The Rochester VHF Group. Volume 64, Issue 4 December 2011

Transcription

1 The Rochester VHF Group The VHF Journal Volume 64, Issue 4 December 2011 The next regular meeting of the Rochester VHF Group will be Friday, December 9 th 2011 at 7:30 PM K2TER s QTH 130 Angels Path, Webster, NY Map and directions in back In this issue: The Chairman Speaks! Secretary Report Treasurer s Report Vice Chairman Report Atlantic Division Election January VHF Sweepstakes Something to think about Classified Topics: Tune Up Clinic The Chairman Speaks! John Stevens WB2BYP Groupers: The Rochester VHF Group cordially welcomes you to the December meeting which will be held at Bill Rogers s home in Webster NY. (See further announcements in this newsletter for details and directions). This change in venue is an experiment, and we may be experimenting like this in the future as to other locations for the meetings to broaden the reach of the club. We are also planning something new to a lot of us, that of putting a meeting on-line to see what interest is generated with in-and-out-of-town members, or other VHF/UHF clubs. We have not decided to move meetings from Spencerport, as we continue to be grateful to the Spencerport Wesleyan Church for the open doors and meeting hall that we have been enjoying for a couple of years now, and especially to John Gilly W3OAB for coordinating with the church. Last month s meeting was well attended and one of the most entertaining of the year, with a visit to the Antique Wireless Museum in Bloomfield. Our tour guides Ron Roach and Duncan Brown were outstanding in their knowledge and walkthrough of the library, workshops, storage and prep areas as well as the main Museum.. Continued. Published by Rochester VHF Group PO BOX Rochester, NY Editor: Tom Jennings, KV2X The VHF Journal is published by the Rochester VHF Group monthly except June-August. The subscription price is included in the membership dues. If you elect to receive the PDF version by downloading it from our website, dues are US$10 per year. In this case, you will be notified by the day it is available for download. If you choose to receive the hardcopy Journal by Postal delivery, the dues are US$15.00 per year. Articles and comments should be submitted to journal@rvhfg.com

2 The Chairman Speaks! Continued The highlight was the ozone and clatter from the spark-gap transmitters on the third floor. Many of us saw equipment we have not seen for a while, maybe have only seen in the Old Timer s Bulletin or in some cases, maybe once worked on! Great job on the part of the Museum for letting us come by, and best wishes on the plans for the new facility and further restoration of many fine pieces of radio history. Pictures from the AWA Tour Ron Roach explaining how the spark gap transmitter works Early Broadcast Station Western Union Station Wall of antique keys The December meeting is traditionally the Tune-Up Clinic, with a myriad of test equipment to measure Preamps, Converters, Transverters and Filters used throughout the VHF and UHF spectrum. The fun really comes in seeing what works and sometimes what does not. I can vouch for having brought a lot of blivits (go ahead and Google that.) to the test setup in the past, but seeing some of the best and the mediocre has educated me a lot. All are welcome to bring something and try it out, or just watch the thrill of the game and the agony of the defeat. Directions are listed later in the newsletter. Among events that happened last month was the second weekend of the ARRL EME Contest. Below is a snapshot of the screen of the Flex 1500 SDR that was in here at Area 26 for the contest on 1296

3 MHz. If you can imagine it, that is the lower 48 KHz of the spectrum with the moon in the European window, east of our meridian. There are at least 12 stations visible and detectable in which makes you say things like is this 20M or 1296? I had a ball, worked a bunch of DX like CT1DMK in Portugal, SP6JLW in Poland, F5SE in France, G3LTF in UK, S59DCD in Slovenia, DF3RU in Germany, OZ4MM in Denmark, W7JM in Arizona, and that K2DH character in NY, among others with really fine CW signals. EME is a blast, and not necessarily limited to the big antennas and high power, though careful fine tuning of all system fundamentals is required to work lots of stations consistently. It is probably one of the most rewarding and technically humbling journeys one can take in amateur radio. I ve been messing around with 160M also (What? Not UHF?). If you have any experience with that band you know that it shares a lot in common with UHF weak signal work, in that DX does not come easily. You quickly are reminded of the key fundamentals of radiation efficiency and the struggle to get power where you want it to go. That sounds vaguely familiar. The most recent experiment is with an electrically short amplified antenna called an AMRAD, which couples a very high Z input FET to a short whip and transforms the circuit down to 50 Ohms ideal. The FET runs a significant amount of current to remain linear in strong-signal environments such as might be encountered in the AM broadcast bands. It really shines at LF and MF frequencies, where signals are buried in noise on the conventional low-to-ground dipole. Good clean fun. I have it mounted in the woods just west of the house.

4 A little discussion has transpired as to 2014 Microwave Update. A couple of people have come forward with ideas for presentations and offers to assist with the planning stages. We would welcome all suggestions from the RVHFG community and outside too. We especially want to solicit involvement from our Canadian brethren. A skeleton committee is forming and an outline of our objectives has been going around. See any of the Board members for details and to give us your thoughts, and hopefully volunteer to be on one of the committees. Watch the newsletter, save the RVHFG website in your favorites and check into the Monday and Thursday night Rochester VHF Group SSB nets at 2100L on USB for the latest info and updates. Hope to work you on the bands. John, wb2byp

