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Should QCARC continue giving VE Exams before club meetings in even months?
Total Voters: 3  Loading ... |
Where: Smeal Building Conference Room, 1 College Place, DuBois, PA 15801 Time: 6:00 pm Walk-ins WELCOME Exams will be given for all classes of license Bring the following:
Volunteer examiners are reminded that the exam session is scheduled for June 25, 2016 at 11:00 AM. Operations are scheduled to start 2:00 PM, Saturday June 25, continuing through the night, with the hopes of taking advantage of any changing propagation characteristics. There is to be a Get On The Air (GOTA) station activated. The GOTA station will give new hams and those not even licensed, the opportunity to experience operating the HF bands under the supervision of a licensed amateur radio operator.
Location Coordinate information: 41°01.840 N 78°26.540 W. Follow the route depicted by orange arrows, on the map, after you turn off Rte. 322. If you operate APRS, there will be an object beacon to help you locate the Field Day site. Please consider what will make Field Day comfortable for you, like in the real deal you will be responsible for your own comfort and personal operating conveniences such as chairs, clipboards, pens, pencils, paper. flashlights, etc. – remember to mark your property -. The main equipment will be provided, such as transceivers and antennas. I do not recall that the building is handicapped accessible. If you have a spare HF radio or antenna to bring, all the better as a just in case but only 2 will be on the air plus the GOTA station. Additionally if possible, please bring along some type of food to share. Plans are in motion to have breakfast Sunday morning and some picnic style food for later times. To help with the items and food for Field Day, please down load the 2 page checklist and email the Club secretary (secretary@qcarc.org) as to the items that you will supply. I’ll try to keep all the updates current on the download list. If you have anything to add, please email your input to the Club secretary. Amateurs who are attending the QCARC Field Day, please advise the FD Coordinator by email at secretary@qcarc.org . This info is for overall planning purposes.
There is a $15.00 fee, payable to ARRL for as many exams as you can pass. Retests at the same session incur an additional fee. Those taking tests must present a photo-ID, a copy of their existing license (if licensed) and any CSCE forms.
The Quad County Amateur Radio Club will hold a “New Ham Radio Operator Event” at the regular meeting on June 17, 2016. The meeting will be held at the Penn State Du Bois Campus, Smeal Building at 6:30 PM. This event is open to those who recently obtained their amateur radio license and who have been licensed but inactive for some time. The meeting is also open to the public who may be interested about amateur radio. The Quad County Amateur Radio Club, which serves amateur radio operators in; Clearfield, Jefferson, Elk and Cameron Counties, was founded in 1975. Regular meetings are held monthly on the third Friday, 6:30 PM at the Penn State Du Bois Campus. For more information visit the Club website at www.qcarc.org Lately many of us have heard stations from rather distant areas on the 147.315 repeater. It is interesting to hear those stations that we normally do not hear but often it is just due to a weather phenomenon called and inversion. I expect that some amateurs sit back and wonder just what is this inversion thing that some offer as an explanation for the unusually distant stations heard and some stations that we can even carry on a QSO with. Sometimes the stations seem as though they are just audible for enough time to hear a call sign but other times long enough for a typical QSO. Then there are times that you may not even be able to hear or access your local repeater and again you will hear folks offer the explanation as an inversion as well. Consider the simplified diagram of an inversion below. Note that typically as you increase elevation the temperature lowers but with an inversion the opposite happens! You can see the yellow area depicting the inversion, which actually ends up acting as a boundary layer that can either attenuate the signal to and from the repeater or at times signal attenuation can occur to the extent of both blocking the repeater from hearing your transmitted signal and from you hearing the repeater’s transmitted signals. This occurrence can lead one to believe the repeater is off the air. I recall years ago there were trips made to the repeater site when we could not use the repeater, only to find the repeater operating. All due to an inversion. Sometimes the inversion layer is well above what the diagram depicts too, leading to other stations that you will be able to talk with that you would not ordinarily be able. There is another term used for this phenomenon which is called ducting that enables more distant than typical communications to occur, especially on VHF as well as UHF. Inversions, ducting, tropo and what ever other titles the phenomenon of having radio signals reflected and refracted is an interesting and vast topic of which you can read up on. Look for propagation of radio signals either on the Internet or the ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications, what was previously called the Radio Amateur’s Handbook.
In honor of the Club’s 40th Anniversary, the Quad-County Club will use the special-event callsign N3Q. The GOTA station will be operating with the Punxs’y Club callsign K3HWJ as in the past. Of course there will be hotdogs with legendary “BUX” sauce, made from the secret recipe created by Dick Flanders WA3BUX (SK), served at every Field Day since the Club’s origins! Other food will be available, and everyone is encouraged to bring something to share with the group. Plans are to operate around the clock, and to have a GOTA station set up for new hams, inactive hams and the public to operate. Additionally a VHF station will be set up to operate on 6-meter and 2-meter SSB/CW/Digital modes. Most importantly, a good time will be had by all, as we once again demonstrate to public officials and all of our guests how hams are always ready to work together to set up top-notch radio stations away from the comforts of home and communicate with each other across the miles, to serve our communities.
CLASSES COMPLETED. ARCHIVE COPY.
VE Test sessions are scheduled for Saturday, November 23 and Thursday, December 5th, in DuBois and Clearield, respectively.
The Quad-County ARC is planning to set up a station and invite local Scouts to talk to their counterparts across the country and around the world on the weekend of October 19th and 20th. QCARC Vice President and Scouting Liaison Officer Peach Caltagarone, AB3OG has graciously offered the use of the hilltop cabin at Hummingbird Speedway in support of this event. The plan is to open the station to the Scouts and their parents with several hams and Scout leaders present at all times the station is open to assist the Scouts in getting on the air and making radio contact with other Scouts worldwide. Volunteers are needed to make this a successful event.
Back by popular demand, as an added bonus we will offer optional Morse Code training beginning at 6:00 pm for those who are interested. Even though code is no longer required for any license, there is quite a bit of CW activity on the bands, and this unique skill is very useful to round out your abilities. Completely optional, this training will enable Technicians to operate legally on the 80, 40, 20 and 15 meter HF bands using CW. If you have any musical ability at all, the method we will use is guaranteed to get you up to speed or double your tuition back! A VE Test session will be scheduled for a date following the completion of the class at a date, time and place to be announced.
The wide availibility of WAN repeaters should allow handheld users an opportunity to check in by using a local repeater instead of DXing the 147.315 machine which may be dozens of miles away! Here is a recording of the first session (6.5MB download)
Quad-County members participated in a number of contests over the summer months, with good results! Here are some of the official results: ARRL June VHF Contest Current Club President Herb Murray W3TM and Secretary Joe Shupienis W3BC hit the bricks to participate in the Rover-Limited category. Activating 5 grids and handing out 92 QSOs, their final official score was 5,406 points, with contacts being made in 48 grids! It was a lot of fun, and they activated some grids neither had operated from before, notably FN02, EN92 and EN91, along with FN00 and FN01. We are fortunate to live in or near so many “rare” grids, and the 6 meter stations were grateful! That score was enough to win the WPA Section, and to take second place in the Atlantic Division! Field Day Overcoming confusion about our location, we stuck it out and had a great time. Finishing in the top 10 of all stations in the WPA section, we scored 2,550 points and most importantly had 26 participants who helped put our signals on the air for the full duration of the event! That score allowed us to take First Place honors in our 2A-Commercial category for both the Western Pennsylvania Section and the Atlantic Division. We finished 6th place in our category, Nationwide. Great work, everybody! CQ WW DX (SSB) This is “The Big One” — the 900 pound gorilla of contests. Current Vice-President Peach Caltagarone AB3OG graciously opened up his Hummingbird Speedway facilities to the club, and the 16 members and guests who stopped by to operate and observe. We strung up a number of antennas, including a pair of crossed G5RVs and W3BC’s “Half-Rhombic,” a 300 foot monster pointed at Europe. Results were very good! We logged 91 counties — that’s almost DXCC in a single weekend! the antennas worked flawlessly, digging out European, African and Asian stations well into the wee hours. Then it was back at it Sunday morning, with all the comforts of home — W3BC brought an HD TV and antenna. We were able to receive 11 HDTV stations, and could keep an eye on the football games as we racked up our own score on the air! Our goal was to introduce non-contesters to RadioSport, to allow everyone to try their hand in a big contest, and to have fun. We did that and more! We finished 2nd Place in the 3rd call district, 17th place Nationwide, 27th place in North America, and 96th place worldwide. With over 8,000 other stations sending in logs, that is quite an accomplishment! The CQ WW DX (CW) weekend is coming up, as is the ARRL Sweepstakes (SSB) weekend. Gear up for these and be sure to include “Quad County Amateur Radio Club” as your club to help out our club aggregate score! Whatever you favorite on-air activity, it’s coming to your radio soon! |
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The Quad County Amateur Radio Club will operate Field Day June 25-26, 2016, at the Clearfield County Fairground Community Building, yes we’ve been there before. Operating hours are scheduled to be from 2:00 PM Saturday to 2:00 PM Sunday, antennas have to be installed after the VE exam session. All amateur radio operators are welcome as well as the general public. Since the public as well as a number of Clearfield County officials and TV stations have been invited, as Club secretary, I ask that members please wear their Club shirts if possible. Thank you – in advance.
