Nelson Family Christmas Letter 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Well another year gone by, they truly are going faster each year. I LOVE CHRISTMAS, but you all know that, it is such a special time of the year. To remember the true meaning of Christmas, the Saviour and his gift to all of us.

We have been in Qld for three years now and the summer heat still knocks me hard. We are at home for Christmas this year as Marty and Blair will be busy preparing for the National Y.S.A Convention. They are DJ’ing the New Years Eve dance, Backing up the Band at the Ball and providing Audio/visual gear and expertise for other events.

Christmas day will be at our home with my Mum, Dad and my little brother Doug, my eldest sister Heather and her three daughters for lunch and then the Missionaries joining us for dinner. My two other sisters Glenys and Ally and their families will be together up in Mackay. Every year I normally do our traditional big roast lunch with the works, but this year I am stepping out of the roasting kitchen where I swelter ever year and out to the BBQ were the men love to cook their steak. Yeh!!! So that will be nice.

February next year Marty and I will celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary. So I can't pass for a thirty year old anymore. Especially when James turns 20 in May. I recently received a new calling as the Relief Society activities person as we are not using homemaking or enrichment anymore. Anyway I enjoy that, we just had our R.S Christmas dinner where my assignment was to decorate the hall to Christmas heaven. I think I succeeded, everyone loved it, so it was a nice night enjoyed by all. We had 65 ladies come which was amazing. Our ward is huge.

Mid year we had a family photo at Wellington Point with a professional photographer. I'm really happy with the photos, normally we go to a studio and have a indoor photo in our best clothes but this time we went outdoor in our jeans and white shirts. We will send a copy of the photo with this letter.

Marty keeps very busy with work as a Facility Manager for the Church. Also this past year he has expanded the DJ business with help from Blair. He is serving on the High Council and has the responsibility for Stake activities. So far he has organised our stake ball and last week he ran the Stake Carols by Candlelight.

James is 19 yrs and is working a couple of casual jobs at the moment whilst trying to find an apprenticeship. He still enjoys keeping fit by playing basketball and going to the gym. He also loves spending time with his girlfriend Elle.

Blair is 17 and finished his senior schooling this year which he is happy about. He plans to go to uni next year to study business/finance. He had his formal last month and that was really nice and at a lovely place. He is still doing his D.J work on the weekends and he continues to help Marty with all the church dances. I'm sure he will get more D.J. work with all the after convention parties that continue like last year. Blair also enjoys playing basketball, playing his guitar and learning new D.J skills.

Jordan is 13yrs old and is still mad about Star Wars. He will be in year nine next year and also starting early morning seminary. He is Deacons president and has proven to be a great leader. Jordan enjoys playing basketball, xbox 360 and the wii. He loves to watch movies and I'm sure we will go see the latest flicks over the school holidays.

My baby girl Brooke will be 10yrs old in January. She is happy to be on school holidays. She loves horses and every birthday she asks for a real horse but we do not have enough land for a horse. For her last birthday we held the party at Mini Mates which is a horse farm. She loved it! I do not know what I am going to do for her birthday next year. She has lots of pony toys to keep her happy for now.

Have a great Christmas and a happy new year.
Love from Lorraine and all of the Nelson family

Marty gets IRLP Amatuer Radio node up and running

Marty, VK4DOG has an IRLP node up and running to service the Bayside area. This provides an alternative to the VK4RBS node which may be helpful if the repeater is busy. The node (number 6647) is on 145.400 MHz simplex.

Here are some comments from Marty regarding the setup and testing of the IRLP node.

"When I visited my friend Reg, VK4XH about a year ago he showed me his IRLP node and I was fascinated at how far ham radio technology had come. I had not been an active operator for many years and I had missed the introduction of Echolink and IRLP. I knew that when I was ready to get back into the hobby that setting up a IRLP node was one goal I wanted to achieve."

