Tag Archives: Education and Training

Activities, Antennas, CW and QRP, Digital, Education and Training, Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter, On The Air, Space

Sights from Field Day 2018

June 30, 2018 Anita Kemmerer

We had a great Field Day this year at the Hudson Memorial School! Thanks to our Field Day Chairmen, Dave Merchant, K1DLM, Hamilton Stewart, K1HMS and Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC for putting together a great Field Day for us.

Our publicity chairperson, John W1SMN went above and beyond this year as we had coverage in print, video as well as on WMUR, the local Manchester ABC station!

Here are links to our press coverage:

WMUR Sunday News: https://www.n1fd.org.
Hudson Litchfield News: http://www.areanewsgroup.com/calling-all-hams-for-a-field-day-at-hudson-memorial-school/
Hudson Community Television: http://www.hudsonctv.com/CablecastPublicSite/show/7707?channel=1

Here are a few of the sights from Field Day 2018. Join our next Meeting on Tuesday, July 3rd at 7:00 pm at the First Church Nashua for the full readout!

Thanks also to all of the committee chairpersons and all others who worked so hard to make this year’s Field Day a great experience!

Craig, N1SFT, our Transportation Chairman

Step 1 is to get all of our Field Day equipment onsite from multiple locations. Our transportation chairperson, Craig, N1SFT did a great job of planning and carrying this out.

Many members came out on Thursday evening and Friday to set up 3 towers, with Yagis, the V-Beam, the Satellite Antenna and 13 stations! Here is a shot that was taken by Desmond, WK1V from his drone.

The 40-meter V-Beam worked great and we got more QSOs on 40m SSB than any other band/mode in the event!

The Satellite antenna was impressive to watch as it rotates around to follow the Satellite passes.

4 Flex Radios were the heart of our Digital and GOTA stations. They were located near the 60-foot digital tower and accessed remotely via laptops and a Maestro in the Digital/GOTA tents. Thanks to Bill Barber, NE1B and John Keslo, W1MBG for contributing their Flex Radios to the effort. And most thanks to Dave, K1DLM for setting these up and keeping them and the network running for the duration of the event!

Adam Goldstein, a teacher from Hudson Memorial School and a sponsor of the HAB-3 effort at HMS gave us training on ARISS and how HMS was able to get a contact with the ISS, which will be this coming November.

N1FD On The Air - 10A NH — N1FD On The Air – 10A NH

Guests to Field Day were greeted by our new Banner!

Guests could sign in and learn more about Field Day and the Nashua Area Radio Society at our Public Infomation Tent. We also had an N1MM scoreboard and a weather radar display so we could be prepared for any incoming storms.

Jamey, AC1DC and Abby, AB1BY spent many hours on 20m and 40m SSB and made many QSOs!

Scott, NE1RD was one of our top operators!

Keith, KC1IMK made his first digital contacts on PSK31.

Dennis, K1LGQ and Jean K1AVM worked CW.

GOTA and 15 meter Digital Stations — GOTA and 15-meter Digital Stations

Here is Keith’s Dad, Mark, KC1IML with coach Ira, KC1EMJ making contacts on the GOTA station. Dave Merchant, K1DLM is working on the 15m Digital station. Thanks to Dave for all the work he did in setting up and keeping the network and digital stations running!

Hamilton at the 10/15/80 meter CW Station

Hamilton, K1HMS, one of our 3 Field Day Chairpersons, worked CW QSOs on our 10/15/80 meter station.

Curtis, Charlie and Trish working the Satellites — Curtis, Charlie, and Trish working the Satellites

Curtis, N1CMD, Charlie, W1CBD, and Trish had fun working QSOs with other Field Day stations through Low Earth Orbit Satellites.

We had delicious food thanks to Valerie Merchant, who provide meals and drinks during setup as well as Field Day operations.

We are still working on the final scoring and we’ll have a final readout at the July 3rd membership meeting.

Please share any pictures or video that you have from Field Day to Fred, AB1OC.

Anita, AB1QB

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

Countdown to Field Day 2018

June 20, 2018 Fred Kemmerer

The Nashua Area Radio Society will again be participating in the ARRL Field Day event this weekend. We have a long history of participation in Field Day and you can read more about some of our previous Field Day operations here.

Field Day is about training and emergency preparedness, learning about new communications technology, and having fun!

