Category Archives: Activities

Nashua Area Radio Society activities. Included is Field Day, our Annual Picnic, Tech Nights, On The Air Activations and much more.

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

October Contests

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WRTC 2002 Champions, Helsinki, Finland

Contesting Season is Here!

There is nothing in amateur radio as invigorating as contesting. October marks the official beginning of the new season and I hope this brief article will help you prepare.

If you are interested in a whole year’s worth of contest scheduling you can go to contestcalendar.com to see events happening in the next week or the next year. This month, though, one of the biggest contests of the year is held: CQ WW SSB. This was the first contest I entered just after being licensed in 2002. Though I was worried I would make a fool of myself, I found that contesting is fun and easy.

One of the biggest contests of the year

The dates for CQ WW are as follows:

  • SSB: October 27-28, 2018
  • CW: November 24-25, 2018

The exchange in this contest is a signal report (always 59) and your CQ zone. Our zone here in the Northeast is 5.

Working in this contest almost effortless. Here’s a sample exchange (assuming I’m the one you’d like to call):

  • YOU: Listen listen listen. Tune around. Find a station you’ve not worked. Listen for his call sign, and for the number they give in the exchange.
  • THEM: CQ contest November Echo One Romeo Delta
  • YOU: Alpha Bravo One Oscar Charlie
  • THEM: AB1OC 595
  • YOU: Roger 595
  • THEM: QRZ?

Using the stuff we learned in the last two posts, enter the information in your logging program so that their call sign and CQ zone, along with your own exchange information (5)  is recorded properly. If you have rig control set up so the radio talks to your logging computer and the clock is set to the correct time and date, recording the exchange information is all that’s left. You have a successful contact!

With almost no HF experience all those years ago I was still able to make nearly 300 contacts in an afternoon. Conditions are not nearly so good as they were in 2002, but you should still be able to have some fun.

Club Competition

We will have another club competition for this contest. Enter the contest, make lots of contacts, submit your score to the 3830 scores website, and then email me at programs – at – n1fd -dot- org to tell me what club category you’ve selected.

All categories are single operator except Superstation. The club does not differentiate between assisted and unassisted operation. Here are the categories:

  • QRP ~ 5 Watts or less, any antenna(s)
  • Small station ~  Wires or verticals, no gain antennas, <= 100 Watts)
  • Triband-Wires ~ One antenna with gain, still <= 100 Watts)
  • Superstation ~ Unlimited operators and equipment

Also This Month

There are QSO parties and other contests throughout the month. Here are a few of interest (see contest rules for exact time and dates):

  • Starting October 6
  • Starting October 13
  • Starting October 15
  • Starting October 20
  • Starting October 21
    • Illinois QSO Party Exchange: [them] RS(T) + county | [us] RS(T) + state

Clawing your way through your Worked All States award but don’t have South Dakota? This is your month! QSO parties are a great way to get those rare states. Don’t miss out!

Closing

I’ll try to give a list of on-air activities like this once a month. This is also where I’ll announce winners from the previous month’s club competition.

Remember: read the rules, prepare your station, and submit your log. Oh, and HAVE FUN!

Photo credit of the WRTC 2002 Champions R. A. Wilson, N6TV (Creative Commons CC BY 2.5)

Activities, Education and Training, General, Newsletter

Doing my Hobby at Work

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Back in December 2017, I was awkwardly stuffing my face with food at my group’s annual Christmas party. In the middle of munching some seriously tasty treat, one of my bosses approached to me and says he heard I was a ham. I nodded my head (b/c verbally acknowledging his comment would have caused food to spew out) and he subsequently asked if I would be interested in organizing an Intro to Amateur Radio Course via the Technical Education Committee at my place of work (MIT Lincoln Laboratory). I felt the need to clarify. I said something to the effect of: “So wait, you’re going to pay me to essentially do my hobby at work?” He nodded and told me to take some time to think about it. Yeh…so…didn’t need a whole lot of time.

First order of business: What am I going to make this course about? I tried to do my HW and research what are the essential topics to cover. I decided I would do a 10-week course: 5 weeks to technical topics, and 5 weeks for applications of the hobby. You can see in the image below what I decided on. That’s a relatively concrete outline:MIT LL Amateur Radio Course Outline

Secondly: who’s going to help me out? I pinged a generic bulletin board at work asking for volunteers to be lecturers and demo preppers for various topics. The response I received back was phenomenal. Numerous folks (order 30 people or so) offered to help out. After attrition, and various folks realizing this was a serious time commitment, the list whittled down to around 10 or so. I was still happy. Additionally, I was even able to recruit our very own Burns Fischer to participate and do an AMSAT lecture! (Thanks, Burns)

Thirdly: how to keep the lecturers honest and encourage them to follow through. I borrowed a strategy that my colleague used for his digital communications course at work. You have a slide deck laydown 1 month out (that means the speakers come prepared with printed out copies of their slides and they lay them out on a table and we go through them for 1.5-2 hours) and enforce a dry-run 2 weeks out from their dedicated class time. Because this was all volunteer work, I couldn’t rip apart people’s slides too much, so the deadlines were more to stay on top of folks and gently remind them of their obligation.

