATA and ARRL Hudson Division
Director Ed Wilson N2XDD.

The world turned its attention to Kolkata as HamFest India 24 when it
opened its doors to hundreds from the international amateur radio
community.

Delegates representing the amateur radio community from Nepal, Oman,
Germany, Dubai, the US - and more than 16 states from around India
converged in Kolkata on the 14th and 15th of December for HamFest India
24. The national amateur radio convention took place at the
Sister Nivedita University and was hosted by OSCAR India.
OSCAR India is an organisation with an educational mission and its
name stands for Open Source Classes for Amateur Radio.

Participants included representatives from the Nagaland State Disaster
Management Authority, the National Disaster Response Force, the
India Meteorological Department and the National Disaster Management
Authority.

Still in Kolkata India:

A student from New Barrackpore, who was suffering from memory loss and
went missing a couple of years ago, was found in a Prayagraj asylum.

He had been arrested by UP police.

The student was reunited with his family thanks to the efforts of a

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--- SoupGate-DOS v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)