We will be a 10A station this year with three towers and several high-performance wire antennas. You can read more about our Field Day 2018 plans here.

Field Day 2017 - New Remote Tower — 60 ft Tower at Fiel Day

Our Field Day will be held at the Hudson Memorial School in Hudson, NH an will also feature an Amateur Radio Open House activity the students and parents that were part of our High Altitude Balloon Project 3. We will be supporting an ISS Crew Contact at Hudson Memorial School in November and we will have the primary ground station on-site at Field Day for satellite operations and testing. We are counting down to the beginning of our Field Day Operations –

[waiting name=”2018 Field Day”]

NARS members can still sign-up to operate or to be part of the setup teams at Field Day. Just log in to our website and follow the link to our online signup.

All Amateurs and the general public are welcome to visit our Field Day operation on Saturday or Sunday, June 23rd or 24th. Click on the white space below to see a map of our Field Day location. See you at Field Day!

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

HAB-3 To Launch On Sunday – How To Track Our High-Altitude Balloon

June 1, 2018 Fred Kemmerer 4 Comments

We are planning the third launch of our High-Altitude Balloon (HAB-3) this Sunday, June 3rd between 10 am and 11 am ET. We will be launching locally from the Hollis-Brookline HS here in Hollis, NH. Read on to learn more about our HAB projects and how to track our HAB while it is in flight.

You can learn more about our HAB projects here on our website and you can view a video about our first two HAB launches above.

High-Altitude Balloon Launch Site and Weather

The weather and Jetstream conditions look good for our HAB-3 launch! The jet stream has been unusually tranquil the past couple of weeks and this is going to enable us to launch locally from the High-School here in Hollis, NH. Nashua Area Radio Society members and friends are invited to join us for our launch.

We have been working with students at the Hudson Memorial School and World Academy here in NH. The students and their teachers will handle HAB-3 launch preparations and the launch. Launch preparations will begin on site at 9:00 am ET.

HAB Launch Weather — HAB-3 Launch Weather

The weather forecast looks great for our launch on Sunday with mostly sunny skies and moderate winds. These conditions should enable us to capture some spectacular video from HAB-3 during its flight! We are also planning to live-stream video from our HAB-3 launch and recovery to the Nashua Area Radio Society Facebook page.

Tracking Our HAB

I wanted to share some information about tracking our HAB as it flies. Our balloon will carry’s a GPS receiver and a 2m APRS Transmitter.

The onboard APRS transmitter will operate on the Amateur Radio standard terrestrial APRS frequency of 144.390 MHz and will transmit our HAB’s position, heading, speed, altitude and other telemetry data every minute during HAB-3’s flight. The transmitter is battery-powered and generates a 250 mW signal into a dipole antenna suspended from HAB’-2s flight platform. HAB-3 will use N1FD-11 as its call sign.

HAB-3’s APRS packets will be picked up by ground-based Digipeaters and iGates and will be relayed to aprs.fi where the HAB’s current location and flight path can be tracked. You can click on the link in the previous line to see HAB-3’s current location and flight track.

Based upon online HAB flight prediction calculators that we have been using, we expect the HAB’s flight to last a little more than 2 1/2 hours. The HAB should reach an altitude of over 110,000 ft before the balloon bursts and the parachute on the flight platform brings HAB-3 back to the ground at a safe speed. The above predictions will likely somewhat different from HAB-3’s actual flight path. Based upon the predictions, HAB-3 will be traveling approximately 25 km between its takeoff point and landing near Devens, MA.

Aprs.fi will store and display a copy of all of the APRS AX.25 packets transmitted by HAB-3 during its flight. Of particular interest to the STEM element of the flight will be the Balloon’s data on atmospheric temperature and pressure conditions at different altitudes.

All you need to track HAB-3 during its flight is Internet access and a web browser. Just click on one of the aprs.fi links here to see HAB-3’s current location and altitude. If you have an APRS ground station, you may also be able to receive HAB-3’s telemetry directly during the flight.

We will post updates on launch plans and the flight in the Youth Forum on our website.

T minus 2 days and counting until HAB-3 launches….

[waiting name=”Balloon 3 Countdown To Launch”]

Fred, AB1OC

High-Altitude Balloon Launch Site and Weather

Tracking Our HAB

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