The admin aspect of the job threw me for a loop. I didn’t expect to have to get so down in the weeds. From security issues to generic scheduling of dates, it was slow-going. Especially in the summertime.

But the reward of doing it all — oh the reward. After some pretty effortless advertising on my part, I was told by HR that we had 60 people enrolled in the course with a solid waitlist; this was the most popular course in the Fall. My. Mind. Was. Blown. I mean it was and it wasn’t. I work at a place with a ton of engineers who love RF as much as their children. But at the same time, I didn’t expect so many young people want to learn what this hobby was all about. I’m glad they signed up.

Our kickoff class was September 12. Myself and my co-organizer spoke to a packed room plus full of interested people. I remain in awe of the interest level of the students and feel fortunate to be a part of this entire ordeal. Maybe this is the beginning of something lasting. The hard part is determining what are the next steps once the class has concluded.

Thanks for reading,

Brian AB1ZO

Activities, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air, Youth Activities

Update on NARS Amateur Radio Expo for Young People

Interest and support for the Nashua Area Radio Society’s Amateur Radio Expos for Young People are continuing to grow! We’ve been busy with follow-up activities from our Youth Expo at the New England Amateur Radio Convention in Boxboro, MA earlier this month and we are planning our next Youth Expo as part of the New England Tech Trek (NETT) at NEAR-Fest in October.

Boxboro Convention Slide Show Featuring our Youth Expo
Boxboro Convention Slide Show (Click Image to view)

The Boxboro Convention team put together a really nice slide show which includes some photos from our Youth Expo. Click on the image above to view it!

Amateur Radio Expo for Young People Special Event QSL Card
Amateur Radio Expo for Young People Special Event QSL Card

We are having a new N1T Special Event QSL card printed for our Boxboro on-air operation. We made QSOs on the HF bands as well as via Satellites during our Expo. Requests for N1T QSLs from Boxboro are coming in daily and we hope to have our new card back from the printer soon.

Plans for NETT at NEAR-Fest

We have been working with the NEAR-Fest folks to plan our next Youth Expo as part of the New England Tech Trek (NETT) at the NEAR-Fest Ham Festival in Deerfield, NH on October 12th and 13th.

NETT at Fall NEAR-Fest Display Layout
NETT at Fall NEAR-Fest Display Layout

Our Expo at NEAR-Fest will feature five GOTA stations, an expanded kit building activity, new Fox Hunt and Morse Code activities, and a classroom area we can use to introduce young people to Amateur Radio and our display.

N1T Youth Expo Special Event QSL Card
N1T at NETT – Youth Expo Special Event QSL Card

We will again be hosting a Special Event at NETT and we will be operating as N1T there. Our planned GOTA stations include:

Boxboro 2018 - Completed Kit
Morse Tutor Kit – Build It at NEAR-Fest!

Our kit building activity is very popular and we are going to expand our kit building activity at NEAR-Fest to support up to 21 simultaneous builders. We expect that students in larger groups will likely work in teams of two so we should be able to accommodate over 40 students at a time! Our kit will cost $18 and will include a printed color manual and batteries. NARS members will be available to mentor builders on soldering and building their kits.

Youth Expo Fox Hunt
Fox Hunt

We are planning a Fox-Hunting activity at NEAR-Fest and we’ll also have a variety of hands-on Morse Code activities as well.

Morse Code Training at HMS - Amateur Radio Youth Outreach
Morse Code Activity

You can view and download a printable flyer about our plans for NETT at NEAR-Fest here.

NEAR-Fest and Our Members Help with Fundraising

The NEAR-Fest Organization along with a few  NARS members have agreed to match dollar for dollar all contributions up to a total of $1,100 made to our STEM Learning and Training fundraising project between now at the end of NEAR-Fest!

Please consider making a donation to support our projects as your contribution during this time will have double the impact in supporting our work to bring young people into the Amateur Radio service.

We are raising funds to support a variety of STEM learning projects including High-Altitude Balloon projects, electronics learning projects,  license training for High School and Middle School students, and other projects that provide STEM learning through Amateur Radio. We are also raising funds to allow us to purchase and maintain equipment to provide emergency communications and associated training in times of disaster.

We hope to see you at NEAR-Fest! NARS members, we need your help! If you’d like to help us with our Youth Expo display, please contact Anita, AB1QB at [email protected].  See Anita’s forum post for details on where we need help.

Fred, AB1OC

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide