NOVEMBER 19, 2021 MEETING TOPIC:

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Building a Ham Radio Trailer

In this presentation, George (KJ6VU) described the design and construction of a ham radio trailer used for club events. The topics covered included selecting a trailer, physical build out, electrical power system, radios, antennas and accessories. The trailer was finished in early 2021 and used at Field Day for the first time.

George was first licensed in 1972 and is active in repeater building, QRP, and portable operating. He is the host of the popular Ham Radio Workbench podcast where he and guests take a deep dive into technical aspects of the ham radio hobby. George is also the designer of the Sierra Radio repeater controllers and PackTenna portable antennas.

October Monthly Membership Meeting (via Zoom)

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OCTOBER MEETING TOPIC:

Our October presentation was about a problem we have all had at one time or another. HF Noise and how to Mitigate it.

 

This was an educational seminar to help both new and experienced amateurs who are on HF and find themselves plagued with noise. We learned what "noise" is, about the various sources of noise, and how to mitigate those noises using a variety of techniques. This was followed with a live “noise tracking” demonstration using a low cost AM receiver, and a low cost SDR and loop antenna.

 

Our presenter was Mike W7VO who is a forty-year plus Life Member of the ARRL and a very active ham. Mike was first licensed in 1974 as WN6HKP and earned his Amateur Extra in 1983. His main radio interests are contesting, DX and mentoring. He is the past President of the Willamette Valley DX Club, and is Trustee for the Columbia River DX Club, which he founded to mentor new hams in HF operating. He has served as an ARRL ARES Emergency Coordinator, is an ARRL Accredited Volunteer Examiner, ARRL Registered License Instructor, author, and seminar presenter on a variety of ham radio topics. In November 2018 he was elected as Director for the ARRL Northwestern Division, and in January 2019 as a Board member for the ARRL Foundation, the League’s grant and scholarship arm.

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Professionally, Mike holds technology degrees from Foothill College and San Jose State University and had a successful 35-year career in the high-tech industry. More on Mike can be found on his website: www.w7vo.com.

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73;

Mike - W7VO

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Friday September 17, 2021, 7PM

SEPTEMBER MEETING TOPIC:

Novel antenna construction techniques

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John – W6NBC made an encore presentation of his popular QSO-Today Presentation on novel antenna construction techniques. Hams think only in terms of wire and tubing for antennas. Low-cost, self-adhesive copper and aluminum tape offer many useful designs. John showed the basic theory of selecting tape for equal performance plus gave us a look at several practical designs from UHF to HF.

John retired in 2002 after a long career in broadcast television, principally for KNBC Channel 4 - Los Angeles, Ampex Corporation - Redwood City, CA and Sony Electronics - San Jose, CA.

 

John has been a ham since 1965, as WB6ZCT, G5AJH (while living 7 years in the UK), AA6NG and now W6NBC and still has a British call sign, MØGCK. He is active on all bands 160 Meters to 2.4 GHz and will be on 470 KHz. His current interests include assisting new licensees, local 2M mobile and 40M Mobile as a part of RVing. He also manages a remote HF/VHF base station on Vandenberg AFB.

John is fortunate to be married to a fellow ham, Rebecca – KF6OEB. He is also active in digital photography, Web Site design, cribbage, pipe organs, Elks, and steam railroading, and he LOVES sushi.

John is a frequent writer for QST and other ham publications.

Check out his website at www.W6NBC.com

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Friday August 20th, 2021, 7PM:

AUGUST MEETING TOPIC:

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Having Fun with VHF, SOTA, and More...

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Mountaintop operating has always been a fun way to operate VHF ham radio because Height Above Average Terrain makes a big difference on these bands. Bob/KØNR shared some of his experiences operating from the tops of mountains, including Summits On The Air (SOTA) and VHF contesting. 

 

About our Presenter...

Bob Witte KØNR

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Bob enjoys a wide variety of amateur radio activities, HF through UHF. In recent years, he has been most active with Summits On The Air (SOTA) and VHF contests. Bob has written numerous magazine articles for QST, CQ, CQ VHF and QRP Quarterly. His recent book VHF, Summits and More covers VHF/UHF topics, mountaintop operating and SOTA.

 

Bob recently retired from Keysight Technologies and currently consults on electronic test and measurement topics. His wife Joyce is also licensed (KØJJW) and they are often heard activating summits in the Colorado mountains. 

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Friday July 16th, 2021, 7PM:

JULY MEETING TOPIC:

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Transceiver Performance for the HF Contest & DX Operator.

by Rob Sherwood NCØB

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To read Rob's Bio, click HERE

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Friday June 18th, 2021, 7PM:

JUNE MEETING TOPIC:

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Building the Next Generation

"Proven Techniques for Growing Amateur Radio into the Next Generation”

 

Our presenter was David Cripe, NMØS, licensed since 1981. He is a well known ham radio kit designer, having designed most of the kits marketed by the 4-State QRP Group. He is also president of QRP ARCI (https://www.qrparci.org/) Active with Boy Scouts in his local troop, he has overseen the creation of their Amateur Radio club, WNØBSA, currently with over a dozen licensed members. He also dabbles in longwave radio, crystal radios, vacuum tube circuits, and antennas.

 

David W. Cripe, NMØS

NMØS Electronics 

 

https://sites.google.com/nm0s.com/home/

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Friday May 21st, 2021, 7PM:

May MEETING TOPIC:

 

All Electric Future?

