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, CW and QRP, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter

Learning Morse Code – Our CW Training Classes Have Begun

August 17, 2016 Nashua Area Radio Society 4 Comments

A Big Thanks To Our Morse Code Instructor Team – Layne, AE1N, Mike, K1WVO, Dennis, K1LGQ and Wayne, KB1HYL.

The Nashua Area Radio Club has begun teaching a Morse Code training class on Saturday, July 16^th 2016. The class was created in response to interest in learning Morse Code, expressed by several club members who are drawn to this unique mode of communication. While this unique skill-set is no longer a licensing requirement it continues to be a long standing practice enjoyed by may radio amateurs worldwide. Numerous groups and organizations exit to encourage and promote the practice of communications using Morse code such as FISTS; North American QRP CW club (NAQCC); CW Operators Club (CWops); and the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC). Also, you can learn more about Morse Code and CW operation on our website here.

Morse Code - Dennis K1LGQ: "didit dah dah didit" — Dennis K1LGQ: “didit dah dah didit”

The use of Morse Code is one of the simplest ways of modulating a Continuous Wave (CW) RF carrier by generating characters composed of a series of “dits and dahs” to create a message. Most QRP (low power) operators favor CW operation because of its low circuit complexity, lightweight (for portable operation) and extreme efficiency. A limited number of amateur radio operators find great satisfaction in operating using Morse Code aka CW as their only mode.

Morse Code - Mike K1WVO 'Practice Practice Practice ...' — Mike K1WVO ‘Practice Practice Practice …’

The Nashua Area Radio Club Code course employs the Chuck Adams – K7QO, training CD. Chuck’s course is available for download free of charge and is well-organized with over 500 audio MP3 files to help learn and improve your skill levels. Our class encourages following K7QO’s guidelines and instructions to develop good CW habits that avoid the later roadblocks to greater speed and proficiency. Our class has introduced a few variations to Chuck K7QO’s training plan with a couple of special CW practice quizzes that help keep the classroom fun and more interesting. The G4FON software trainer utility has added to the fun with background noise, QRM and QSB listening challenges, which adds a taste of real CW operation. Learning and gaining proficiency with Morse Code requires practice, practice, practice. The K7QO training MP3 files can be listened to with a PC, MP3 player or in many of the newer car CD players.

Morse Code Keys - From the $2 Paperclip to $440 Bengali Key — From the $2 Paperclip to a $440 Bengali Key

Our training class has provided an opportunity for many of the students to observe several different Morse Code keys. A couple of students have also brought in some innovative code practice keys that were constructed from some unique household items. Other students are building a small microcontroller based keyer that can be used with a straight key or a single or dual paddle key for training or use with a transmitter. The class will continue for a few more weeks and then many of the students will be ready to try their first on the air CW QSO. Each on the air QSO will help grow their CW skills and is ultimately the best form of practice, practice, practice.

Mike, K1WVO

Activities, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter

Fall 2016 Ham Radio License Classes

August 14, 2016 Anita Kemmerer

The Nashua Area Radio Club has a dedicated team of Ham Radio license class instructors and we offer Technician, General, and Amateur Extra classes twice a year. We have a great track record using the Gordon West class materials and have 68 graduates who got their initial license or upgrade.

Our classes are held at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Nashua, 2300 Southwood Drive in Nashua.

We setup a live VHF and HF station in the classroom, which allows us to provide live demonstrations of the class material. This helps students to better understand the material and also give them an idea of what they can do with their license once they have it.

Ham Radio License Class Radio Station — Class Radio Station

This season, two new instructors have joined our team, Greg Fuller, W1TEN and Brian Smiglieski, AB1ZO, who are both graduates of our May 2016 Extra Class. They join our existing instructors Dave, N1RF, Skip K1NKR, Wayne AG1A, Aron W1AKI, Anthony, KC1DXL, Wayne, KB1HYL, Fred, AB1OC and Anita, AB1QB.

We will hold a License Exam Session at the end of each class, starting a 4:00 pm on Sunday.

We have scheduled 3 classes for this fall:

Date	Class	Class Fee (due in advance)	Book
September 24-25	Technician	$30	Gordon West Technician Class Manual 2014 - 2018
October 22-23	General	$30	Gordon West General Class Manual 2015 - 2019
December 2-4	Amateur Extra	$40	Gordon West Extra Class Manual 2016 - 2020

More information can be found in the flyers below. Please pass this information along to anyone you know who is interested in a Ham Radio License or an upgrade. Contact Anita, AB1QB at [email protected] to sign up.

Anita, AB1QB

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

Our Second Round Of NPOTA Activations

August 14, 2016 Fred Kemmerer

We held our second series of National Parks On The Air Activations this past week. The weather was beautiful and we have the pleasure of activating two different parks this time.

Mobile HF In NPOTA Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP — Mobile HF In Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP

On Saturday, Aron W1AKI and Merle W1MSI Insinga, Anita AB1QB and Fred AB1OC activated Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park (NPOTA HP26) in Vermont, USA. We used our Mobile HF station for this activation which was an SSB operation on 20m and 40m using 500w.

Operating Mobile HF in NPOTA NH26 — Operating Mobile HF in NPOTA HP26

We took turns operating as two person teams with an operator and a logger. The IC-7000 radio which we use in our Mobile HF station is easily accessible for connection and we brought a laptop running N1MM+ which we connected to the radio. This made logging accurate and easy. We made a little over 210 QSOs in about 2 1/2 hours in Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller on Saturday.

Saint-Gaudens NHS NPOTA — Saint-Gaudens NHS

On Sunday, we activated Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site (NPOTA NS60) for the second time. In addition to the gang from Saturday, Joe KB1RLC and Jill Gordon, Jeff Millar WA1HCO, Ira Brand KC1EMJ and Mike Ryan K1WVO joined us for the Sunday activation.

NPOTA Portable Antenna - 20m Inverted-V — Portable Antenna – 20m Inverted-V

We arrived early on Sunday and began our operation by setting up and tuning a 20m Inverted-V antenna for our portable station. We were able to get the feed point of this antenna up higher (about 35 feet) this time and the antenna performed better as a result.

Portable Operation With A View - NPOTA NS60 — Portable Operation With A View – NPOTA NS60

We setup our 20m portable station in a shady spot at the bottom of the park’s meadow. This gave us a nice view while operating.

20m Portable NPOTA Station — 20m Portable Station

We used our 20m portable setup which is based upon the 100w Icom IC-7300 again for our second activation and it worked very well. We had a laptop computer running N1MM+ for logging.

Nashua Area Radio Club Operating Portable In NPOTA NS60

The 20m portable station tent was our main “hang out” during our NPOTA activation on Sunday.

We also had our Mobile HF station at Saint-Gaudens and we operated it on 40m. We were QRO at 500w from the Mobile.

40m Bandpass Filter - 500W — 40m Bandpass Filter – 500W

We used the new bandpass filters from DXEngineering on both the 40m Mobile HF and 20m Portable stations. These filters have very low passband loss and very good filtering characteristics. We had no problems with interference between our 20m and 40m stations during our activations.

Saint-Gaudens Park Staff Supporting NPOTA — Saint-Gaudens Park Staff

The park staff rolled out the red carpet for us during both of our NPOTA activations. They displayed our signage and shared the information that we provided about the NPOTA program and our club. They really made us feel at home in the park.

There was a large crowd of visitors at the park during our activation. The combination of great weather and live music was a huge draw for folks. This gave our club and our NPOTA activation some nice public exposure.

Saint-Gaudens was a renowned culture in his time and there are many impressive pieces of sculpture on the park grounds. The park recently commissioned this impressive sculpture of Abraham Lincoln which has become one of their centerpiece works in the park.

Flower Gardens At Saint-Gaudens NPOTA — Flower Gardens At Saint-Gaudens

The park has many beautiful gardens and they offer a wonderful set of surroundings for the sculptures in the park.

This is my personal favorite spot in the park – a Birch tree-lined walkway!

Team Operating Our Portable NPOTA Station — Team Operating Our Portable Station

Our NPOTA operations kept us pretty busy all afternoon on Sunday. We operated as two person teams – an operator and a logger. This gave more of us a chance to operate and the teamwork made it easier to handle the steady stream of callers.

More NPOTA Team Operating — More Team Operating

I got a chance to operate both the mobile and portable stations. It was great fun handling our contacts with NS60!

Eyeball NPOTA QSO With A Local HAM — Eyeball QSO With A Local HAM

It seems that every Amateur Radio operation that I have the pleasure to be part of manages to hand our a nice surprise or two. This one was not an exception. I worked a local HAM, Jeff Katchen WB2NWR, in Cornish, NH which is very near the park. He came by afterward to visit and share his QSL card and a nice eyeball QSO!

Our operation was a lot of fun – a success by all measures. We made a total of 570+ QSOs between our activations on Friday and Saturday.

If we include our test activation of Saint-Gaudens, our NEQP activations of both parks and our July activation of Saint-Gaudens, we have made a total of 1,240+ NPOTA QSOs as N1FD!

There was some discussion at the end of the day on Sunday about doing one more NPOTA activation this year. Our final one would be a high-power operation with both stations running QRO 500w! We will discuss this at an upcoming club meeting and we’ll certainly do a third activation if there are enough interest and support.

We took a lot of nice pictures between this last and our previous activations. You can look at them in the gallery which follows.

73,

Fred, AB1OC

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide