Yellowknife Amateur Radio Society (VE8YK)

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, CANADA

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Here is the reply from ChatGPT3.5 to the following:

What relevance does AI have to the amateur radio service?

AI has significant potential to enhance various aspects of the amateur radio service. Here are some key areas where AI can be relevant:

1. **Signal Processing and Noise Reduction**:
   - **Noise Cancellation**: AI algorithms can be used to filter out noise and improve the clarity of received signals, making it easier to communicate in noisy environments.
   - **Signal Detection**: AI can help in detecting weak signals that might be missed by traditional methods, improving the overall sensitivity of receivers.

The Annual General Meeting for the Yellowknife Amateur Radio Society is re-scheduled as follows (we lacked a quorum on 16 Jun 24):

  • 0900 MST Sunday, 16 June 2024 July 28, 2024 
  • Red Apple (on Franklin)
  • In person

Tentative Agenda:

  • election of the new officers of the Society (President, Vice-President and Secretary-Treasurer)
  • presentation of financial statements 2023-2024
  • review of YARS activities during Wildfire emergency in 2023
  • discussion of whether to proceed to change name and objects and constitution of the Society and expand its focus to the Territories rather than just Yellowknife
  • plan for ARRL Field Day 2024 - June 29-30
  • plan for RAC Canada Day Contest 2024 - July 1 (same weekend as Field Day)

Agenda to be prepared and disseminated shortly...

...

Introduction

Figure 1 - E-Waste

In the world of amateur radio, it is traditional for radio amateurs to take old materials and repurpose them.  This tradition evolved from the days when radio equipment was difficult to obtain and incredibly expensive.  Typically radio amateurs build their own equipment from what was essentially trash.  The era of the Great Depression exacerbated this as did the onset of war in the 1930s and 1940s.  After the war, military surplus equipment was available and cheap.  Gradually the commercial availability of amateur radio equipment gave rise to the amateur radio market.

In the 1970s onwards, this same tradition was applied to home computing.  Initially one could only obtain a computer in a kit form and while financially affordable, it was still expensive.  With the rapid evolution of microprocessors and other computer-related technologies, home computing became more accessible and cheaper.  A commercial market was established and the titans of the computer industry soared to dominate it. 

End of Support for Windows 8.1 – My Laptop from 2014 is now E-Waste

On 10 January 2023, Microsoft ceased support for Windows 8.1.  My home laptop had been running Windows 8.1.  I tried to upgrade it to Windows 10 but ended up with a message from Microsoft indicating that my computer hardware was too old to actually run Windows 10 or 11 and that I should consider buying a new laptop – and then displayed a list of recommended laptops.  I immediately tried to do a security update and it failed.  Physically, there was nothing wrong with my old laptop other than it had a motherboard manufactured in 2014 (so it was 10 years old).  I thought about upgrading the RAM or the solid state hard drive (SSD).

[2024-05-09] The GNWT Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) has updated its online information about Emergency Management in the Northwest Territories at:  https://www.maca.gov.nt.ca/en/services/emergency-management-nwt .  The new Emergency Plan is at https://www.maca.gov.nt.ca/sites/maca/files/resources/nwt_emergency_plan_-_april_2024.pdf

In terms of "radio", the usage of that term, along with "communications" is exclusively in respect of communications directed at the public.  Under the Incident Command System this is only one aspect of Incident Command Management ("public information officer" in the ICS organization chart above).