Category Archives: On The Air

Articles and other information related to On The Air Operations, Special Events, Activations, DXxpeditions, Portable and Mobile On The Air Activities, Nets, etc.

Activities, Education and Training, General, Homebrewing, On The Air, Space

Amateur Radio at MakeIt Labs

On Saturday, January 28th the Nashua Area Radio Club (Nashua ARC) will be hosting a special event for Interested kids, parents, and friends in the community about the joy of amateur radio at MakeIt Labs in Nashua from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. You may drop in at any time and stay as long as you like to participate! Among our activities, you can:

Get-On-The-Air Station (GOTA)

Ham Radio GOTA StationThis is amateur radio at its best and what it’s known for! We invite you to get on the air and make a contact (we call them QSO’s — pronounced: cue-so) somewhere in the world! You might be able to make a new friend in Germany or even Japan! Making contacts sits at the heart of amateur radio and is an activity that brings people together. So don’t be shy, step up, and hit the push-to-talk button!

Satellite Station Display

AMSAT LogoThe Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) began in 1969 to foster amateur radio participation in space research and communication. Currently, AMSAT groups help advance the state of the art in space science, space education, and space technology. Come learn about what components go into constructing a station capable of contacting a satellite and what antennas, and smart phone apps, operators use to keep a pulse on the satellite location.

Digital Amateur Television (DATV)

DATV Transceiver RackNot only are amateur radio operators granted privileges to transmit speech, but we also can send fast-scan data such as TV signals! Many operators have experimented with how to homebrew their own fast-scan TV stations, and our club president Fred (AB1OC) and our member Skip (K1NKR) have chosen to use construct a station which uses a Raspberry Pi (RPi) with an Arduino shield to sit at the heart of the transceiver. The RPi is the brains of the TV which runs Linux and among other things is responsible for sequencing, transmit/receive control, automatic VSWR monitoring, and a touch-screen controlling interface to configure and operate the system. Learn about what it takes to build and operate one of these stations. We may even be able to make a contact! More information can be found at https://stationproject.wordpress.com/category/amateur-television/.

Kit Building with Nashua ARC

Oscilloscope KitThe Nashua ARC holds kit-building nights were both inexperienced and experienced members homebrew in a relaxed, learning environment. In the past, we have built Pixie QRP (low-wattage) kits transmitting Morse Code on the 40m amateur band. But, on February 18 from 1 – 5 pm, First Church in Nashua, Nauss Hall, we will build the digital oscilloscope kit DSO138 (shown to left). This kit comes with a clear acrylic case to protect it, build instructions, and among its specs has a 1 Msps sampling rate, 12-bit accuracy, 200 kHz bandwidth (good for audio signals), capable of freezing the waveform display, and comes with a 1Hz / 3.3V test source. We invite you to join us and will bring some kits with us. More info can be found on our website at https://www.n1fd.org/2016/03/27/inexpensive-diy-digital-oscilloscope-kit/.

We hope you will join us for our event! Please bring friends, family, but most importantly we want you to have fun and enjoy this hobby with us!!

Contact Information

Brian Smigielski (AB1ZO): [email protected]
Jamey Finchum (KC1ENX): [email protected]

Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air, Youth Activities

ARRL Kids Day on the Air

On Saturday, January 7th the Nashua Area Radio Club participated in the ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air.  Fred (AB1OC) and Anita (AB1QB) opened up their station for any youth that wanted to come and participate!  We also had snap circuits available with help from Greg (W1TEN) and CW paddles for those who wanted to practice up on their Morse code.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us as it was a snowy day with slippery road conditions.  We had a couple of youth not able to make the event due to the weather, but we still had a few show and they were very enthusiastic!

Connor (KC1GGX) operating on 20 meters during Kids DayConnor (KC1GGX) started the event off by operating on 20 meters and made several contacts.  Despite having a little “mic fright” he warmed up nicely and didn’t want to share the mic when it was someone else’s turn!

 

Abby (AB1BY) stopped by and had two frienAbby (AB1BY) operating on Kids Day with her two friendsds – Samay and Jaegen – from her Destination Imagination team with her.  Abby got the ball rolling for her friends and  showed them how to create a pile up – just have a young YL voice and the calls start coming!  She then turned the mic over to Samay and Jaegen and helped them work through their first QSOs.  They soon were comfortable with the phonetic alphabet and they had fun spelling their names during their QSOs.

