CIRCUIT. The El Dorado County. In This Issue FROM THE PRESIDENT. Page 1 President s Message. Page 2-5 Operating CQP at 8,500 Feet

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1 The El Dorado County CIRCUIT Newsletter of the El Dorado County Amateur Radio Club October, 2016, Vol.10, No. 10 In This Issue Page 1 President s Message Page 2-5 Operating CQP at 8,500 Feet Page 6 Meeting Minutes Page 7 Tube of the Month Ham Radio Testing October Meeting 7:15 PM This Thursday Federated Church, Placerville This is a special non-radio meeting presentation on self-defense, with the emphasis toward women but of interest to everyone. Thanks to KG6YST for arranging this presentation. Submitting Material to the Circuit Material may be submitted for publication by sending it directly to the editor. This can be done by US Mail, or via the Internet (preferred). The deadline for each issue is the Thursday, one week before the monthly meeting. by mail Bob Hess, W1RH 5020 Glory View Drive Placerville, CA FROM THE PRESIDENT I hope this message finds all of you well and happy. Another month is almost history. So is 2016 for that maer. On a repeated note, elec"ons are coming up and you all should be thinking about who should be the club officers next year. We did a beer job of publicizing our club and its ac"vi"es in 2016 thanks to our new PIO. The effort to publish info about our club and its ac"vi"es paid off beer than I had hoped. We actually received guests at our field day event from members of the public who had read about them in the local paper. Way to go! But now is no "me to rest on our laurels. Having tasted success this year only whets my appe"te for more. It would be great fun to receive guests from the public at our monthly mee"ngs who had read about them in the paper, or heard about them on a local radio sta"on such as KFOK where I know there is already interest. Well then, October has seen some fun with the California QSO party and the Youth Expo in Garden Valley. Due to some prior obliga"ons AF6ND (yours truly) did this event solo. With some help from the CCC volunteers I was able to erect my pop-up, a folding table and my newly acquired ICOM 706 MK II G mul"band radio. For an antenna I slung a horizontal long wire about 12 feet high between two trees with a simple wire feed to a point near the middle. My MFJ 946 tuner had no trouble matching the radio to this jury rigged antenna and I ended up making about 16 QSOs during the CA QSO party. Unfortunately in my excitement I neglected to log the "mes of these QSOs which resulted in their not being countable. Had I not done this my score would have been about 90 which, when compared to the Continued on Page 2 THE AG6AU REPEATERS YOUR DONATION TO THE REPEATER FUND WILL KEEP US COMMUNICATING!! IRLP Node 7195 and the AG6AU-R Echolink node are available for use on the 440 and 2 meter repeaters. Autopatch available on 2/440 repeaters BAND FREQUENCY PL 6 Meters MHz Hz 2 Meters (local EDH) MHz 82.5 Hz 2 Meters (wide area) MHz 82.5 Hz 1.25 Meters MHz Hz 70 Cen"meters MHz 82.5 Hz 33 Cen"meters MHz Hz 33 Cen"meters MHz Hz

2 (Continued from Page 1) scores of some of our veteran contesters is a prey modest tally; s"ll it was a learning experience in improvised EM- COM field opera"ons and I'll do beer next "me out. Interes"ngly, more than a few folks came walking up to our sta- "on with their eyes fixed on that antenna and asked about it, providing me with a segue to talk about Amateur Radio. I had a brief bad moment when the Garden Valley FD backed one of their trucks under my low slung antenna but no contact was made between the truck and my antenna. I have now installed that ICOM and related stuff in my shack and it is awai"ng its first deployment on the HF airwaves although I have been using the 2 meter sec"on of it to get on the nets since the beginning of October. Time to get hot on my code prac"ce too. Other ac"vi"es this month included a group effort to buy out the Ham gear of an silent key in Garden Valley. To date we have paid off our ini"al investment and have a lile more than $2500 over that to donate to the clubs accounts. ED Larsen KI6R, EB Keller KC6SOJ, Jay Harmor KE6GLA, and myself (AF6ND) were the primary members of this group effort but others showed up as well and helped move the literally tons of stuff to new loca"ons where a lot of it can s"ll be had by club members. There will be an estate sale of the rest of the stuff later and I'll let you know when as there is s"ll some equipment and other items that may be of interest to club members. Some will go to our general fund and some will go to the repeater fund where I hope it can be used to help accelerate our vo"ng receiver replacement project. 73 to all, and I hope to see you all at the monthly mee"ng on this coming Thursday, the 27 th. AF6ND OPERATING THE CALIFORNIA QSO PARTY AT 8,500 FEET Tyler, K6TLR I went up to Monitor Pass, in Alpine County, with my uncle, K6DRL. Bob, W1RH gave us a pretty sweet radio setup. We both have had our general licenses for less than 1 year combined. We got out there around 11:30 PM Friday night, set up camp in the wind and head lamps. Finally got to bed around 2 AM. Woke up Saturday morning around 7AM to find that my uncle's CPAP machine drained my truck battery. We got it charged back up and started setting up the triband beam on the 25 foot mast in the bed of my truck. We finally got up and on the air at roughly 1 PM. We got a few search and pounce QSO s logged, and then tried to settle down on a frequency to do some running. After about 30 seconds of calling CQ, a very excited responder, happy to get Alpine (we were the only station operating in Alpine County) in the log said that he just spotted us and we should be getting some traffic soon. Sure enough, the pileup started... and then we got booted from our frequency by someone sitting right on top of us. This was the story of the weekend. Spend 30minutes trying to find an open frequency, get 10 QSOs logged, then get QRM d from the frequency. At one point, N6O came over and thought the frequency was clear... after asking the rhetori Continued on Page 3 October 2016, Vol. 10, No El Dorado County Circuit

3 (Continued from Page 2) cal question, and me just about to start throwing my hotdog across the "campsite" because I knew I couldn't compete with the power of N6O, a good Samaritan came across the air to tell N6O that someone had sounded a little frantic trying to respond that the frequency was in use. N6O apologized and moved on. Thank you good Samaritan! Saturday night got down to roughly 19 degrees with a constant 20+mph wind, so we called it quits and bundled up in our tents at 930 PM. Sunday started out strong, but sadly, it was the same story. Run for 10 calls, and get booted to another frequency. After seeing some pretty massive storm clouds roll over our way, we called it quits and packed up. About 20 minutes after we got back onto 89, a snow storm hit Carson pass hard as we were heading out. Average temperature, 40. Average wind speed, 20 (had to have hit 50-60mph gusts on Sunday as we were packing up. (our table decided to go flying 20 feet across the "campsite"). We spent the entire weekend with only our eyes left uncovered, battling wind and cold at 8,500 feet. It was miserable...and I will probably go again next year...just so long as I Continued from Page 4 El Dorado County Circuit 3 October 2016, Vol. 10, No. 10

4 Continued from Page 3 get to take an amp with me so that all of you other CA stations west of there can actually hear me and stop taking my frequencies! See fun tips below! Fun Tip #1: You can charge a car battery with a radio power supply! Fun Tip #2: If you don't have a rotor for your beam, you can just turn the truck around! Fun Tip #3: With enough ingenuity (and wires and connectors), you can run a CPAP machine off of your car battery by connecting 2 lines via their fuses, and then tape the ring connectors of that contraption to the load and ground points on the male cigarette lighter for the 200w inverter! Probably not the safest, but it works! Caution: Do not attempt this unless you have a radio power supply and power generator to recharge your car battery in the morning. Fun Tip #4: If you forget to download the drivers for your rig control cable before leaving home, you can download them on a phone by walking around until you find a 4G spot on top of a mountain at 8500 feet. You can then transfer the.exe file to your laptop via the charging USB cable and run the driver install file! That's it! It was definitely cold and miserable, but I think with an amp next year, we could hold our frequency, and it might be worth it... if anything, we could use it as a big hand warmer. October 2016, Vol. 10, No El Dorado County Circuit