5 Secretary Report Tom Jennings, KV2X Rochester VHF Group Meeting Minutes for September 2011 The November meeting was held at the AWA in Bloomfield, NY and it started off with an introduction talk on the AWA by Ron Roach, W2FUI. Ron also talked about the future plans of the AWA. We then proceeded to tour the facilities. Attendees: WB2QCJ, K2ERG, KV2X, WB2YJH and his XYL Arlene, WB2BYP and Gloria, WA2ZNC, K2TER, WB2GFZ, N2ZDS, K2DH, K2DLW, K2OEQ, W2CNS, and Don Corrieno. Old business: It was announced that the future home of the RVHFG Beacons will be at the AWA. New business: No new business. Rochester VHF Group Treasurer s Report CHECKING ACCOUNT Previous Balance (as of 11/09/2011): $1, Income: Dues $30.00 $ Current Balance $ Respectfully submitted, Tom Jennings, KV2X, Treasurer Vice Chairman Report We re going to try something new this year for the December Meeting/Tune-up Clinic. I will be hosting it at my new house, don t worry there s room for your gear. We ll have the traditional equipment available and more time to set it up before hand. We ll be ready to check your preamps and Transverters as well as your other gear. I guess I will have to finally unpack the boxes in my lab! My Address is 130 Angels Path, Webster, NY 14580

6 73, Bill Rogers, K2TER Vice Chairman, RVHFG Atlantic Division Election Incumbent Atlantic Division Director Bill Edgar, N3LLR, of Bradford, Pennsylvania, faced two challengers for his position: John Mueller, K2BT, of Falconer, New York, and Philip Theis, K3TUF, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Edgar was declared the winner, with 1628 votes. Theis came in second with 1368 votes, and Mueller came in third with 755 votes. This will be Edgar s third term as Director. Before becoming Director in 2006, he served two terms as Vice Director. From ARRL Newsletter Up Coming Contest: ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes Groupers, now is the time to start preparing for the annual ARRL January Sweepstakes! So dust off those transceivers, transverters, and amplifiers. Get em over to the RVHFG s tune up clinic to make sure the noise figures are better than spec! Power out is peaked up to the max. MDS signal is - 140dbm. Check out and tune up your yagis, quagis, loopers, dishes and omnis. SWR 1:1 across all the bands. Drain the water out of your wave guides and hard lines! Get the rust off the rotor gears! Visit the weekly 2m, 6m, 432 nets for expert reports! Get those rovers out of storage, rigs installed, cables run, antennas mounted. Get computers humming and up to date with latest loggers. Hone you cw skills so you can dig out those weak EN80 and FM sigs for a couple new multipliers! And get it done a week before the contest! Begins 1900 UTC Saturday, ends 0359 UTC Monday (January 21-23, 2012). Take a bunch of pictures and let me know how much fun you had! GL in the Contest! Tom kv2x

7 Something for Rover s and Fixed Stations to think about.. While listening to the presentation given By Steve and Sandra (N2CEI & K4SME) from DEMI on their 12 grid rove at MUD in October I took note on something they said and showed in a couple of pictures about communicating with the fixed stations that were looking for them. I wonder how many of those who listened to the presentation took note. Steve said that they used channel #2 on 60 Meters for their liaison frequency to let the stations know when they were at a new grid. When they got to a site they have a 60M mobile vertical (available from for $31 plus S&H, has them also to name a couple) on a stake mount that they stick into the ground, hook up the coax from antenna to radio (FT- 857D) go to ch #2 that is in the memory bank and announce which grid they are in and are ready to run the bands, 6 metersthru 10 GHz. Now we all know about and have been using 2 meters for years for coordinating BUT, 2M is not always reliable and sometimes distance limited. On the other hand, 60 meters is rock solid close in and out to several hundred miles and for the most part quiet. I have no problem talking to Steve in Fl from my home in NY state any time I call him on ch #2 and I am using a 40M inverted V with 40 watts. We in the K2LIM contest group have been discussing this and are excited about trying this out. We have purchased a 60M ham stick and have a dedicated rig for ch #2. (In our case the rig is an ICOM 706 MK IIG that I have sitting in my shack that I use for my 10M beacon.) This will be in place and ready for use starting with the January 2012 VHF contest. We really appreciate the effort that all the Rovers put forth in activating grids and we want to work you all in every grid on all the bands that we have. But, we have missed some of you on some bands and in some grids in the past and we don't want that to happen any more. I really feel that using this simple tool, that we already have available to us in the new rigs that most are already using, will help us all to make those contacts and enhance the fun. So rovers, I hope that some of you will step up and try this along with us and we can report on the results after a couple of contests, Fixed stations, you should think strong on this also. What a great way to coordinate with the rovers. Looking to work you in the VHF contests. Ken KA2LIM Classified Listings For Sale: Kenwood TS-480sat. Purchased for ham who had passed away before he received it. It has been removed from the box and powered up to see if it worked before mailing. It was used on RECEIVE only and has NEVER transmitted. It is under 2 months old. Everything that came in the box goes with it. $ Cash or Postal Money order. billkb2bls@hotmail.com or my cell For Sale: Harris Platinum I Channel 2 TV Amplifiers for use on 50 MHz. Hello 6m (or aspiring 6m) DXers! I have purchased a quantity of the Harris Platinum I Channel2 amplifiers for the purpose of making them available at an affordable price to serious 6m operators - especially those in rare DXCC - who have been limited to "barefoot power".10w input produces around a kilowatt output on 6m, if you use one of the cheap HPS3KW switching 50 VDC power supplies. A

8 pair can very easily provide 1500w output continuously if you use some high volume fans on the heat sinks. Details are on my website: Please pass this information on to anyone who might be interested, especially those in rare DXCC ;-) CU on 6m EME! MNI TNX and GL! VY 73, Lance, W7GJ