"Green Roving in a Red Rover"

 

by: Wayne Overbeck - N6NB

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All-electric cars seem to be here to stay. Governments all over the world are setting deadlines for auto makers to switch to electric cars and the manufacturers are rushing to comply. General Motors, for example, has announced that it will only produce electric cars at some future date. California Governor Gavin Newsom has not only issued an executive order banning the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines after 2035, but also proposed to ban all oil production after 2045. In this talk, Wayne Overbeck, N6NB, describes how he set up a rover station for VHF contests in his new Chevy Bolt all-electric vehicle.

Wayne has been licensed since 1957 and has been doing roving or "mountaintopping" almost the entire time, mostly using gasoline-powered cars, vans and trucks with large V8 engines. He made many trips to Arizona when he was ARRL Southwestern Division vice director in 1984-92, mostly in cars with big engines, but also in his Piper Cherokee, a small aircraft that used even more gasoline per hour than any car he ever owned. Over the years, Wayne has had #1 scores nationally in more than 40 ARRL VHF contests, but he surely also set records for gasoline use during contests. A retired university professor since 2003, he is seeking more earth-friendly ways to pursue his amateur radio hobby.

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Friday April 16th, 2021 -  7 PM, via Zoom

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April MEETING TOPIC:

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Digital Modes and Multiprotocol Linking on VHF/UHF:

Where Have We Come From and What is Next?

 

by Bud Talbot, PhD

WØRMT

 

The use of digital voice modes on VHF and UHF in amateur radio has grown in popularity over the past five years. Amateur operators have made great use of "made for amateur" modes such as D-STAR and Yaesu's implementation of C4FM, in addition to commercial modes such as DMR, NXDN, and P25. One of the more exciting recent developments in this area is multiprotocol linking, which brings different modes together. In this talk, he looked back at the past few years of digital voice use on VHF and UHF in amateur radio to lay the groundwork for the current state of use. He also discussed some more recent developments, such as new digital modes and phone and computer apps for accessing digital voice networks. Finally, he offered some ideas on where the field might be going and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead.

 

Brief bio: 

Dr. Robert (Bud) Talbot is an Associate Professor of Science Education at the University of Colorado Denver. He is an experienced secondary school physics teacher, and has been an amateur radio operator since 1998. His current interests in amateur radio focus on VHF/UHF digital voice modes and multiprotocol linking, hotspot building and troubleshooting, and network development. He is the co-founder (along with Jimi Chistensen N7VDR) of the Colorado HD Talkgroup - DMR BrandMeister 31088 - and the Colorado Digital system  https://coloradodigital.net/. Dr. Talbot also works in emergency communications for the Boulder County (Colorado) Type 3 Incident Management Team, and is a National Wildfire Coordinating Group certified Radio Operator and Communications Technician in training.

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Friday March 19th, 2021 -  7 PM, via Zoom

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March MEETING TOPIC:

Working DX via Sporadic E.

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Did you know you can work stations thousands of miles away on the VHF bands? Hayden VK7HH from Ham Radio DX in Australia ran us through a presentation of his experience on working long distance via Sporadic E.

 

Covered in this topic were:

• What it it?

• When does it occur

• DX on what bands?

• Predicting openings using WSPR

 

Hayden lives in Australia and has had an interest in electronics since an early age and has been a licenced amateur radio operator for 17 years with main interests in digital modes such as WSPR or FT8 using WSJT-X, VHF and above propagation and microwave experimentation. He also maintains and runs several ham radio repeater stations and a YouTube channel - Ham Radio DX in his spare time. Please check it out!

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https://youtube.com/HamRadioDX

 

Kind regards,

Hayden VK7HH

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Friday February 19th, 2021 -  7 PM, via Zoom:

 

FEBRUARY MEETING TOPIC:
Batteries for Ham radio and Solar applications

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Our feature presentation for this month's meeting came to us from Kevin Zanjani - KI6DHQ who made a presentation on batteries for Ham radio and Solar applications. Kevin is the National Sales Manager for Bioenno Power in California. This exciting presentation discussed typical applications and he had a virtual show-and-tell of various products from Bioenno.

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Kevin has earned his Master’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC-Irvine and his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Michigan. Kevin then went on to get his MBA at USC. Kevin has been with Bioenno Power for 12 years.

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​January 15, 2021, 7PM -

Annual Membership Meeting/Elections via Zoom

07:00 PM Arizona time.

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January Presentation: FCC Monitoring Program

 

About our Presenter:

Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, was our guest speaker.

Two years ago, Riley agreed to head up the ARRL’s joint initiative with the FCC called the Volunteer Monitoring Program. You might recall the Official Observer Program of the ARRL; the new program has much more involvement from the FCC. Riley will give us all the details during his presentation.

 

During his career at the FCC Enforcement Bureau, we invited Riley to be our presenter at a previous OVARC meeting; some OVARC members might recall his excellent presentation then.

 

Riley has been licensed for 60 years, receiving his first call sign, KN4ZDH in 1961 in South Carolina. After 10 years with the FCC’s Enforcement Program, Riley retired in 2008. He became the Atlantic Division Vice Director but gave up that slot in March of 2019 to run the Volunteer Monitoring Program. As of March, 2020 the program is up and running and has 160 Volunteer Monitors.

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