Radio club meeting 4-30-15
5 members in attendance: Kirk Crawford, Don Hall, Ryan Noguchi, Jason Bayonne, and Teresa Moore
Antenna Test report: Last week we set up the Crank IR and Buddipole antennas and got some experience with tuning them. The Crank IR is pretty easy; the Buddipole has to be adjusted manually. It took a while to figure out how to use the SWR meter in the trailer as it is not a design anyone was familiar with. We heard a couple people on 20 and 15 meters, but the bands were not very active. We did not make any contacts. We plan to do another test on Wednesday, May 6. Ryan volunteered to go to the D8 shack to see if he could hear us.
On May 19, the club will be manning a booth at the Aerospace Career Development Day. Our plan is to set up the KX3 and the Buddipole and just see what we can hear, and talk to people about the club. We have to be there between 11:30 and 1:30, and will probably have to be there early to set up. We need volunteers to help with the booth. You don’t have to stay the whole time.
Pain, cheapest price for levitra http://amerikabulteni.com/2014/04/14/2014-pulitzer-prize-winners-full-list/ weakness of the extremity, and loss of vision are not present in its herbal version. Regular massage also heals the damaged nerves and tissues in the corpora cavernosa.Cigarette smoking: Cigarette smoking aggravates atherosclerosis and thereby increases the risk for erectile dysfunctionDiabetes mellitus: Erectile dysfunction tends to tadalafil soft develop 10-15 years earlier in diabetic men than among non-diabetic men. It has become viagra ordination amerikabulteni.com a blessing for the individuals suffering from the pain of injury as depicted by physiotherapist Glasgow. There are some other problems that stop sans prescription viagra a man performing well during the time of intercourse. June 27-28 is Field Day. We discussed some plans. We will use the trailer rig, the KX3 + amp, and Teresa’s personal HF rig for three HF stations. We can use the Buddipole, CrankIR, and a club dipole on Teresa’s portable mast for these stations. We will need to either guy the antennas or use weight sacks to put on the tripod legs of the two club portable antennas. Don volunteered to look into weight sacks. For the VHF stations, Kirk found some better whips than the current little tiny ones on top of the trailer. Jason and Kirk will move the trailer out of the tent so we can test these VHF whips. We can move extension cables, the awning, and anything else we may need from the shacks and into the trailer before Field Day. We will plan several lunchtime trailer events over the next couple months to get the trailer ready. We need to space the VHF radios farther apart so there is room for multiple people to work them. We can get extra points for advertising (put a notice in the newspaper, invite representatives to see our site, etc.). If you are interested in volunteering to help with the advertising campaign, please contact Kirk.
Don gave a report on the cross-band repeater project. He has identified the Kenwood TMV71A 144/440 dual band radio as the best candidate. The plan would be to mount it on a cart so it is portable and not necessarily tied to the trailer. He will be doing more research on an antenna, portable mast, cart, and battery that can last at least 8 hours. Next month he will have a list of parts/prices for us to consider.
Our ultimate goal is to be able to contact Colorado Springs and Chantilly from the trailer. However, we’re not there yet. As an interim measure, after Field Day we would like to set up a regular sched with the radio clubs at COS and Chantilly from the D8 shack. If anyone wants to volunteer to lead that project, please contact Kirk.
Teresa
Here are some Comments on this that I gleaned from the email traffic:
I don’t mind taking the lead on establishing a CONOPS for inter-site comms with COS and Chantilly and setting up a check-in, ideally a net. I do think it would be a good idea to have multiple people on our end participate in those call-ins, and no more frequently than monthly. Are we just going for voice contact, or do we need to set up some digital modes to transfer larger amounts of data? Who are the appropriate POCs I should work with at COS and Chantilly?
For the crossband repeater, I don’t think the software is really needed. The software is free for the TM-V71A, but you have to buy–or make–the cable. For our purposes, we probably wouldn’t be programming a lot of repeaters into it, and in an emergency situation we shouldn’t count on having the computer handy to do so. If the area’s repeaters are working, we probably don’t have much need to use our crossband. A better investment of money may be to provide better power and cooling options for the transceiver.
The problem with any battery-based emergency solution is that we’ll have to make sure the battery stays charged without a lot of manual intervention. If we get a SLAB or gel battery, we can also get a BatteryTender or similar unit to help keep it topped off. The battery will be heavy, which may make it not too fun to lug around to an elevated position (even with a wheeled cart) in an emergency situation, when elevators may not be available. As I mentioned, if it’s safe enough to get up on the roof of one of the buildings that has a shack, it may be better to just use the antenna feedline from that shack to tap into the base station antenna.
