President s Notes for May 2017

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Florence Hubbard
5 years ago
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1 President s Notes for May 2017 It s May, the first month after our club elections, and there have been some changes in our board of directors. I am once again club president, taking the position after a gap of two years. This time, though, the pattern of Dave, N8HKU, and I alternating in the presidency and vice-presidency has been broken, as Tye, KC8YEJ, is now serving as vice-president, along with his continuing as historian. I want to thank Dave for his years of service as a club officer. He now gets to spend a year as a regular club member. As I said, it s May, and we all know what that means: it s time for Hamvention, which has always been called Dayton. But now that it s in a new venue and new city this year, is it still proper to refer to it as Dayton? Should we be calling it Xenia? Maybe. Then again, the old Hara Arena was not in Dayton proper but in Trotwood, yet I never heard anyone referring to Trotwood. We ll figure out what to call it soon enough. Every ham who goes to Hamvention (there s a solution to the naming issue) will have something in common: nobody will know where anything is! Will Icom, Kenwood, MFJ and Ham Radio Outlet be in the same building this time around? Will Mendelson s have their tent(s) in the flea market? How will the forum rooms compare to Hara: bigger, smaller, more ventilated, what? Guess we ll find out in a week and a half (from the time of our meeting). With the longer days of spring and summer come shorter nighttime hours, which means fewer opportunities for our repeater to be interfered with. Our Sunday night nets have been going off without interruption for several weeks now, and our weekday morning QSO s have been mostly free of the QRM. But work continues to resolve the interference and improve our robustness to it. Keep monitoring. This month s presentation will be very timely: I ve prepared a presentation on What s New at Hamvention?. It ll be a short survival guide with pictures and maps. This first time at the new location, I m not quite sure what to expect, but this should help. See you at the meeting this month, and I hope to see many of you at Dayton, er, Xenia or whatever! 73, Roger, KD8CSE FARL BOLT May Page 1 of 8 [ ]

2 Ford Amateur Radio League (AKA: The Tin Lizzy Club) Club Meeting Minutes April 13, 2017 Ford Amateur Radio League April 13 th Meeting Minutes (CORRECTED): Called to order at 6:03 PM by Dave Treharne 1. Minutes from prior meeting, reviewed and a copy/carryover section from prior meeting at 6B is removed in the meeting. With the removal this is approved by the meeting. 2. Treasurers Report done by Pat Quinn and we have money (not stated here) and interest (not stated here). Prior month had no expenses and motion was approved. 3. Communications from Board of Directors had a comment of the FERA club certification was platinum; this is the highest we have in the FERA rank, congratulations to club. 4. Committee Reports: A. Repeater was discussed for noises per notes. Has a few paths to consider of the following: a. Repeater controller PTT b. ADR box c. Transmitter staying on. How these function to be turning on at a time of 6:30 AM repeatedly with not clock function we know of is not clear. May pull the repeater Fusion hardware to a member s home for work with this to debug what is issue was discussion. Heat in the facility or weather discussed but its not time specific and the range of the site is not issue for the electronics and cabinet from discussion. B. No comments C. Test was held on 4/13 and had three successes for new/upgraded Ham licenses. D. Communications, send items to Rajiv and he will use for the newsletter and website. FARL BOLT May Page 2 of 8 [ ]

3 E. Historian, Tye is storing in his house or garage, managing for environment in a plastic tub for protection. F. Equipment Inventory, the leather climbing belt was discussed to be disposed since it s not able to be used and obsolete. Motion made to dispose and approved. 5. Unfinished/Current Business a. The K8UTT operating license is due from FCC/ARRL in May, not received yet. Who gets to keep and have since Dave transitioned from President is now Roger. 6. a. Club Elections, had discussion of offices, rules in handouts of the meeting and nominations. The review of the Quorum being met was done and we met it. i. President, Roger Reini, motion made and approved. ii. Vice President, Tye Winkel, motion made and approved. iii. Secretary, Mac Lunn, motion made and approved. We don t have two secretary positions, its one now per discussion. iv. Treasurer, Pat Quinn, motion made and approved. v. Activities, Bill Boyke, motion made and approved. b. IEEE request for instructors/demonstrators for License classes coming up. Kimball Williams was a guest for meeting and discussed that local amateur clubs and IEEE have some Science, STEM, basic electronics, computer (Arduino) software classes. The library classes start 5/13 and signup sheet for contacts was passed out in class. Kimball has been contacting the local clubs for this discussion. c. New member of Michael Fluegemann application reviewed and motion made, accepted. d. The prior talk of RF finder listing, the ARRL office had response and phone call with Dave on his letter. It s clarified that a non-exact (or some local center of a town, not actual location) can be used and is accepted. Others have had issues since rural may have less to no physical protection of a transmitter/receiver of repeater and don t want a listing since it covers a larger area to not need specific location. They do allow this to be non- FARL BOLT May Page 3 of 8 [ ]

4 exact and the years listing is out, if were in this or not it s a review. For next year it s a clarified process. Program discussion: Tye Winkel and John Oynoian discussed the Software Defined Radio: - It s a number of hardware solutions from low cost DVB TV receivers of USB input to a PC. These have improved over time to be more accurate clocks since the SDR and users have needed it. - Some higher cost SDRPlay that John showed to the recent Icom 7300 radio we used at Field day 2016 from Jerry Trimble is a version of a SDR. Full SDR of the Flex radio type is about highest cost solutions and range of B/W, capability and features. - A lot can be done for not much and the DVB was what Tye showed with an upconverter (Ham it up) to get the HF frequencies on the TV tuner range. - This was shown on the screen and PC outputs, also gets noise of the local room (noisy from experience for RF) and SDR shows this also. - This really is a need to use it and try it, the links to software and hardware was shown in meeting. Adjourned at 7:47 PM. Attendance: Mac Lunn Tom Bray Chris Jenks Pat Quinn Rodney Deo Tye Winkel John Oynoian Roger Reini Al Habbal Kim Williams KD8TPO W8TJP KD8VPJ WD8JDZ K8SGL KC8YEJ KE8CTQ KD8CSE W8AMH N8FNC FARL BOLT May Page 4 of 8 [ ]

the air. I did rejoin it in the evening, starting on 40m and working my way to my destination band of 80 meters as darkness fell.

5 2017 Michigan QSO Party Report - David Treharne, N8HKU The outside weather for the 2017 Michigan QSO party was warm and windy. I think many of us spent the early hours of the contest being outside and doing activities other than radio operating, as I spun the 40m band early in the afternoon and did not hear many stations on the air. I did rejoin it in the evening, starting on 40m and working my way to my destination band of 80 meters as darkness fell. As expected, 40m was good for those outside of Michigan to work Michigan stations. I worked a total of 3 Michigan stations on 40m out of 34 contacts. As I went down to 80m, I was surprised by the amount of QRN that was on the band, and it only got worse as the evening went on. The noise level was a consistent S9+10dB on the Icom meter. All of the fancy filtering on my radio helped keep my ears from bleeding, but it was tough to make contacts. I heard others on the band saying the same thing, and the ARRL weekly section , written on Saturday, also mentioned the unfortunate propagation. In the end, I hung up the headset after 4 ½ hours of operating by 11pm. I managed 153 contacts, working 38 out of 83 counties. Through all of that noise, though, I was the fortunate recipient of one operator who was operating mobile and gave me 2 U.P. counties, Mackinac and Alger. K8IR was playing rover, and we connected up twice, in spite of the noise. He made sure to mention when he called me the 2 nd time that he was mobile and now in a different county. The N3FJP contest software was fully aware of the roving operator mode for this contest, and allowed me to enter the same call for the same band, new county. There is never a limit to my amazement at how radio manages to function, allowing a weak mobile signal in when stronger stations are in the noise. It keeps me operating! FARL BOLT May Page 5 of 8 [ ]

6 FARL BOLT May Page 6 of 8 [ ]

7 Club Repeater Information The Ford Amateur Radio League operates 3 club repeaters under the club K8UTT license. All the repeaters are located in the Dearborn, MI area near the Southfield Freeway. All repeaters are open for members and guests to operate. Repeater Output Freq Input Freq Tone 2 M Repeater KHz 100 Hz PL 1 1/4 M Repeater MHz 100 Hz PL Club Net: 8pm on Sunday, 2 and 1-1/4 Meter Repeaters! Classes and Exams The following amateur radio clubs conduct license exams throughout the year. Many clubs allow walkins but pre-registration will insure an exam is available for you when you attend. Club Name Contact Person Phone Ford Amateur Radio League Bill Boyke wboyke@ford.com South Lyon ARC Christian Anderson K8VJ@arr.net Motor City ARC Don Novak K8THU@arrl.net Hazel Park ARC Jerry Begel w9npi@comcast.net USECA ARC Joseph Kennedy N8OZ@arrl.net ARROW Assn Roger Place merrogplace@aol.com Some of the above clubs also conduct license classes. Please contact them for additional information. FARL BOLT May Page 7 of 8 [ ]

8 Club Officers Please contact any of the officers for information regarding the Ford Amateur Radio League, or go to the club website at for current events and activities. President Roger Reini KD8CSE Vice President Tye Winkel KC8YEJ Treasurer Pat Quinn WD8JDZ Secretary Mac Lunn KD8TPO Repeater Chair Murray Scott KE8UM K8UTT Trustee Dave Treharne N8HKU Activity Chair Bill Boyke N80ZV Bolt Editor Rajiv Paul KD8LHF Historian Tye Winkel KC8YEJ Club Meetings The Ford Amateur Radio Club meets on the second Thursday of each month, except for Christmas and the summer months July and August. The meetings are held at 6:00 PM at the Ford Engine Manufacturing & Development Offices (EMDO) building. EMDO (located at Southfield Rd, Allen Park, MI) is south of I-94 on the east side of Southfield just north of the Allen Park Municipal offices. Park in the front of the building and come into the main lobby at the side. Knock on the inside door on the right if no one is standing there to let you in. Next Club Meeting: May 11, 2017 at 6:00PM Topic: What is New about Hamvention This Year? Hint: Almost Everything! The Ford Amateur Radio League PO Box 2711 Dearborn, MI FARL BOLT May Page 8 of 8 [ ]

The Bolt The Official Publication of the Ford Amateur Radio League

The Bolt The Official Publication of the Ford Amateur Radio League President s Notes for May 2016 Spring time means warmer weather and the annual Michigan QSO party. I was able to put some RF on the air during the event on Saturday, starting on 40m in the evening and