5 El Dorado County Circuit 5 October 2016, Vol. 10, No. 10

6 EDCARC BOARD MINUTES FOR 9/22/2016 Bob, KR6N BOD meeng called to order at 1840 BOD members present Don AF6ND, Nancy KG6PNP, Bob KR6N and Bob W1RH. No old business for discussion Treasures report. Nancy reports current balance of $ and distribu"on of funds to pay debts. Next month BOD will discuss disbursement of SK estate sale funds to club and repeater funds. Jay KE6GLA brought up the Gold Discovery Days Celebra"on at Coloma Park and the Clubs par"cipa"on at this event in the past. Jay will present this at the General mee"ng tonight. The BOD decided that the best days to set this event up for radio work would be January 28,29. This is to avoid conflict with NAQP SSB contest the same weekend as the actual public event. BOD mee"ng adjourned at 1930 EDCARC General meeng called to order at 1935 with Pledge of allegiance and introducons of members and guests. Don AF6ND men"oned the estate sale proceeds that will be donated to the club and repeaters funds. Nancy KG6PNP Presented the Treasures report with some discussion about new expenses that were paid. Jay KE6GLA made a short presenta"on about the Gold discovery event and invited anyone interested to become involved. There will be two opera"ng sta"ons setup for use. Don encouraged everyone to become involved with the club net night on Tuesday. Nancy asked that if anyone has any interes"ng topics for net discussion to please talk to her about them. Bob W1RH suggested connec"ng to na- "onal nets maybe via echo link. Bob W1RH gave tonight s presenta"on on The California QSO Party contest coming up next weekend and about our club s AG6AU repeater system. New member. Colton Meyer KM6FFO was voted in as a new member tonight. Colton is from Somerset. Welcome to the club, Colton. AOer a short break the Raffle was held for a nice collec"on of prizes. EDCARC general meeng adjourned at October 2016, Vol. 10, No El Dorado County Circuit

7 Tube of the Month Norm, N6JV Visit the Museum at n6jv.com HAM RADIO LICENSING TESTING THE GOLDEN VT The First Legal Triode Before World War I, the only triode that was legally available to the amateur radio operator was the de Forest Audion. This ended in 1916 when the Marconi Company sued de Forest for patent infringement of the diode Fleming valve. Marconi couldn t make the triode as it infringed on de Forest s patent. Other tubes such as the Cunningham Audiotron were in circula"on but they weren t legal due to patent infringement. Nothing was legal for amateur use. Private use of radio stopped when the war began. Later produc"on for the military produced some much beer tubes. When the war ended all the patent judgments went back into effect and commercial produc"on again stopped. This insanity was finally ended in 1919 when Marconi made de Forest and the Moorhead Company of San Francisco an offer they couldn t refuse. Moorhead had been making the SE-1444 triode for the military that was very successful. They were used in the Navy flying boats used in the first trans-atlan"c flight in Moorhead teamed with de Forest to use his triode patent and Marconi extended them the Fleming patent to make receiving tubes. Marconi would handle the sales for the coali"on. The resul"ng tube was called the Marconi VT. The glass they used gave the tubes a golden color and they are s"ll referred to as the Golden VT. The Golden VT had both de Forest and Marconi markings and the note: Licensed for amateur and experimental use only. We were finally legal. january 14th, :00 AM THE AMERICAN LEGION POST GREENSTONE Rd. PLACERVILLE, CA FEES ARE $14.00 (Subject to change) CONTACT: KEN VOGELE, W6KWV El Dorado County Circuit 7 October 2016, Vol. 10, No. 10

8 El Dorado County Amateur Radio Club PO Box 451 Placerville, CA Post Office Will Not Deliver Without Proper Postage First Class Postage Club Information 2016 President Don McCallum AF6ND Vice President Don Brooks KG6YST Treasurer Nancy Harmor KG6PNP Secretary Jordan Heichman WC6J Board Member Bob LeClerc KR6N Board Member Verne Terwilliger K6DN Board Member Mark Ashurst KJ6EUO Board Member Aaron Tassin KK6MCY Repeater Trustee Bob Hess W1RH Newsletter Editor Bob Hess W1RH Webmaster Jay Harmor KE6GLA Meeting: Club meetings are normally held on the 4th Thursday of each month (except for June and November), 7:15 PM, at the Federated Church, 1031 Thompson Way, Placerville Club Nets: Tuesday evenings, 8:00 PM, on the AG6AU repeater, MHz / MHz / MHz / Mailing Address:El Dorado County ARC, P.O. Box 451, Placerville, CA October 2016, Vol. 10, No El Dorado County Circuit