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

Interest and Excitement Around HamXposition Is Building

Interest and Excitement around HamXposition @ Boxboro are building! The event will take place on September 6th – 8th in Boxboro, Massachusettes. You can learn more about HamXposition here.

The Nashua Area Radio Society will be hosting several activities and displays at HamXposition this year. Our planned activities include:

  • NEW! Ham Bootcamp Program – a hands-on activity to help folks get on the air and build their stations
  • Our Ham Expo Display featuring information and hands-on activities you can do with Amateur Radio
  • A Kit Building Activity featuring a choice of two different kits
  • Multiple Get On The Air Stations including an HF Remote GOTA station and an on-site Satellite GOTA station
  • A Special Event Station using the N1T Callsign
  • NEW! Radio Programming Station – Get your FM HT programmed with a custom repeater list for your location
  • Two Forum Presentations by Nashua Area Radio Society Members

The ARRL and the HamXposition team have been helping us to promote our activities. You can see what the ARRL is saying about our plans in their recent posting – Dayton Hamvention Radio Club of the Year to Hold Ham Bootcamp at New England Convention.

You can learn more about HamXposition and our activities there at the HamXpostion website.

Ham Bootcamp

A First HF Contact at Ham Bootcamp

We have created a program that we call Ham Bootcamp to help recently licensed and upgraded hams to get on the air. We are making this program available to up to 100 HamXpostion attendees on a first-come-first-served basis.

Our Bootcamp program will run from 9 am to noon on Saturday, September 7th in the Federal Room. Bootcamp will feature tracks for both Technician and General class license holders. It is also a great place for folks who are not yet licensed to learn more about Amateur Radio and how to get on the air.

Our Bootcamp program will include:

  • How to make a contact and join a repeater net
  • Putting together an HF station
  • Radio, antenna, and feed line choices
  • Getting started with FT8 and digital modes
  • Exchanging QSL cards
  • Learning Morse code
  • Tips on upgrading
  • Introduction to ham radio kit building
  • Handheld radio programming tutorials

Ham Bootcamp is free.  Participants will receive discount certificates for a kit build at the show and for purchase of Ham Radio Gear from Ham Radio Outlet.

You can learn more about Ham Bootcamp on the HamXposition website and on our website.

Ham Expo Display and Kit Building Activity

HamXposition - High Altitude Balloon Display
High Altitude Balloon Display

Our Ham Radio Expo will feature a total of 10 hands-on exhibits about activities that you can do with Amateur Radio. Our display will include:

  • Information on Licensing and Ham Radio Skill-Building Activities
  • Ham Radio Communications via Satellites and the ISS
  • High-Altitude Balloons carrying Amateur Radio
  • Radio Direction Finding (Fox Hunting)
  • DXing and HF Station Construction
  • Portable Operating
  • Field Day and Emergency Communications
  • Ham Radio Kits and Computers
  • Learning and using Morse Code
  • and more!
70 cm Ground Plan Antenna
70 cm Ground Plan Antenna

Our kit building activity will feature a choice of two kits that you can build at HamXposition. In addition to the popular Morse Tutor kit, will also have a 70 cm Ground Plane Antenna kit available at the show.

HamXposition Kit Builderand Mentor
Kit Builder and Mentor at HamXposition

We will have tools and mentors available to help you build your kit at HamXposition.

You can learn more about our Ham Expo Display on the HamXposition website and on our website.

GOTA Stations and N1T Special Event

HamXposition - HF GOTA Station N1T
HF Remote GOTA Station – Visitor Operating the N1T Special Event Station

Our Remote HF GOTA Station will be back again this year. Visitors can use it to make HF contacts around the world. You can also help to operate our N1T Special Event Station. This is a great way to learn about DXing and speak with other Hams in the USA and around the world!

HamXposition - Satellite Station Operated by Burns WB1FJ
Computer Controlled Satellite Station at HamXposition

We will also have a Computer-Controlled Satellite Station on-site.  The station will feature the new Icom IC-9700! It will also use an automated antenna system to track satellites in space. Visitors can use the station to learn about satellite communications and to talk to other Hams through a satellite in space.

Get Your HT Programmed At HamXposition

Kenwood TH-D74 HT
Kenwood TH-D74 HT

We will be offering an HT programming service at HamXposition. Programming software and cables will be available to program the following popular FM HTs:

  • Icom – ID-31A and ID-51 Models
  • Kenwood – TH-D72 and TH-D74
  • Yaesu – FT60, FT65, and FT70
  • BaoFeng – UV-5R and BF-F8HP
  • TDXOne – TD-Q8

We will help you to create and load a custom list of repeaters into your HT that are available near your home QTH.

HamXposition Forum Presentations

HamXposition - Forum Presentation by Dan AC1EN
NARS Forum Presentation, Dan AC1EN Presenting

It has been a very active year for the Nashua Area Radio Society. We will be sharing some of the fun in two Forum Presentations at HamXposition:

A Recent Local School ISS Crew Contact
Time/Place: 1 pm in the Cotillion Room

The Nashua Area Radio Society worked with the Hudson (NH) Memorial School to plan for and execute and ISS crew contact this past year. Join us for an overview of this project including information about what goes into planning, preparation, and execution. The presentation will feature a video of the students talking with astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor abroad the ISS. The talk will highlight the STEM learning aspects of the project.

The Journey to 2019 Club of the Year
Time/Place: 2 pm in the Cotillion Room

The Nashua Area Radio Society was recently honored as the Dayton Hamvention (R) 2019 Club of the Year for its work in bringing new people into the Amateur Radio service and providing mentoring and STEM learning opportunities for young and old. Members will discuss some of the programs that NARS has created to help folks enter the Amateur Radio service, build their skills, and have fun with Amateur Radio.

