20141010 - WA Amateur Radio News

Post date: Oct 17, 2014 9:38:02 AM

The amateur radio news in Western Australia is produced by an informal group of volunteers, commonly referred to as NewsWest. This group is not a legal entity and cannot own broadcasting or recording equipment, apply for grants, pay for services, like domain names, hosting or insurance or conduct itself in anything other than an unofficial capacity.

On Thursday evening last week this changed when a new Amateur Radio Association was formed around our informal group. In many ways the association is like other specific purpose clubs in Amateur Radio, for the provision of training, the maintenance of repeaters, the pursuit of specific bands or other amateur activities like scouting or fox hunting.

The purpose of this association is:

• to provide Amateur Radio News,

• increase public awareness of the Amateur Radio Service,

• raise awareness of the Science and Technology of radio communications,

• conduct activities that educate, support, develop and promote Amateur Radio, communications and electronics, and to

• facilitate interaction between Amateur Radio clubs.

The founding committee was elected with Bob VK6POP as President, Neil VK6BDO as Vice President, myself Andrew VK6PDQ as Secretary, Onno VK6FLAB as Treasurer, with Alan VK6PWD and Doug VK6DB as committee members.

We'll start the work of incorporation shortly. Our working name is WA Amateur Radio News, but in normal day-to-day operation, we're likely to continue to use NewsWest as our on-air identity.

The contact address for the association will continue to be newswest@vk6.net. The website will continue to be vk6.net. We'll still be the same group of people providing you with the news, only now we'll have a formal framework to do that with.

If you have questions, comments, suggestions or feedback, you know the address, newswest@vk6.net.