Mobile scanner in Australia

[w0sd]

The wife and I are both licensed amateurs and will be operating in Australia in March-July 2006. We plan on buying a car and travel and get set up mobile HF and VHF/UHF for repeaters and IRLP.
Question 1 is there any movement on "true" recipical licensing in Australia vs. have to apply and pay. Seems very unfair now as you chaps can come to the USA and operate for free, no application.

Question 2 is there any law against mobile scanning or do I have to be at a fixed location and if it would be worth our time to bring our Pro 2096 or BC 796D.

Question 3 does anyone have any links to scanning groups and repeater links or other places to post?

Thanks

Ed W0SD
Edith W0OE

 

[grant]

Visiting Downunder

Dave of Scannsw is the best one to answer this as he is a licensed amateur and is up on this sort of information. He is the one with the cute baby face (when he replies you will see what I mean)


Grant

 

[SCPD]

HI, and hope you have a good time down under. I'll answer your questions as best I can one by one.

"The wife and I are both licensed amateurs and will be operating in Australia in March-July 2006. We plan on buying a car and travel and get set up mobile HF and VHF/UHF for repeaters and IRLP."

Hope you aren't buying a new one, as they aren't cheap in Australia!!!

Question 1 is there any movement on "true" recipical licensing in Australia vs. have to apply and pay. Seems very unfair now as you chaps can come to the USA and operate for free, no application.
NOt sure on this one. There are proposed changes coming up to the laws regarding amatuer radio, licensing and so forth. Best email the federal government body that regulates it and ask them what the current status it.
Go to http://www.acma.gov.au and follow the links to contacting them.

Question 2 is there any law against mobile scanning or do I have to be at a fixed location and if it would be worth our time to bring our Pro 2096 or BC 796D.

When it comes to Australia, we basically have no restricting laws on scanners or scanner. About the only I have heard of is the use of a radio scanner in the process of a crime ( or somehting similar to that ) Other then that, there are no laws as to what you can and can't listen to, or take your scanner. When it comes to scanning receivers Australia is the best place to do it. NO restrictions what so ever.
You can't listen to telephones of course, but this comes under the listening devices act, and our cell phones systems are all digital anyway, so you can't listen regardless.
It certainly would be worth your time to bring a 2096 or 786 to Australia. Most of the states police forces are currently in some sort of digital cross over. Sydney currently has a mixture of both analogue and digital frequencies. None the less, many people here actually own these models and have had them imported form the states for this reason. I myself own a Pro96 and a BC-296D.

Question 3 does anyone have any links to scanning groups and repeater links or other places to post?

scanning groups ( or clubs ) are virtually non existant in this country. There are stacks of online communities but. Try a search of yahoo for scanning mailing lists for Australia. There are to many to list here.
Here are some links that might help:-

http://www.scannsw.com ( better plug my own site )

http://www.scannaustralia.com

http://www.acma.gov.au

http://www.vkham.com

http://www.oz-hams.org

My local repeater in Sydney http://www.vk2rct.oz-hams.org
This 70cm repeater is also now linked up with another in southern Sydney, giving it uge coverage across the lower part of Sydney. Its also IRLP and Echolink enabled if you need it.

Thats just a few off the top of my head, without looking into my book marks.

Dave

VK2DAV


Thanks

Ed W0SD
Edith W0OE

 

[w0sd]

Thanks Dave, I will look this information over. Glad there are no regulations against taking scanners mobile. We plan on buying a used Ford Falcon station wagon. We are retired so not the typical back packers but we will be imulating them<grin> We will be staying in caravan parks and renting a cabin or sleeping in our tent.

We are planning on having our HT VX7R's along and possibly our FT-8800. For sure our FT-857D and possibly IC-706 MarkII. We are going to visit NZ for about 1- 1.5 months and then fly into Sydney around March 1st and because my XYL Edith does not like hot WX we will travel South, down to Tasmania, then west and if not to hot up to the Opal mines and then back along the south coast to Perth, then north and then back west. We will go down to the Alice Springs area and then back track and then head for the east coast and back south ending up in Sydney and selling our used car.

Right now the biggest hurdle I see is after we buy the used car in Sidney is to get my HF mobile and HF antenna mounted on the vehicle and hook up the 12 VDC. I will need some metal and some tools to mount it and a store to get some supplies from. Here in the USA I have mounted a piece of heavy angle iron to the frame and had it stick out the back enough to mount the vertical. If we have a station wagon then I need to go out at an angle so I can open the back door. With being on the road for 3 or 4 months I want HF mobie and hope to use Winlink 2000 for e-mail. Of course I want to use IRLP and the repeaters. I probably will use Pocket Mail and Internet Cafes for a back up to Winlink 2000. BTW is there an amateur radio store in Sydney?

What is the price of petro in Australia right now?

Ed W0SD
Edith W0OE

 

[grant]

Cost of petrol

By my calculations Aussie $4.73 for a US gallon (based on Aus $1.25 per litre which is the current price) .... works out to about $3.60 in US money terms.

It should be a lot less but the federal government bumped up the price with an excise tax (34%) many years ago, to encourage the exploration companies to search for more oil fields apart from Bass Strait


Grant

PS Take care when driving in the NT as there are no fences and the cattle etc just pop up on the road out of nowhere. The famous lunar geologist and comet discover Eugene Shoemaker (Shoemaker-Levey 9 was the comet that hit Jupiter) came to an untimely end there in the NT under exactly the same conditions. Alice Springs is worth the trip to see Ayers Rock aka Uluru etc but petrol is about $1.50 per litre due to cost of cartage.