Reaching Out To Hams Across New England

HamXposition Program Info - Training and Skills Development
HamXpostion Program Info – Amateur Radio Licensing and Skills Development Opportunities

The Nashua Area Radio Society is continuing to expand the reach of our Licensing and Training programs to as many Hams as possible. Our hands-on weekend License Training classes for Technician, General, and Extra class licenses are already quite popular with folks outside of our area.

We are also making our training video content and our popular Q&A forums available to Hams outside of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. These materials are available via our Internet Subscriptions. Look for more information about what we can provide in the HamXposition program and visit us at www.n1fd.org/hamradiofun to learn more as well.

We hope to see you at HamXpostion!

Fred, AB1OC

Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter, Youth Activities

A Raspberry Pi Video Player for Expo Displays

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We are continuing to provide our Ham Radio Youth Expo displays at local Hamfests. We are always looking to simplify to delivery of our Ham Expos displays.

Raspberry Pi Video Player
Youth Expo Kits and Computers Display

Dave, K1DLM recently suggested a great simplification idea. His idea is to replace the multitude of Laptop Computers that we’ve been using to display videos at our Expos with Raspberry Pi Computers. I wanted to share how we went about building our Raspberry Pi Video Players so that others might have the information needed to duplicate what we did for other applications.

Raspberry Pi Video Players

Raspberry Pi Video Player
Completed Raspberry Pi Video Players

We’ve been using a total of 8 laptop computers as part of our Ham Expo displays and most of these only play video content. Many of these computers can be replaced with a simple and compact Raspberry Pi Computer.

Raspberry Pi Player Close-up

The image above shows a closeup view of one of the completed Raspberry Pi Video Players. All that is required to use our new players is to connect the player to an HDMI display. Power is provided via a small USB power supply.

Raspberry Pi Video Player Display

The players produce a very nice display on an HDMI monitor. We also connect the players to a small USB powered speaker to provide audio.

Player Hardware and Packaging

Our video players are relatively inexpensive and easy to build. Here’s a bill of materials:

The parts cost a total of about $60 new on Amazon. Fortunately, we had most of the parts required on hand except for the cases which significantly reduced the overall cost of the project.

Raspberry Pi 3 B+

The current build of the Raspian OS includes a copy of the VLC Media Player which we use to play our videos. Playing high-resolution videos does stress the capabilities for the Model 3B+ that we are using and a few of our videos needed to be downscaled to 720p resolution to play smoothly. The downscaling was done using QuickTime Player on a Mac. Our monitors are 27 in or smaller and there was no noticeable loss of video quality at 720p resolution.

Case, Power Supply, Fan, and Heatsinks

The processing load associated with continuously playing videos causes the Raspberry Pi to generate a good bit of heat. To deal with this and also to provide a nice case for our players, we chose an enclosure package which includes a fan and heatsinks. The package also includes the required USB power supply with an on-off switch.

Player Software

RPi Desktop via VNC

We enabled the Raspberry Pi VNC Server on our Video Players to provide keyboard and mouse access via Windows and Mac computers. This allows a single PC to configure and start the VLC players on all 7 of our Video Players used in our Ham Expo Display. We use the RealVNC connect client on the controlling PC to access our Raspberry Pi  Video Players.

Raspberry Pi File Sharing on a Windows PC via Samba

We also installed the Samba file sharing package on our Video Players. Samba allows a Windows or Mac PC to access the drive on the Players to load our videos.

The Model 3B+ provides both wired and WiFi access and we use the wired connection for loading our videos because it is much faster than WiFi. The Raspberry Pi’s WiFi connection is great for VNC access to start out players at our Expos.

Planned Use Of Our Players

The Raspberry Pi video players create an inexpensive and easy to use System for playing videos as part of our Ham Expo Displays. We will be using them for the first time at our Ham Expo Display at HamXpostion at Boxboro in September.

The resulting Raspberry Pi are very capable systems and I expect that we will find other applications for them as we go forward.

Fred, AB1OC

Activities, Featured, General, Newsletter

NARS Dayton Forum Video

The ARRL gave the Nashua Area Radio Society a Forum at the Dayton Hamvention® this past year to talk about how we approached Growing and Modernizing our club. Here’s a summary of our presentation from the Hamvention program:

ARRL is pleased to introduce members of the Nashua Area Radio Society (NARS), from New Hampshire. This ARRL Special Service Club has over 200 members contributing to Amateur Radio licensing classes, youth and school activities, on the air operating activities, Amateur Radio Expositions in public venues, and emergency communications training. NARS is a vibrant, active radio club with a strong mentoring component. Club members will share a presentation about their activities and approach to building membership and youth participation in their club. If your radio club is hungry for new ideas and is looking for ways to engage newcomers – you won’t want to miss this opportunity to hear from a vibrant, active radio club. Sponsored by ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio®.

The ARRL has produced a video of our Dayton Forum presentation. You can view our Dayton Forum Video by clicking on the image above.

NARS Story
The Nashua Area Radio Society Story (click to view)

You can also view the slides from our Forum presentation by clicking on the image above. It works well to view both the slides and the video together. You can do this by clicking on the slides to bring them up in a separate tab in your browser and then playing the video from this page.

The Nashua Area Radio Society in the ARRL Booth at Dayton

The ARRL also provided space in their booth at Dayton for us to host a display about some of our projects and to talk with folks about how they might go about modernizing and growing their Amateur Radio club.

There has been quite a bit of interest what has worked for us and we are providing this presentation via the Internet to several other Amateur Radio Clubs around the USA. If you would like to have us share this presentation at your club meeting, please contact us via email to [email protected].

Fred, AB1OC

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide