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Should QCARC continue giving VE Exams before club meetings in even months?
Total Voters: 3  Loading ... |
The Quad-County Amateur Radio Club meets on the third Tuesday of the month, at the Penn State DuBois Campus in the Smeal Building Conference Room. The VE exams are scheduled on even months. Set your GPS to ” 1 College Place, DuBois, PA 15801 ” . This meeting is open to the public. Face masks are NOT required. Members and non members alike are welcome.
Doug was an enthusiastic supporter of operation on the VHF and UHF bands, including repeaters, and simplex operations, as well as single sideband operations on Six and two meters. He was part of the “WIT Team” – a group of club members focused on VHF contesting led by Gary Boucher W3GNR, and with the group scored first place an numerous VHF contests through thhe early 1980s. Doug is survived by his brother, Jeff KA3FHV who resided with Doug at their home in Morrisdale. Funeral arrangements are being provided by the Chidboy Funeral Home in Curwensville. Viewing will be on Tuesday, January 6, 2-4 pm and 6-8 pm, and on Wednesday, January 7 from 10-11 am, with services following.
Since I was just sitting here, I thought that I could show you all what I found at the ham-fest in Butler last Sunday. Well, lets go back to the beginning in this story. In 1978, I became interested in ham-radio satellites, so called OSCAR satellites. Way back then, the AMSAT OSCAR 7 was the satellite to work. It had an orbit that made it show up every 90 minutes, and covered Europe, northern Africa, and also the US East Coast. To work US East Coast stations, you had about 5 minutes before it went down under the horizon again, so you had to be quick! Now to the more technical part, the radio you see here at the right, is an Icom 402, it was the state of the art in late 70’s if you wanted to do some SSB on 70cm. It has 3w out-put, and that is not very much, but then again, your average 2m FM radio had a high-power setting of 10w. I used an Icom 402 on the uplink, 435 Mhz LSB, and then the signal from the satellite came back on 145 Mhz USB. The 402 was hooked up to a 46 element J-beam, and the antenna for down-link was a simple 4 element yagi. Right at the 2m yagi, I had a low-noise preamp, to help my Kenwood TS-700 hear the weak signals coming back from the satellite. I would say, that I worked a few hundred stations via OSCAR satellites. Now to complete this little story. At the hamfest, I paid $10 for this radio in close to mint condition! Needless to say, it made my day! Of course, there aren’t many 70 cm stations around Clearfield — much less SSB ones — but late last night before I went to bed, I went into my shack, and for some reason I tuned around the band and heard somebody! It was Joe W3BC, and he was operating from W3SO in Altoona, so that was my first QSO on my new “old” rig, Joe also gave me the frequencies for 2m and 6m, since what I stumbled into was the VHF contest, lucky them! Hope this little essay was worth reading :) PS: For all you who are interested, there is a 2m version of this radio and a 6m version, Icom 202 and Icom 502, there is also a fm 2m, Icom 215. Lars PS2: This is a 70cm Halo antenna I built for the radio, it’s horizontally polarized and it is Omni directional (same radiation all directions) Update on Halo, just worked W3SO, Altoona, made op laugh! Will listen for other stations also….
I have been unable to publish a Parasitic Emission since January, for personal reasons I won’t go into here. I apologize for letting all the readers down, and I realize the importance of a regular newsletter to each and every club. A monthly newsletter serves many purposes, not the least of which is a monthly reminder of upcoming club activities. I hope to be able to resume publication soon. I also have a duty as QCARC Secretary to publish the minutes of each month’s club meetings on a timely basis, and I have failed to do so. Beginning immediately, I will publish meeting notices and monthly minutes on this website, until such time as I am able to resume newsletter publication. //Joe W3BC
Doug is recuperating from a heart procedure at Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh. He expects to be home early this week, and reports that everything went well. He expects a full recovery. Please add your comment to this message with your get-well wishes for Doug.
Looks like I will have about 6 months, before I’m healed and so I have been thinking of a little something to do in the meantime. You see the rig at the right here, it’s my beautiful Kenwood TS-520 and its a so called “hybrid rig” it means that the radio have both old time tubes and transistors, the tubes are just used in the transmitter “PA”, but easily delivers a nice and clean 100w out. Now to my crazy idea, if you guys know of anybody who wants to get rid of his old non working TS-520, 520s or 520se, even TS-820, 830 or even TS-530 would work fine, I would be happy to buy for around $90- 100, just as something to do…. As you might have figured out, cheaper is better, since trying to get back to shape, (torn rotator cuff) so I can get back to work again, isn’t cheap… Mind You, I’m not a repair pro, but hoping to learn “how to” Thank you for taking time to read this… Lars KB3WBT PS: E-mail me at sm7fyw at hotmail.com Now is the time to renew your Quad-County Amateur Radio Club membership. It’s still only $12.00 a year, the same as it was in 1975! In 1975, that would buy you a tank of gas, today it would only buy 3 gallons. Or you could look at it as only $1.00 a month… or 3 cents a day!
2013 promises to be a fun-filled year with lots of enjoyable ham radio activities already being planned! Come join the fun, and support your Club!!! 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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Hello all Lars here.
Here’s the 2013 Membership Application!
