Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hello Mike,
Our club already has a CW practice net. It meetings on Monday and Thursday evening at 8 pm. Check out our club calendar for details.
73,
We will be setting up at the park tomorrow (Friday) at 9 am and we’d welcome some help from a few members with this part of the operation. We will be setting up our antenna and testing the station between 9 am and noon.
We hope to see you at the park!
73,
FB Brian. If you get it working, put it on the air as part of our 37th Anniversary Event this weekend. The combination of the amp and the special event should help you stir up more interest that you’re used to.
73,
Hi Brian,
Thanks for posting this. Your list is a great start! Here are some additional topics to consider –
- DC Power Supply Design and Construction – power supplies are easy homebrew projects and it might be fun to explain some of the common designs, when to use them and how to design a build a simple 13.8V DC supply for amateur radio use.
- Operating using Digital HF Modes – this would cover how to get on the air using digital modes on the HF bands. Topics would include HW and cabling, radio and SW setup. Wed want to cover the PSK, RTTY and JT65 modes. We might be able to demo some of these live in the room.
- Evaluating Antennas and Propagation via Reverse Beacon Tools and Networks – here we show how to use tools like WSPR, CW Skimmer, PSK reporter and others to evaluate your station’s performance in different parts of the USA and the world in real time. We would also cover how to go about setting up a station to contribute data to RBNs at your home QTH.
- PC Board Design and Construction with Eagle – here we’d show how to use free board layout programs (EAGLE) to design a PC board for a project. Topics would include circuit capture, board layout, trace routing and sizing, and steps to have the final board fabricated. We might tie this with one of the other topics like the power supply one and have boards made that folks could use to build their own PSUs.
- Arduino and/or Raspberry Pi Setup and Programing – this could be follow-on to the program that is coming up. Topics would include picking HW and SW distributions, installing OS and tools, and a simple programming example. We might be able to come up with enough HW to have 3-4 stations setup in the room for people to play with one of these platforms if there is interest.
- HF Operating Techniques – this would be a how to about operating on the HF band. Topics would include operating split, busting pileups, working DXpeditions, running a pileup, etc. We’d also want to cover the rig aspects of this. Examples – setting up split operation, how to use filters, how to use noise reduction and blanking, how to use notch filters, setting AGC, using compression, etc.
- QSLing 101 – How to Effectively Confirm Contacts – We’d cover direct/cards, LoTW, ClubLog, eQSL and QRZ. Topics would include discovering routes, how to avoid postal problems and theft, determining what to QSL, etc.
- DXing 101: How to Find and Work DX Stations – we’d cover sources of DX information (ex. DX newsletters, spotting cluster, alerting tools, most wanted lists, ClubLog Tools, etc.). We’d also cover how work DX from a modest station. Determining the best times, bands and modes, pileup busting techniques for little pistols and medium guns, equipment for DXing such as amplifiers and directional antennas, etc.
- Cool Smart Phone Apps for Amateur Radio – There a pile of cool apps for amateur radio. Some which come to mind include echoLink, CW practice tools, spotting cluster apps, repeater finders, SmithChart tools, County finders, Grid Square Finders, Antenna Calculators, Satellite Trackers, ….
- Popular Logger Setup and Use – the idea here is that we’d pick a popular logger or two (ex. DXLab, HRD, N1MM+) and ask folks to bring the computers and possibly a radio. We’d go step by step through the setup and help people to get things working. We’d also cover some of the more useful features of the logger suite in question. I’d suggesting doing DXLab or HRD for the first one. We could do this a second or perhaps even a third time to include other loggers.
- LEO Satellites: Building a Station and Operating through Satellites – this would be a more complete treatment of how to get on the air and operate using amateur sats. We’d want to include setups and operating for both FM “easy sats” and linear transponder birds. Topics would include, equipment and antenna choices, satellite pass prediction SW and how-to, operating including dealing with Doppler and tacking, etc. We’d also want to include an overview of the sats that are up and operational.
Let me know if any of these sound interesting. Lets also figure out how we want to do the survey when we see each other at Tech Night next week.
73,
Wow, 20m is wide open tonight. Folks need to give our 37th anniversary special event a try. Just made 90 calls in an hour and had a nice pileup most of the time. Here come the QSL cards…
73,
If folks are operating using the N1FD call sign and have signed up via the spreadsheet, I’d suggest you self spot and indicate that we are the Nashua Area Radio Club Anniversary special event on the spotting cluster. This should improve the amount of traffic the we get. I am headed to the shack now to operate as N1FD and I plan to do this. Have fun!
73,
Thanks for researching this Wayne. Is this something that we might want to consider doing through our website via an online form and PayPal?
73,
Hi Brian,
Generally, most amplifier manufacturer’s do not recommend the use of ALC because its easy to create lots of distortion products and splatter this way. The best thing to do is to just use and RCA pin cable to connect the Key out on the IC-7300 to the key in on your amplifier. Before you test, turn the power output on your radio down to 5W or less to start with and put a dummy load on your amplifier. Key the radio up and confirm that you amp is keying up and putting out more than the 5W in from the radio. Next, adjust the power out on the IC-7300 until you amp produces slightly less than its rate power output. This is the correct drive level for you amp and you should have a nice, clean signal on the air this way. Note that the best drive level may be a little different as you switch bands.
ALC just causes you amp to dial back its output if the Tx is overdriving it. The problem is that the combination of the amp and the transceiver doesn’t dial back in a completely linear way. This can cause significant distortion and resulting splatter on the air. When you see someone who is very “loud” but seems to have an overly wide signal on the air, more than likely they have ALC connected and are overdriving their AMP in hopes that ALC will somehow correct this. It cannot.
Have fun with your new amp!
73,
Hi Mike,
This is really good information, thank you! Would you mind turning this into an article on our Blog? I think that logs of folks would benefit from the information that you shared here. Thanks!
73,