August 2014 Meeting Minutes

August 28, 2014 AEA Amateur Radio Club Meeting Minutes

Five people were in attendance:

  • Kirk Crawford KG6MTE
  • Ed Warren
  • Teresa Moore AG6OD
  • David Ping
  • Han Lin


The club budget was discussed. For FY15 we made a $4K request, including $3500 for equipment-related expenses. Other expenses include the Christmas party and raffle prizes. We spent $9783.77 on the D8 shack and emergency equipment in FY14. In the budget is money for 80/160 antennas for the D8 shack, an emergency generator, and an HF antenna for the A2 shack.

The California QSO party is the first weekend in October.

David Ping made a report on the state of the repeater project. He stated that it is a full rack of equipment weighing several hundred pounds and is not easily portable. Repeater is 220/440/2m and is crystal controlled (NOT frequency agile.) The triband Comet high-gain antenna is installed on the roof of A8. A controller can activate any of the three radios. About eight hours of work remain to get this repeater to full operation, including re-tuning cavities and doing some wiring. This repeater is set for the test pair (446.86 or .88?). David was hoping to get the repeater operational for demonstration at the September meeting. We will have to coordinate with facilities to get roof access.

Dave has been working on the antennas for the engineering models for AMSAT’s Fox-1 cubesat. A talk about this project would be welcome as a presentation at a future meeting.

July 31 2014 Meeting

July 31, 2014 AEA Amateur Radio Club Meeting Minutes

Sorry, there was no recording this month.

The club meeting was held in building A3/1607B (Dining Room B) at 11:30 hours.

Four amateur operators were in attendance:

  • Kirk Crawford KG6MTE
  • Donald Hall KK6DCX
  • Teresa Moore AG6OD
  • Judy Kerner KK6GCB


Three Non-members attended as well:

  • Jon Osborn
  • Ching Kong
  • Adis Gharibian

The APRS presentation was postponed until the next meeting as Bernie was unable to come to the meeting this month.

Kirk presented a report on Field Day. The slides will can be found here. We had a very successful Field Day, given that it the first Field Day the club has participated in for a long time. The presentation included a lot of photos of the trailer and our setup, a breakdown of our points, and a list of things we would like to improve for next year’s Field Day.

The Field Day presentation led to a discussion about the trailer. The trailer would need updated equipment and antennas in order to reach Chantilly (say, in the event of a major earthquake). As a club, we need to make more use of the trailer to make it a credible emergency resource. It would be useful if the RV and trailer could operate at the same time; currently we have to unplug the RV in order to plug in the trailer as both use the same outlet. We should try to find out if there is a way we can plug the trailer in to the RV in case of an emergency if power is available.

We also talked about what it takes to get a Technician level amateur radio license and encouraged interested people to pursue getting licensed. It is likely that there are quite a few Aerospace personnel, especially in labs, who could get a Technician level license with very little effort. There was some discussion about some of the interesting things one can do with an amateur radio license, including talking to CubeSats, amateur television, digital modes, and APRS.

We briefly discussed the California QSO Party contest coming up in October, with the idea that we may be able to participate from the D8 shack.

Don Hall agreed to coordinate with The Proud Bird to schedule our Christmas party.

Field Day 2014

Some pictures from Field Day…14703231253_ac2e11a530_k 14496668710_322f6004cc_k 14496669060_1c1ed0b96d_k http://appalachianmagazine.com/category/news-headlines/page/18/?filter_by=featured viagra without prescription Every married couples dream about happy married life. To know more, check out this link viagra mastercard For almost every day. With cialis generic overnight crestor the liver is restricted to produce cholesterol. The argument that the developing nation like India cannot afford to canadian generic tadalafil meddle with 40,000 crore market size of the tobacco industry does hold some value. height=”300″ /> 14660334476_1768cb5ba8_k 14680149861_4825772093_k 14683339875_dd404dac16_k 14683339975_805ee390d6_k

April 2014 Meeting Minutes

April 24, 2014 AEA Amateur Radio Club Meeting Minutes

MP3 Audio recording of the meeting.
(Left-Click to play on most browsers, Right-Click to download the file)

The club meeting was held in building A1 room 2906 at 11:30 hours.

Three amateur operators were in attendance:

  • Kirk Crawford KG6MTE
  • Archie Buchanan KD60LH
  • Bob Simoneau N4RAS


Kirk shared that he found the proper repeater pair to use for our portable/emergency repeater project. According to the TASMA (Two Meter Aera Spectrum Management Association for Southern California) bandplan, we should use 147.585 for the input and 144.930 for the output.

We talked a lot about the ARRL Field Day in June (28-29). We would like to do something as a club for this event. We thought that we might be able to do something simple by pulling the EMCC trailer to the A6 Parking Lot and set it up there for the event. Hopefully we will have the portable tower purchased by that time and can use that. Otherwise we can make sure the built in antennas work. We will need lots of volunteers to run the stations and help with the logistics of the event. I (Kirk) am willing to coordinate things, but I can’t do it all. If we have it on Aerospace property, will we be able to have retirees on site overnight? We should see if there is toilet access, maybe the porta-potties for the construction site will be accessible. Volunteers needed. Please go to the ARRL site and read the documentation and rules for the event.

Bob Simoneau N4RAS joined the meeting and had several questions about setting up a quad band mobile rig. He is interested in the FT-9800R but also wants to have 10 meter sideband to be able to talk to the big rigs. Does anyone have any ideas for him?

We need more presentation ideas and more presenters. Does anyone use WIN system much and can present on that? Any other ideas or areas of the hobby you want to know about?

AEA Amateur Radio Club