Coming up soon, on Tuesday. You should attend. Resistance is futile.
The 2016 edition of the ARRL Field Day has come and gone. Did we make a whole lot of QSOs? Nah…
It’s a social event; so it’s more about good company and good food than anything else. And we had fun!
Mother nature, as always, had some surprises in store. Strong winds, heavy rain, and thunder and lightning Saturday afternoon. We ended up having to move the small generator because it got soaking wet. And even after we relocated it we decided to shut it down until the (horizontal!) rain quit.
Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Nasty weather.
So we ended up running the whole station off of the backup batteries for a while, in order to give them yet another good test:
Let’s leave that noisy box off for a while 🙂
It’s good to have a backup for the backup! 🙂
Oh well. Free car wash for all vehicles in the parking lot!
The vehicles turned out to be water proof.
Meanwhile, inside, this happened:
Left to right: KU5Z, KS5TX and K5WW.
That’s right: KU5Z on her phone again; while KS5TX and K5WW do all the hard work! 🙁
And some time later, this happened:
Trading places.
All in all: we didn’t do too bad. Surprisingly, we made much more RTTY QSOs than expected:
Where was our CW guy???
In fact: we made more digital QSOs than anything else. Then again, with two die-hard RTTY operators at the helm, not too surprising after all. 😉
And then this image, just for fun:
We got almost every ARRL section!
The North Carolinians were out in full force!
Thanks to all participants, visitors, sponsors, cheer leaders, photographers and folks who bothered to log us. More fun next year 🙂
We’ll be having Field Day at the shack this weekend. Bring your cap and sunglasses 🙂
The meeting was called to order at 19:13 local time.
Attending: Richard N5YPJ, Jim AB5JK, Don KG5NYB, Mary KU5Z and Erik K5WW.
According to the Treasurer’s report we currently have $837.49 in our infamous sock. More coming soon.
Our most magnificent member Jason KS5TX has donated his Kenwood TS-2000 to the club. It will need some work, as the ATU has a bit of a problem. K5WW was in contact with Cliff Holland at AVVid Amateur Radio Service Center. After reading the symptoms Cliff hinted towards one or more shorted capacitors in the tuner. He asked if anyone was any good at soldering; so we may be able to fix this ourselves. If we can’t fix it then we’ll send it to Cliff’s skillful hands. Stay tuned!
Jim received a note from the widow of a local operator who recently became an SK. She needs help disposing of his equipment, especially the tower. We will go over there and inventory the equipment, and publish the list on the website when we have it.
Field Day is in less than a week. Due to it going to be hot (again) and lack of planning time we will participate from our ice cold shack! Bring our own dirt and mosquitoes. Food and drink may be available; because our master chef will be visiting this weekend. 😉
It is time to renew our ARRL affiliation and for that reason we did a head count of the active, paid members. Those who are a bit overdue will get an email from the Secretary, to see if they still have a pulse.
34 minutes after it started the meeting was adjourned. But we weren’t done!
Don KG5NYB took and passed the General Class exam – congratulations, Don! Marvelous job, as he missed only one question due to someone sneezing:
General Class. Ah, the possibilities…
When asked if he’ll be taking the Extra test next month he said he needed a bit of time off to recover from all the studying. What? You’re on a winning streak; keep going! 🙂
The June meeting will be on Tuesday June 21st. That’s a week earlier than usual; but we got Field Day things to discuss. Y’all come!
The meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM CDT.
Attending: Jim AB5JK, Don Ausmus, Richard N5YPJ and Erik K5WW.
The Treasurer’s report showed no changes since last month; but that is about to change because our dues are due. Far-out-of-town members: please mail in your dues! It’s still a bargain at $12/year, and $6 for an in-house relative! Don’t have any in-house relatives? Make a donation! 😉
Because of time constraints of both President and Secretary not much has been planned when it comes to Field Day. However, our next meeting will be on June 21st, the Tuesday before Field Day, at which time Field Day will be discussed in great length, and plans finalized.
The meeting was adjourned around 7:20 PM (again, CDT), after which new member Don took and passed the Technician test with a perfect score! And almost passed the General test too, despite – according to his own words – not having studied for that one. Ouch, and congratulations!
Perfect score, we don’t see that every day – congratulations!!!
Try this one, then: the final results of the 2016 ARRL RTTY Roundup are in.
There you have it. KN5S first place in the low power, multi operator category. In the West Gulf Division! 🙂
The meeting was called to order at 7:11 PM.
Attending: Jim AB5JK and Erik K5WW.
The KN5S repeater is back on the air and seems to be working great. Possibly even better than before! We will be working to get the Echolink / Allstar nodes back online, after the hardware’s been moved to a new location.
In a very contested race and super heated election AB5JK once again was victorious and will remain President; and K5WW will remain Secretary. It was close; so close that the votes had to be counted twice.
Due to that delay the meeting was adjourned at 8:26 PM.
Tired of it yet? All the BS, on a daily basis, about the Presidential elections? Yes, we know you are!
But here’s one more: Tuesday April 26 is the CARC’s meeting. The usual place, time, and suspects.
And: it’s our time for elections too! Show up, or your vote won’t count 🙂
No, I’m not referring to that old Thin Lizzy song; but to our repeater’s cavities instead:
But Thin Lizzy’s not bad either 😉
Fully re-tuned, aligned, lubed and supercharged! The KN5S repeater will be on the air again soon, thanks to David W5DUH for making the trip to Tone City and Jim AB5JK for hooking everything back up. 🙂
