Last Up Dated – 14.06.18
The Western Suburbs Radio Club Inc. Clubrooms are situated at 3000 Great North Road New Lynn.
Meetings are held monthly on the fourth Saturday at 10am. Generally a guest speaker is invited to talk on a radio related subject. – Visitors Most Welcome.
The Club is affiliated to The New Zealand Amateur Radio Transmitters (Inc.) (NZART) as Branch 03.
The Clubs Committee meets monthly on the second Saturday at 0900am at the clubrooms.
The Club has a semi active Amateur Radio Emergency Communications (AREC) section. This meets on an irregular basis to train personnel in the correct operation of radio equipment and emergency management techniques. Meetings are generally held Tuesday at 7:00pm at the clubrooms.
History
Western Suburbs Radio Club is one of the oldest clubs in the country. It was originally formed in 1931 as the New Lynn Radio Group. In 1948 this group was succeeded by the Auckland West Branch and finally renamed Western Suburbs Radio Club. The New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters (NZART) was formed in 1926 so the club is almost as old as the association.
Western Suburbs Radio Club has the call of ZL1AC. This call was originally held by Len Spackman and was taken up by the club in 1997 when Len passed on. Len was at the inaugural meeting in Auckland of NZART. The club used the call ZL1RK for many years but relinquished this when ZL1AC became available.
The club has always been active in national events and under the call ZL1RK won the national field day contest on a number of occasions. Recently the lack of proficient CW (Morse Code) operators has left us trying. The club also ran a CW only field day site under the call ZL1WI for many years and was successful in winning on a number of occasions. Currently we enter the 40 & 80 metre phone/CW section and have won the QRP prize several times.
For twelve years the club ran the Waitakere Sprint contests. These contests last for one hour and the object is to make as many contacts with other radio stations within the hour. There are two contests on consecutive Saturdays. One being for voice and the other for CW. This contest has proved to be one of the most popular in Australia and New Zealand. The Papakura Club has taken over the running of these contests recently.