Despite the rainy weather, we had a good turn out on Saturday the 6th for the antenna build. Jordan, WC6J led us through the process of building the antenna for the 2 meter band. Each of us made the cuts and soldered the connections on the 450 ohm window line. Once we were finished, we tested out the antennas with a MFJ analyzer. Everyone had a good time and got their antennas built. It was a fun project for a Saturday morning.
Hope everyone enjoyed the April meeting. The weather was nice for a change and no raincoats or snow shovels required. We had a short discussion of club business and welcomed our new member Jim, KM6TLY to the club. Roger, W6WHU asked for assistance with finding a new Field Day site because the current site will be unavailable and the past site may still be covered in snow. If anyone has a good idea for a location please contact Roger.
Our show and tell started off with Justin, KB2ZVD showing his new antenna launcher. He can pressurize it to 120psi to launch a landscaping throw bag a few hundred feet. He says it has a loud boom when fired.
Bob, W1RH brought a mystery object to show. He passed it around the room to see if anyone could identify it.
He revealed that it was a mechanical reed a method of generating the original PL tones for repeaters. One reed was required for both encode and decode and for each tone.
Bob, also gave the main presentation for the meeting. He gave us a virtual tour of the VOA Museum in Ohio. The exhibits included amplifiers and their tubes, original station control equipment and replicas of station antennas. There was also a section with vintage receivers and transmitters. The museum is not far from the annual Hamvention and is worth a visit.
We had some new faces and a good showing of members at the March meeting. We even had 12 Zoom participants join the meeting.
After introductions JR presented a radio to our newest 220 "Use it or Loose it" net winner
Jordan, WC6J gave us a preview of our next club project a "Slim Jim" antenna that we will be building in the future.
Steve, W1SRD was our feature presenter for the evening. He gave an introductory talk about HF propagation and where to find the information on-line. Link to W1SRD's presentation.
After we shared in some snacks, we held the monthly raffle and went home.
There was a large turnout for our February meeting despite the cold temperatures.
JR, K6LBP presented a new radio to Shannon, K6TNY our latest 220Mhz net monthly winner.
Roger, KN6IMS showed off his new small spectrum analyzer the TinySA.
Dave, K6TQ told a story about a QSL card that took 26 years to get to the correct recipient and how he was involved in delivery.
Jay, KE6GLA demonstrated an application called CatSync the links your transceiver to an on-line SDR.
Finally, Bob, W1RH gave an update about CERA and the work they have completed and future plans.