LiFePo batteries are much lighter but I’m not sure how well they like being kept on trickle charge unattended for long periods of time. The Buddipole A123 batteries are nice but very pricey, and hobby LiPo or LiFePo batteries can be hit-or-miss. I went with Bioenno (bioennopower.com) for an industrial-quality LiFePo battery that is less than half the cost per A-h. They come with Power Poles installed and an inexpensive 120VAC balance charger, but it isn’t clear how well they can be charged with normal 12VDC LiFePo chargers since its connection to the balance meter is through the AC power connection, not via a separate balance plug. I’ll try to find out more from Bioenno.
73 de AI6DO
Ryan Noguchi
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The club owns solar panels, Buddipole A123 batteries, solar charge controllers (for the A123 batteries), and 12V powered chargers. If I remember correctly, the parts are:
1×20 watt solar panel
1×10 watt solar panel
Genasun GV-10 solar charge controller
Genasun GV-5 solar charge controller
2xBuddipole A123 4s4p battery packs
2xBuddipole A123 4s2p battery packs
Cellpro Multi4 charger
Cellpro 10x charger
I have these in my office.
Bernard B. Yoo
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All,
Sorry I haven’t been able to get involved in these activities too much, but work’s taking priority and there’s plenty of that.
The contact we last had with the Chantilly hams was Howard Dotson (571-307-7233). He’s a member of the safety staff there. Not sure who’s at COS now, since our previous contact has moved on. Normally we’d just pick a 14MHz freq in the phone band (~14285 or so) around 8AM local. I’d tune around the designated frequency for a clear spot, check to make sure it was clear, and give them a call. Never had a problem getting them with the D8 antenna and KW, although at times they were a little difficult with their antenna pointing the wrong way and barefoot. The 3-way with COS was more problematic since the skip was generally too short at that time on 20 for us, but Chantilly could hear COS off and on. We did establish a contact on PSK31 a couple times, but the guys at Chantilly weren’t too familiar with that mode and it took some effort. I’m not sure they are configured to use it now. The D8 shack digital modes should work, but it takes a little time to get the configuration (software/radio/interconnects) setup correctly. Making the contact from the trailer is certainly do-able, but given the low power, small antennas, and noise level it will take some “fine tuning” of the exact time and frequency to optimize the signal levels. And CW would probably be a good idea to start with, transitioning to phone if the signals are strong enough.
And it will soon be time to generate a club budget for the next year. We still have a very large balance that we need to either 1) spend or 2) come up with an excuse to roll over the balance (such as covering the potential transition costs of moving the D8 shack somewhere (which, I’m told, is a high probability). How much, if any, of the costs the company will cover is unknown, but the club will probably have to come up with some.
I also have the KX3 amp on my desk, so if you’re planning on using it for field day, it’s probably a good idea to figure out how it works (since it’s never been hooked up).
Gotta run.
joe
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Joe,
I’ve been having some offline discussions with Don Putnick. Based on the VOACAP predictions, it doesn’t look like a three-way net is very viable, as there is little overlap in available frequencies. It would probably be easiest for us to communicate with COS–due to proximity and only one-hour time difference–and have them relay to Chantilly.
I was thinking we would establish some set of specific frequencies in each band that we would plan to search on some schedule to try to establish contact. If we have WWVB-synchronized clocks–like my wristwatch, or a desk unit we could keep in each shack–we could establish a schedule that has all stations sweep the bands in a synchronized manner until we find a frequency that works. For example, from XX:00:00 to XX:01:59, try 14.281 MHz; from XX:06:00 to XX:07:59, 18.111 MHz, etc. If a frequency is in use, plan to sweep upward by 3 kHz every 20 seconds. Obviously, we wouldn’t plan to memorize these, but we could program the frequencies into memories and have a printout that we can refer to. We’d have to find a balance between quickly switching bands (which is a pain with the portable antennas, particularly the Buddipole) and length of time to establish contact if ionospheric conditions happen to be poor in a given band. The panadapter is really nice to have when looking for signals. Might be useful to get the PX3 to use with the KX3.
HF APRS would be nice. It typically uses 30m–which offers the best propagation to COS according to VOACAP–and offers the possibility of sending email, which opens up the aperture a lot with regard to the set of potential recipients, who wouldn’t have to be limited to an amateur operator sitting at their transceiver at the same frequency that we’re on. I’ll do some research on it and see if there’s some hardware or software we’d need.
Thanks,
Ryan Noguchi