Despite the weatherEveryone had a great time during Kids Day, the kids had a great time and it was a lot of fun to see the youth in our club improve their operating skills and watch the new kids make their first contacts!

 

Kids Day FunMark you calendars for Sunday, June 18th when the next ARRL’s Kids Day on the Air takes place.  I feel pretty comfortable saying there won’t be any snow… but, this is New England.

 

DX, Featured, General, Homebrewing, Newsletter, On The Air

The DX Alarm Clock – Part 1: Raspberry Pi Software

I have been an Amateur Radio Operator for 5 years and my favorite thing to do is chase DX. As a new Ham, it was always a thrill to work a new DXCC, but now that I have over 280 DXCCs and over 1000 band points, it is a little more difficult to find a new one. Add to that the fact that I am trying to get a DXCC in 80m and 160m., which are usually open when I am asleep. I created the DX Alarm Clock as a way to get notified that there is something new on the air when I am not down in the shack.  This article will talk about how I developed the software for the DX Alarm Clock.  Part 2 will talk about building the Raspberry Pi-based Hardware and loading the OS.

DX Alarm Clock Architecture

The DX Alarm Clock is a Python software program running on a Raspberry Pi that gathers data online about my log and what is on the spotting network and uses that data to alert me when there is a “new one” on the air.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - DX Alarm Clock Architecture
DX Alarm Clock Architecture

The ClubLog website provides a light DX Cluster website called DXLite, which has an XML Interface. The DX Alarm Clock uses this interface to get the current spots. The software uses the Developer API from ClubLog to get a JSON matrix of all DXCC entities by band indicating whether I have worked, confirmed, or verified each band entity. The software loops through all of the spots returned by DXLite and looks each DXCC up in the JSON ClubLog matrix. I also use the QRZ.com XML Interface to get additional information for each callsign that is spotted, like the state.

User Interface

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - DXCC Configuration Screen
DXCC Configuration Screen

The DX Alarm Clock uses Tkinter/TTK for the GUI.  I used the Notebook widget to create a multi-tab GUI.  There is a tab for configuring filters for DX Entity. The user can choose all New DXCCs, as well as specific bands and nodes to provide alerts for.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - WAS Configuration Screen
WAS Configuration Screen

There is another tab for configuring filters for WAS. ClubLog has no log look-up capability based on US State so the WAS filter lets you create a list of States and associated bands to provide alerts for.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - Notification Configuration Screen
Notification Configuration Screen

The Notification tab allows the configuration of what notifications the user would like to receive. The user can specify a separate email address for New DXCCs, New Band Points, and New US States. This allows alerts to be sent to email accounts or as SMS texts. You can also configure the sounds the DX Alarm Clock itself makes to “wake you up” when that ATNO or new Band Point is spotted.

DX Alarm Clock Alerting

The DXAlarm clock wakes up every 5 minutes and gets the latest spots from the DXLite Cluster. It checks each spot against the ClubLog log and if there is a match based on the configure filters, it sounds the alert, and then speaks the alarm, giving you the Callsign, DXCC Entity, Band, and Mode.   A simple text-to-speech package called flite (festival-lite) was used to implement the speech on the Raspberry Pi.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - Alert Screen
Alert Screen

It also puts a message with these details and the Frequency, UTC Date/Time, Spotter and Comment on the display.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - Text Notification to iPhone
Text Notification to iPhone

Additionally, it sends this information as an email to the configured email address, which results in a text or email.

 

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - Apple Watch Alert
Apple Watch Alert

I can even get the alert on my Apple Watch.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - Filtered Spots Display
Filtered Spots Display

Once all spots are processed, it keeps a running list of all spots that resulted in alerts on the main screen. Spots are aged out if they do not recur over time.

Ham Radio Raspberry Pi Project - DX Alarm Clock Hardware
DX Alarm Clock Hardware

The DX Alarm Clock just alerted me that ZC4SB is on 20m – that’s an ATNO!  Got to go down to the shack and work him!    Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post on the DXAlarm Clock Raspberry Pi-based hardware and on setting up the Raspberry Pi OS.

Anita, AB1QB

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide