After months of careful planning and perseverance it finally happened: the Club Trustee and the Secretary made an FT8 QSO with each other on 20 meters!
Anything’s possible! 😉
Happy New Year!
The meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM local time.
Attending: Jim AB5JK and Erik K5WW. A few members are out of town and some forgot they’re still a member. (yes, you are!)
We had a brief moment of silence for our friend Dave WA6YJW who recently passed away, way too soon…
Due to a first aid training class going on in the room next door we decided to keep the meeting short, so as not to disturb the students.
Jim reports that the new Allstar/Echolink hardware is almost ready for prime time. Great to hear; that big repeater antenna is waiting for it 🙂
K5WW forgot to mention at the meeting that the head of the UMH security recently approached him and asked for a photo of every member to be put next to the member list on the shack’s door, so that the (new) security personnel can easily identify us. K5WW will soon be doing his rounds with ye olde Polaroid machine.
Not wanting to jeopardize the CPR attempts next door the meeting was adjourned at 7:45 PM.
Next one: February 26, 2020.
Our friend Dave passed away December 30, after a short but furious battle with cancer. He was 72.
He and his wife Jody had just recently moved to Panama, where he had just received the HP3XP call sign.
Dave joined our club several years ago, after moving to Utopia and wanting to upgrade his license. All of us were stunned when he said he’d been a Technician licensee for over 50 years; and finally wanted to upgrade! And he did, as mentioned in this post in 2014.
Rest in peace, Dave. Thank you for your friendship, marvelous sense of humor, contagious enthusiasm and loyal support to the CARC.
Due to the President being ill and KU5Z and K5WW being on their way to San Antonio there will be no meeting tonight, sorry.
Heads up!
This month’s meeting will be on the 17th, NOT the 24th, to accommodate the Christmas Eve party-goers.
Everybody’s invited!
Or was it a hint???
Not a week goes by without “something interesting” happening or showing up at the club shack. Perhaps it’s time to rename it from “incident command center” to plain and simple “incident center”.
We’ve seen all kinds of trash piled up against the coax bulk head connectors. Coat hangers, high heel shoes, toys. Cats racing out of the building after being locked up inside for who knows how long. Homeless, hungry people begging for food long after dark. The always helpful crews doing “maintenance” on our antenna park. And the occasional snake staring at us from around the corner.
But somehow this is different. I found these, neatly staged at the bottom of the tower, this past Saturday:
Body lotion? I’m not really sure what to think of it, other than that somebody’s dropping a hint, somehow implying that we stink!
Look, we worked hard putting all of that stuff together. And it was hot. Pardon our perspiration!
But thank you, regardless. All of it smells pretty good 😉
Received from Ray WR5AY:
FT-8 Monday’s
The North Texas Microwave Society is holding an FT-8 informal net on
2 meters (144.174 USB) starting about 7:30 p.m on all Monday’s. There are
some folks on the air prior to that for tuning and band condition checking.
This is all done to hopefully increase traffic on 2 meters. I have used it for the
start to my VUCC for 2 meters.
This does require a radio setup that can do FT-8 on 2 meters. A
horizontal antenna is preferred but any antenna can be used to get on the air. I
use a home made horizontal loop like this:
https://www.sharkclub.org/links/antennas/2m-ssb-loop/2m-loop.htm
It is on a push up pole near 30 foot AGL. 200 plus mile long contacts are not
hard with it. Some others use beams. Beams are great but not a requirement.
Their web site is: http://ntms.org/
More information on other informal nets for 222 and 432 is there.
I just wanted to get this information out to more folks to se if anybody else
wants to do or can do FT-8 on 2 meters.
A great place to check FT-8 propogation is:
https://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html
Fill in the blanks: 2M, signals, sent/rcvd, anyone, blank, ft8, 15 minutes.
Last week there were two guys, one in Austin and one in Houston, that made
contact with Florida during our net time. I tried but propagation did not make
it for me.
73’s
See you on the bands.
WR5AY
WR5AY@yahoo.com
Here’s the PDF file Ray distributed: FT-8-Mondays
Attending: unknown.
Jim AB5JK was busy with work assignments; Mary KU5Z and Erik K5WW were in San Antonio due to a very early surgery appointment on the 27th.
Our apologies to any and all who showed up. Last chance to attend one of our meetings (this year!) is in December 🙂
7 PM at the Education Conference Room of the Uvalde Memorial Hospital. Plenty of room!
