After the general meeting in PMB Cale (ZR5CA) from the Midlands Amateur Radio Club (M.A.R.C) gave us a general overview about Meshtastic and similar technologies such as MeshCore and Reticulum etc. He also went through the Pros and Cons and some of his experience using this technology giving a balanced overview of the usefulness of […]
Read MoreA big thanks to Stephen for helping Tony (ZR5CAT) to contact Eskom at the Griffins hill site Thanks to Tony (ZR5CAT) for taking the time and petrol money to go to the site to assess the situation Griffins Hill requires multiple layers on authentication to gain access. So it takes a bit longer to get […]
Read MoreThanks to all the members that made it to the general meeting for April. We discussed the upgrading maintenance and organisation of all our current repeater sites. We had multiple suggestions and inputs from all the members present. We also discussed contact with Eskom and creating backups of all our site access keys. Our next […]
Read MoreThanks to all our members who were involved in the Groenekloof site clean in March “Following the previous MARC meeting and site visits, we arranged to meet at theGroenekloof site on Monday 30th. It was a typically misty Hilton morning when we arrived,beautifully kept reservoir grounds, I have to say.” You can view the activity […]
Read MoreM.A.R.C would like to thank all the members that attended this critical and pivotal meeting on Saturday the 14th of march 2026. With great sadness in our hearts we had to discuss how to move forward with club events and activities as well as financial processes. This meeting allowed us to touch base but further […]
Read MoreIt is with great sadness in our hearts that Jacobus Johannes Petrus De Kock (Koos) ZS5KDK has passed away after a long and brutal battle. Koos was a very active member of the M.A.R.C club helping out, fixing the repeaters and organising events as well as being on the committee. His passing is a huge […]
Read MoreM.A.R.C members enjoyed a 5 star Christmas end of the year lunch at the Woodstone restaurant in Howick. Thanks to Marjoke (ZS5V) for reminding everyone of the dates and a big thank you to Koos (ZS5KDK) for organizing the event. We at M.A.R.C wish everyone a joyous and happy Christmas and a prosperous upcoming new […]
Read MoreA big thank you to all the members who came to the meeting on the Saturday the 24th. We tried the new venue but we will most likely return to the old area. Thanks to Koos (ZS5KDK) for spending a lot of time and working hard to show us how he got his VarAC system […]
Read MoreOn Sunday the 23rd of March Koos (ZR5KDK) Tony (ZR5CAT) and Cale (ZR5CA) attended to the MARC repeater box at the Griffin’s hill towers site. Unfortunately the RTCM clients step-down regulator IC was burnt out, the power supply was outputting no voltage and the Repeater box was full of rat droppings. It seems that there […]
Read MoreOn Tuesday 18 March 2025 Koos (ZS5KDK) did some upgrades on the Groenekloof and Worlds View repeater sites. The old Lead Crystal batteries were also replaced with new Li-PO4 Lithium Batteries. The Blue Power charger at Wolds View was repaired for now but still needs to be replaced.
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