Tag Archives: Station Building

Antennas, Education and Training, Featured, General, Newsletter

Latest Tech Night – Putting Up A Tower

July 2019 Tech Night – Putting Up A Tower

We recently did a how-to presentation on Putting Up A Tower at a Nashua Area Radio Society Tech Night. The video from this presentation can be viewed above.

Putting Up A Tower Video - Topics Covered
Putting Up A Tower Video – Topics Covered

We covered a variety of information related to planning, building and integrating Guyed and House-Bracketed towers. You can view the accompanying presentation materials here.

The Nashua Area Radio Society produces similar how-to training materials on almost a monthly basis and we make these materials available to our Members an Internet Subscribers (folks that live too far from our location to be regular members) for a small cost which supports our new Ham development programs and covers the production and storage costs associated with the video material. Here’s a list of the training topics that we’ve produced to date:

2019 Tech Nights

  • Almost Everything You Need to Know About Antenna Fundamentals Part 1 by Spencer Webb, W2SW and Steve Golson, W1SEG
  • Raspberry Pi for Portable Digital Communications by Jamey Finchum, AC1DC
  • HFTA, Feedline Design and Busting Pileups by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC
  • QSL’ing and Awards by Anita Kemmerer, AB1QB
  • Fox Hunting: Radio Direction Finding for Beginners including a Tape Measure Yagi Build by Jamey Finchum, AC1DC
  • Surface Mount Technology by Hamilton Stewart, K1HMS
  • RF Design with Smith Charts, Building a First HF Station, and Begining with CW – Hamilton Stewart, K1HMS; Anthony Rizzolo, KC1DXL; and Jerry Doty, K1OKD
  • All About Field Day 2019 by our Field Day Planning Team
  • Putting up a Tower by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC

2018 Tech Nights

  • Operating Your Station Remotely by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC
  • Transceiver Frequency Measurement and Calibration by George Allison, K1IG.
  • DMR Radios and Programming by Bill Barber, NE1B
  • WSJT-X: FT8, WSPR, MSK144 and More by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC
  • Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Computers by Anita Kemmerer, AB1QB, Jamey Finchum, AC1DC,  Brian McCaffrey, W1BP, Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC, and Craig Bailey, N1SFT
  • All About Field Day 2018 by our Field Day Planning Team
  • Portable Operating Gear – demonstrations by Nashua Area Radio Society Members
  • K1EL Kits by Steve Elliott, K1EL
  • Antenna Modeling I by Scott Andersen, NE1RD.
  • Building and Operating a Mobile HF Station by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC

2017 Tech Nights

  • High-Altitude Balloons: Amateur Radio at the Edge of Space and was presented by our HAB Team.
  • Getting On The Air 2.0 by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC, and B. Scott Andersen, NE1RD
  • All About n1fd.org – Getting the most from our Website by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC.
  • Digital Modes: RTTY, PSK, and WSJT-X by Mike Struzik AB1YK, Anita Kemmerer AB1QB, and Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC
  • Bonding and Grounding by Jeff Millar, WA1HCO and Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC.
  • All About Field Day 2017  by Dave Merchant, K1DLM, and our Field Day Planning Team.
  • Building and Operating a Satellite Ground Station by Burns Fisher, W2BFJ and Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC.
  • DXing and QSLing by Anita Kemmerer, AB1QB; Bill Barber, NE1B; Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC; and Dick Powell, WK1J.
  • Weak Signal VHF and UHF Stations by Jeff Millar, WA1HCO and Bill Barber, NE1B.
  • Getting the Most from your HF Transceiver and More by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC and Dave Michaels, N1RF.

