MARC - Cincinnati's Club For Amateur Radio - 147.345+

MARC Casual Contesters – Here’s What’s Coming Up In August

July 21, 2017 By

By: Denny KC8RPV

These are some of the Contests scheduled during the month of August. It’s an opportunity to make some new contacts, round out your Worked All States or just have fun getting on the air. The NAQP SSB contest has a team competition and I will be registering the team, in Bill’s absence, as indicated below.

1. NAQP SSB

The North American QSO Party is August 19 and 20, 2017. The contest starts at 2:00 PM local time an Saturday and ends at 2:00 AM Sunday morning.

The contest has a Team Competition, teams need to registered prior to the contest.

Send Denny KC8RPV and email at: dhutson@cinci.rr.com

Deadline for registering for a MARC team is 10:00 AM, Saturday August 19.

Rules can be found on the National Contest Journal website at: www.ncjweb.com

2. Rookie Roundup RTTY

Rookie Roundup RTTY is August 20, 2017. The contest starts at 2:00 PM and runs until midnight.

The is no entry class for non-rookies, however non-rookies can participate by working rookies.

Rules can be found on the ARRL website: www.arrl.org

3. Ohio QSO Party

The Ohio QSO Party is August 26, 2017. The contest runs from noon until midnight local time.

The Ohio QSO Party has a Club Competition, include the following line in your entry to have your score added to the MARC total.

CLUB: Milford Ohio ARC

Last year only two stations in Clermont County and two stations in Hamilton County submitted logs. Get on the air, you could be a rare one.

73

Denny KC8RPV

President’s Message to the Membership, July 2017

July 11, 2017 By

By the time you read this we will be into July and summer just seems to be passing us by. This past month has proved to be extremely busy for the Milford Amateur Radio Club with holding our annual hamfest followed just one week later by ARRL Field Day.

June club meeting was very well attended and Joe W8GEX gave a great presentation on K9W “DXpedition to Wake Island”. Feedback has been very positive and we appreciate Joe and his wife Janet W8CAA coming out and visiting us at our June MARC meeting.

Hamfest was a huge hit with very good attendance and large flea market (boneyard) area. This year the weather stayed on our side although a little hot for some there were blue skies and most important no rain. My hats off to Jim WB8RRR as hamfest chairman in doing a great job once again in pulling it altogether. I would like to also thank all the volunteers from the club who helped out and were there when needed.

Field Day (FD) Chairmen, Erik AC8VK and Mike W8BEI working with Bill WS6K on FD made the event a complete success! According to Bill WS6K this was the first time in a lot of years the club made over a 1000 contacts. There was a number of visitors to the site and everyone did their best to make them welcome and a give them a chance to operate if they wanted. I again thank the FD committee as well as those who came out and helped with the setup, operating and tear down afterwards.

As we look into 2017 we will have several interesting presentations coming up:

  • July – Antenna Testing by Erik, AC8VK
  • August – Using test equipment by Al, AC8GY
  • September – TBD

    • As you know we introduced a new segment to the monthly meetings called “Jack’s Shack”. Feedback so far has been positive, so we will keep it going. I know that for July Jack will have another interesting installment of Jack’s Shack.

    If you have an idea for Jack’s Shack you can submit your ideas to either Jack or me at one of the below email addresses:

    • president@w8mrc.com – Dave Vest, K8DV
    • vicepresident@w8mrc.com – Jack Purdum, W8TEE

    If you have not been to a meeting in a while, I ask that you try and attend in 2017 and get involved as the club is only what you make of it.

    73,
    Dave K8DV

    MARC Member Has Articles Published

    June 15, 2017 By

    Jack Purdum, W8TEE and Vice President of MARC, has co-authored an article scheduled for the September issue of QST.

    (Please note that the ARRL sent notification that the September issue is running over, so we must delay your QST article to a future issue of QST. That will very likely be beyond the October issue as far as we can tell right now.)

    The title of the article is Build Your Own Antenna Analyzer and is the same antenna analyzer (AA) that many members of the club built last year. The AA featured a full graphics display and could examine all amateur bands from 160M to 10M. See Figure 1. Multiple scans with overlays are possible and all scans can be save to an onboard SD card and can be exported in CSV format for use by other programs (e.g., Excel, Word, etc.)

    Figure 1. A 40M scan

    Dr. Purdum also was a speaker at the Four Days In May conference in Dayton May 17th of this year. The title of his talk was: Give Your QRP Rig a Facelift. Although the modifications were demonstrated for the $60 BITX40 SSB transceiver, almost any transceiver could implement most of the changes. The modifications include the addition of a TFT color display, DDS VFO, AGC, CW Mode, CW keyer with contest features, S meter, voltage monitor, and a speech processor. See Figure 2. The screen shown in Figure 2 is 2.4” and costs about $6. The code that drives the display is controlled by an inexpensive Arduino Mega 2560 Pro Mini. The talk is scheduled for reprint in QRP Quarterly this July.

    MARC plans to do more club builds in the future.

    Figure 2. The QRP “Facelift” screen.

    President’s Message to the Membership, June 2017

    June 5, 2017 By

    Hello fellow MARC members, it is hard to believe that 2017 is half over, time flies when you are having fun, I guess. As all of you know June is a really busy month for the Milford Amateur Radio Club, with both Hamfest and Field Day occurring just a … [Continue reading]

    President’s Message to the Membership, April 2017

    April 4, 2017 By

    Hello fellow MARC members and it would appear that spring is in the air, well at least that is what is sounds like when I listen to 75 meters with all the static crashes and noise that is starting to appear as the seasons start to change. In March … [Continue reading]

    President’s Message to the Membership, March 2017

    March 2, 2017 By

    Hello fellow MARC members and my apologies for not publishing a February update. As most of you know I attended Hamcation in Orlando and thus did not make it to the February meeting, I guess between that and the missed update I now have 2 … [Continue reading]

    President’s Message to the Membership, January 2017

    January 1, 2017 By

    Hello fellow MARC members and welcome to 2017. I am happy to be serving as president for the next year and hope that together we can have MARC continue down the road of success. My appreciation goes to Mike Kieffer (KD8OUT) for serving the last … [Continue reading]

    Why You Should Get Your Extra Class License

    March 25, 2016 By

    By Dan Romanchik, KB6NU The Amateur Extra Class license is the highest class of license in the United States, and perhaps the world. Many hams—even hams that live outside the U.S.—aspire to pass the test and be awarded one. There wasn’t always … [Continue reading]