"February 2008 I decided to get back into the hobby and formulated my plan of getting the IRLP node up and running. I had a spare computer, a Dell GX150 pentium III and a Icom IC-228A two metre 25w transceiver. All I needed then was the IRLP interface board. These boards are manufactured by Dave Cameron in Canada. I filled out the electronic order form available at IRLP.net and paid the US$188 by PayPal. About a week later the IRLP interface board and Linux CD-rom arrived. It was a Monday that it arrived and when I got home from work I could wait to get started. I downloaded all of the instructions from IRLP.net and loaded the supplied CentOS distribution of Linux on the Dell. I commenced making all of the interface cables that needed to go between the computer, IRLP board and the transceiver. One thing that IRLP requires is for the transceiver to have a Carrier on Squelch (COS) line output. This output gives 5 volts when the squelch is triggered. I downloaded the circuit diagram for the Icom and found the point in which I could pull off this signal. I opened up the transceiver, identified the track and soldered an insulated wire from that track which runs out the rear of the Icom. I got to bed at 1am very pleased with my efforts.

"The next day again I was excited to be home from work to commence more work on the node. It was mainly software configuration that was needed as all the hardware was now connected ready to go. After a few hours of configuration and adjustment of audio levels I was ready to give it a test. It worked straight up which I was very happy with as going back to trouble shoot is a pain!"

" I did a test with Victor VK4WST the next day and reports from his end were positive. That night I received a call from Bill VK4XZ who is the QTAC person for the WIA and he told me that he knew that I had a IRLP node up and running and asked if I would change the simplex frequency from 146.425 to one of the recommended frequencies for IRLP simplex use as outlined in the Nov 2007 band plan. This was news to me as the copy of the band plan that I had was dated 2004. I was happy to comply and changed frequency to 145.400. At this stage I only had a dual band mobile whip on top of a 6 metre pole as the antenna connected to the Icom. The following Saturday I replaced this whip with a Diamond x-510 2M/70cm base station antenna which is 5.2 metres in length and has about 8db gain on 2 metres. I used the Avair AV-601 metre to test for SWR with a result of 1:1. The tip of the antenna is 22.5 metres above sea level which gives a line of sight coverage of 20 km (this range increases the higher the other station is above sea level)"

"The next day I did some field tests with Roy, VK4IRW. From Underwood (17.6 km back to node) I connected to VK4RBS repeater via my node and Roy who was monitoring RBS reported a good clear signal with some minor noise. Likewise his signal back to me was strong and clear. About an hour later we did another test from Manly (15 km back to node) with similar results."

Marty welcomes BDARS club members to make good use to the node. It will also come in very handy as a second node for JOTA use.

Interested in checking out where IRLP nodes are located around the world? At www.irlp.net you can download the IRLP node overly for Google earth. Just make sure you have the latest version of Google Earth installed. The Echolink overlay can be found at www.echolink.org/googleInfo.htm

Jordan hits the news

Jordan joined his family at Kangaroo Point to participate in Earth Hour. Marty Nelson was invited by the Brisbane Earth Hour Committee along with President David Williams, 2nd cslr in the Temple Presidency to switch off the lights at the Brisbane Temple and KP chapel. Whilst Marty was mingling with the dignitaries a freelance photographer asked if he could take a picture of my children. Jordan and Brooke posed for pictures but Brooke was bitten by a green ant and became upset so it ended up being this picture of Jordan that was selected to go into the Brisbane Times news which is a internet based news service.

The news story can be found here

Nelson's go to Movie World

It had been some time since we had been to Movie World and a friend told be that for the next few months tickets were half price so we decided it was time to return. We picked a good day as the park was not crowded so we did not have to wait to long to get on rides. The superman escape was really good. Eugene Ditherry and his family was at the park as well and we crossed paths a few times throughout the day. After a fantastic day we returned to our Ford Falcon wagon and it would not start. Marty called the RACQ and they diagnosed that the problem was a faulty coil. They did not have one and shops were closed so we got a taxi home. Marty when to a auto shop the next morning and purchased a new coil. Lorraine and James dropped Marty of at Movie World carpark and Marty fitted the new coil and drove the Falcom home. Lorraine and James went on to shop at Harbourtown factory outlets.

Brooke Gets Baptised

Brooke's 8th Birthday

Test

Cleveland Ward Youth attend Wet N' Wild

Test