2016 Tech Nights

  • Popular Loggers – Ham Radio Deluxe and DXLab Suite by Dave Merchant, K1DLM and Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC.
  • Low-Band Antennas by Dennis Marandos, K1LGQ; Hamilton Stewart, K1HMS; Brian McCaffrey, W1BP; and Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC.
  • RF Simulation and Matching by Jeff Millar, WA1HCO
  • Directional Antennas by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC; Dave Michaels, N1RF; Brian Smigielski, AB1ZO; and Greg Fuller, W1TEN
  • All About Field Day 2016  by our Field Day Planning Team.
  • Surface Mount Soldering and Desoldering, a Hands-On Presentation by Jeff Millar, WA1HCO
  • Building Your First Station and Getting On The Air by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC, and Dave Michaels N1RF
  • Software Defined Radios by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC and Skip Youngberg, K1NKR
  • Advanced Repeaters (DMR, EchoLink, DMR, and D-STAR) by Anita Kemmerer; AB1QB, Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC; and Bill Barber, NE1B
  • Antenna Modeling with EZNEC by Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC

You can gain on-going access to the full library of Amateur Radio Training and How-To materials by supporting our work to bring new people and young people into the Amateur Radio Service as a Nashua Area Radio Society Internet Subscriber. You can learn more about how to become an Internet Subscriber here.

Fred, AB1OC

Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter, Station Equipment

Final Field Day Station Test

Field Day Station Test - CW
CW Station Heaven

What goes into an 11A Field Day? Well, for starters, 13 stations! We got together at AB1OC/AB1QB’s QTH a couple of weekends ago to set up ALL of our Field Day stations at once and test them together. Here’s a rundown of the final Field Day Station Test setup:

  • Three CW Stations
  • Three SSB Stations
  • Three Digital Stations
  • A 160m All Mode Station
  • A VHF+ All Mode Station for 6m, 2m, and 70cm
  • A “Free” Satellite Station
  • A GOTA Station

Each station has a Laptop Computer with one or more monitors running the N1MM+ logger in a networked configuration. We also had the Scoreboard computer (Anita’s Surface Pro) running for the test.

Jon, AC1EV took the lead on getting the CW stations set up and working. This was true “CW Heaven”!

Field Day Station Test - SSB
SSB Station Testing Fun

Scott, NE1RD spent the day sorting out our three SSB stations. We even got Voice Keying to work!

Field Day Station Test - Digital
Digital Station Testing

Dave, K1DLM and Charlie, W1CBD spent the day getting our three Digital Stations to work with four FlexRadio SDRs. Anita, AB1QB took care of our WSJT-X, RTTY, and PSK configurations for the Digital Stations. Dave also got the GOTA SDR station working in his “spare time”.

Field Day Station Test - 160m All Mode Station
160m All Mode Station Test

I spent my day working on the 160m All Mode and the VHF+ Stations. These stations were a challenge because they needed to run SSB, CW, and WSJT-X together with N1MM+. We finally found a software combination that worked for all of this.

Portable Satellite Station
Computer Controlled Satellite Station

Fortunately for me, our Portable Computer Controlled Satellite Station was already set up and ready to go. This is a Mac-based station and we’ll be transferring our satellite contacts into the N1MM+ Windows world via an ADIF file transfer.

160m All Mode Station Main N1MM+ Monitor

It took all of us pretty much an entire day (and most of an evening) to get all of this working correctly. In the end, we made a bunch of test contacts and confirmed that all 13 computers kept the correct logs and scores. With this done, we are all set for Field Day 2019!

Fred, AB1OC

Featured, General, Newsletter, Space, Station Equipment

Satellite Station 4.0 Part 8 – GPSDO Frequency Locking

Frequency accuracy and stability become more challenging for transceivers that operate at 400 Mhz and above. Our 4.0 Satellite Stations operate at frequencies approaching 1.3 GHz and we want to be sure that their frequencies are accurate and stable. We decided to add GPSDO Freqeuncy Locking to the Icom IC-9700 in our Portable Satellite Station…

Source: Satellite Station 4.0 Part 8 – GPSDO Frequency Locking

We recently added a GPS Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO) to the IC-9700 in our Portable Satellite Station 4.1. The addition was easy to accomplish and it locks our Icom IC-9700 Transceiver’s frequencies to the very accurate and stable clock from GPS satellites. You can read more about out GPSDO Frequency Locking project via the link above.

Fred, AB1OC

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