Tag Archives: HF

Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter, Station Equipment

January Tech Night Making the Most of Your HF transceiver

The January Tech night was about getting the most out of your HF transceiver. Fred had an interesting  PowerPoint presentation where he demonstrated how to do just that. For anyone else new to HF, I wanted to comment on it here. In his presentation, he described how you should use filtering first and digital signal processing (DSP) as a last resort. That’s the exact mistake I was doing. if you use a lot  DSP with a narrow filter selected the audio sounds hollow and really difficult to listen to. If you turn off the DSP  select the narrow filter and then bring up the DSP if needed you get less noise and a pleasing audio output. Also turning down the AF gain can be your friend too!

73 and good DXing

-Jim.   K1BMR

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.

 

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide