Broken Arrow Amateur Radio Club HAMGRAM

Transcription

1 Broken Arrow Amateur Radio Club HAMGRAM First 2013 Edition Scott Haley, KD5NJR, Editor Table of Contents Broken Arrow Amateur Radio Club HAMGRAM... 1 Table of Contents... 1 From the Editor... 1 From the President... 2 New Hams / BAARC Members... 3 Engineering News... 3 Net News... 3 Past Meetings... 3 January 2013:... 3 DEC 2012:... 4 NOV 2012:... 4 OCT 2012:... 5 Calendar of Events... 5 February 2 : Fox Hunt... 5 February 4 : Club Meeting March 8,9 : Green Country Hamfest, Claremore, OK... 5 Your Officers for Your Board of Directors for Things to Watch For On HF (special events and DXpeditions... 6 No 6m from 5X Items for Swap n Trade... 8 Feature Article... 8 The Last Word... 8 From the Editor Happy New Year everyone! The smoke has cleared from the 2013 January Meeting. Things were fast and furious in order to get Bruce back in front of his TV for some kind of bowl game but some points of business were conducted including a discussion on possible backup ( ) repeater location options and the dreaded OFFICER ELECTIONS. Thankfully I was NOT nominated for office this year. So I can heckle from the cheap seats. I will try to kick out more editions of the Hamgram in I ll be looking toward the officers to send in meeting minutes and looking to everyone to send in interesting stuff. My work schedule hasn t lined up with the warmer days we ve 1

2 had, so I have not been on the air with the FT-817 much lately. I did however bring my APRS stuff on the road to SW Oklahoma recently for a business trip and that spawned enough chatter to churn into an upcoming club presentation. I ve also got a small computer called a RaspberryPi on the way. While it runs Linux instead of Windows, it s very cheap (for a computer), very small and meant (among other things) to teach British kids how to program. Surely we hams can turn it into something cool. I thought we had a great January program. Earl and James have those VHF receivers that plug into a computer s USB port. They re meant to receive TV overseas, but here in the States they can be used to listen all kinds stuff (hams, NOAA WX, etc.) above around 50 MHz. The software is called SDR# and it s been the subject of a recent QST article. Stay tuned and send in those clippings. I need recent photos, interesting bits of stuff and your input to make the Hamgram. Don t feel like you need to make a certain publication deadline, when we get enough content, we ll kick one out. We should try to do that at least monthly as the Hamgram is a good reminder that it s almost time to make another club meeting. 73 Scott KD5NJR@gmail.com From the President For this month s Hamgram, Dan W5BM, asked me to summarize a recent he sent to the officers and the board. ed. Following Donuts on Friday the 18 th, a brief officer / board was held. High points are as follows: Discussion of Jeff s AE5ME proposed repeater sites. Discussion of Astronomy Club of Tulsa Observatory site in Mounds. Discussion of another site near Coweta. Climate controlled, power, secure. Board authorized Scott KD5NJR to purchase $100 of microcomputer hardware for the purpose of club demos and as a prototype for repeater and digital projects. Dan W5BM to make contact with City of BA officials to keep our club visible and to say thanks for their support over the years. Additional (mainly housekeeping) items to keep in mind: Broken Arrow Community Center reserved for another year. James KE5SWU and Curtis KF5ECI contacted re: refreshing the web page. Scott KD5NJR needs to start writing the Hamgram again. Next officers / board meeting 2/1/13 following donuts. Next general club meeting : 2/4/13. 2

3 New Hams / BAARC Members Bruce handled several membership forms in January. Remember that dues run $20 / yr. from Jan through the end of December. Please support the club and pay your dues. I d like to recognize new(er?) members to the club as Bruce passes those along to me. Maybe he can do that when he makes a new entry in the roster spreadsheet. It s great to see some new faces. Engineering News Most recent engineering discussion has revolved around the removal of / from Leonard Mountain at the request of the City of Bixby. That does leave us with the and repeaters atop Tiger Hill is Echolink equipped. Let Earl WB5UUW or myself know if you have questions on the repeater system. There are plans in the works to re-deploy and perhaps Net News The BAARC runs regular (almost weekly) nets on Monday Evening at 8pm on the repeater. The exception is on club meeting night (first Mondays). Sometimes Gerry KC5JKU picks up the net on major holidays just in case. Please join us to exchange items of interest to area hams. Please advise the editor of additional nets (and their specifics) running on club machines. I d like to mention the Youth at Heart or Submarine Nets if someone will keep me in the loop. Past Meetings January 2013: Meeting was called to order by President James Taggart, KE5SWU with 19 present. OLD BUSINESS Minutes of the November meetings were not read, but were incorporated in the club records. No Meeting was held in December due to the Christmas Party. Treasurers Report: Bruce Burnette, K5PX, Treasurer, shared that cash on Hand as of December 1, 2012 was $ Incorporating dues received, and Christmas party money collected of $405 and deducting party expenses of $ and Tower work of $360.00, Cash on hand, January 07, 2013 was $ , It was moved and seconded to approve the January Treasurer Report. Motion carried. Net Report: Monday night Net was interrupted by the Holidays, but when on the air, check-ins averaged 20. Youth at Heart Net has moved to Friday night. No report on activity. VEC Testing Session: Five applicants took part in December testing resulting in four new Techs and one General class. 3

4 Nominating Committee put forth the following slate of candidates for officer positions for 2013: Bruce Burnett, K5PX Treasury Ray Richardson, WB5JJA V.P. John Anderson, KN5UPS Secretary Dan Woods, W5BM President A request for nominations from the floor was made, but no response. A motion was then made to close nominations and vote to approve the slate above was made and seconded. The proposed slate of officers was unanimously approved. A review of the current directors was discussed. It was decided that Earl, WB5UUW had one more year to serve as director, Scott, KD5NJR has 2 years remaining and James, KE5SWU, as past president, was beginning his three year term. The membership, by unanimous vote, confirmed the directors as presented. No further old Business was discussed. NEW BUSINESS: Jeff, AE5ME brought up the status of the repeater. He suggested that we may want to look outside Broken Arrow proper for our backup repeater site. This was considered a good idea. He proposed a site on Concharity Mountain on a commercial tower. Build-out cost and provided intra structure was unknown; the rental cost was estimated at $ per month. Jeff volunteered to pay the rental to get us started on the site. The potential downstream monthly expense to the club when Jeff stopped paying was considered to be great. His second proposed site, the Hard Rock Casino was discussed. More information was needed on the site. Tony, KA5TRO suggested the tower at S 241 St near the current Astronomy club facility as a possible site. Tony will approach the owner, Blake for details and availability. James, KE5SWU offered his large backup batteries for use on the site. A motion to adjourn the business meeting was made and seconded. Motion passed. After a break, Earl, WB5UUW did a show and tell slide show on the inexpensive SDR, software Defined Radio, presented in the January, 2013, QST magazine. He mentioned several modifications for the down converter presented in the article. He displayed the finished product in operation including a tutorial on the software. Minutes submitted by Daniel A. Woods, DEC 2012: Thanks to Earl for ram-rodding a great Christmas party at Asbury United Methodist Church. They had a beautiful lobby and the food was great. A number of us brought small toys and James KE5SWU and his family got those delivered to Toys for Tots. NOV 2012: These minutes are hand-written. I have not transcribed them or posted to the website. Yet. 4

5 OCT 2012: Burger burn and the great Junque Box giveaway at Bruce s. Thanks to James for coordinating the Junque Box giveaway, and thanks to Bruce for opening his home to us again. Calendar of Events February 2 : Fox Hunt? 10 a.m.? Commentary on repeater. Fox on simplex. February 4 : Club Meeting S. Main, 7 p.m., topic : DX peditions. every Friday : 0830 March 4 : Club Meeting S. Main, 7 p.m., topic : DX peditions. every Friday : 0830 March 8,9 : Green Country Hamfest, Claremore, OK Your Officers for 2013 President Dan Woods Vice President Ray Richardson Treasurer Bruce Burnette Secretary John Anderson W5BM WB5JJA K5PX KN5UPS Thanks to Dennis KE5OTQ, Ray WB5JJA and Ray K5CFY for being our nominating committee. Your Board of Directors for 2013 Past President James Taggart Earl Stutzman Scott Haley KE5SWU WB5UUW KD5NJR 5

6 Things to Watch For On HF (special events and DXpeditions Put a birdy in the ear of your editor, Scott KD5NJR. Scott isn t much of a contester. In fact, he s not much of an HF operator. You might say he s the opposite of Bruce. Bruce claims (and I believe him) that he s talked on VHF as many times as he has fingers on one hand. But, Bruce provided us with. DX DOXOLOGY OK Folks! Here are some GOOD Dxpeditions are being activated soon. Don t miss these! 73 Bruce, K5PX CLIPPERTON TX5K Cordell Expeditions is pleased to announce a scientific expedition to Clipperton Island, March, We will use the vessel Shogun from San Diego. The goals of the project are: Conduct amateur radio operations to enable amateurs to make a contact with Clipperton; Implement an advanced version of the real-time online log website DXA; Carry out activities in support of the wildlife sanctuary and facilities on Clipperton Island. The first goal of the DXpedition is to enable as many contacts with Clipperton for as many different radio amateurs as possible. To this end we will field a highly experienced team of up to 24 operators and up to 7 active stations. The motivation for this is to participate in the worldwide activity of amateur radio, using it as a tool for fraternity and information. We expect to make more than 50,000 contacts with up to 20,000 different stations during the expedition. We will favor making contacts with stations needing Clipperton for the first time, but all DXers are welcome to contact us. The call sign for the operation will be TX5K. 6

7 Boys and Girls, this is a GOOD one! Don t miss it! We are pleased to announce the next DXpedition by "Italian Dxpedition Team" will be in Burkina Faso XT2TT 21 February to 6 March 2013 QTH: Ouagadougou Locator: IK92fi UGANDA- 5X8C Coming up in February 2013 All paper work is over, license, customs, visa, etc. Thanks to all sponsors for their help in our project, we are sure this will be a success. Almost all equipment is now packed, the rest will be just after the "Coupe de REF" contest at F6KOP club station. Stay tuned for more information about our strategy soon. 73's 5X8C team No 6m from 5X... Bad news today as we had a negative answer to our request for 6m. Here is the answer from the Uganda Communication Commission: 7

8 "In the case of Uganda, 6m band cannot be used because it is allocated for fixed and mobile services". That means that 6m is just forbidden in 5X.We are very sorry about this. But we will be active form 160 to 10m! Items for Swap n Trade We can discuss items for swap n trade on the Monday Night Net. If it takes more than a couple nets to get a piece of equipment taken care of, we can put it in the Hamgram. Just let the editor or the net controller know. Thanks! Feature Article In August, Bruce gave a good slide show with a number of antenna layouts, some dimensions and some technical details. In case you didn t know, that presentation has been a.pdf on the web site. If you haven t looked at it in a while, take another look! Thanks, Bruce The Last Word Come back in February ( 7 p.m. February 4 th, 1500 South Main St.) for the next meeting. Topic to follow business meeting : DXPeditions! 73 Scott KD5NJR 8