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New radio products for spring on 01Apr25
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Prez Says - April 2025
March was a full month for the club, starting with the monthly meeting on the 14th where Ed Fong WB6IQN gave us a talk on his antennas.? Many of us are already happy owners of one or more of them, but at the meeting we got to hear about the time and research he spent on their design. Ed concluded his presentation by offering us a group discount on his antennas and within a few days I¡¯ll be placing the order. I own his DBJ-2 roll-up antenna, which I ¡®every-day-carry¡¯ (EDC) in my backpack.? I may never need to use it, but if I do, it¡¯s ready for quick deployment. ?
March 22nd we held a VE session which resulted in 7 new hams and 2 upgrades!? Congratulations to everyone that tested and also a big thanks to the VE¡¯s that volunteered their time.? Without volunteer examiners our club would not be able to provide this needed service for our community. I have to say I really enjoy participating in testing sessions.? It¡¯s rewarding to me to see folks get their license for the first time, or get their upgrade. ?
As most of you know on the same day we held our first picnic of the year, which included setting up radios. This event was well attended, and included guests from the morning VE session too!? What a treat for them to be able to take their test in the morning, then walk out and look at stations and ask questions. It definitely put a smile on my face.? Thanks to all our club members that welcomed these folks, and thanks for bringing yummy treats and side dishes. ?
Because that event was such a success, I decided that we should do ¡®Portable Radio Operations and Help Sessions¡¯ every month!? Except for December, I have reserved the picnic pavilion area of Grace Lutheran Church one Saturday every month from 11am until 2pm so we can ¡®play radio¡¯.? Note that the club will not be providing food for these monthly gatherings (except for the picnic in September), however if anyone wants to bring their own food and make a picnic out of it, you are free to do so.? The first of these will be on April 19.? Mark your calendars! ?
This past weekend was the CQ WXP SSB contest.? I hope many of you got on the air and gave it a try.? Even if you are not a contester, contests are the perfect way for you to have a quick ¡®in and out¡¯ exchange to know how far you can be heard.? I didn¡¯t start until late Saturday, working mostly US stations on 20, 40 and 80M, but? Sunday was very different.? My opinion that my 131 foot long EFHW antenna sucks on 10M changed when I heard and made contacts with many DX stations.? Italy, Denmark, France, Germany, Curacao, European Russia and others.? Wow!? 10M was hot!? I wish I had started earlier in the contest, but what I did do was fun! ?
One interesting exchange I made on Saturday was with N3QE.? What was interesting about it?? It was an AI operator!? I originally thought it was a real person but the inflection was always the same for the same words and numbers.? I looked up the callsign on QRZ and saw ¡°Tina, the AI operator¡±.? The day had to come right?? What I don¡¯t know is how automated ¡®Tina¡¯ is.? Is it just someone typing into a purpose built piece of software that does text to voice?? I plan on reaching out to N3QE and hopefully get some details.? Here is a recording of N3QE during the contest.? Unfortunately it doesn¡¯t have both sides of the exchange, but if it did you¡¯d hear a pretty quick back and forth. And yes, my background noise is that bad at my house. I later discovered the noise blanker does a pretty good job of removing the background noise. So that¡¯s March.? What is happening in April? April 11th Friday 7pm - Monthly club meeting where I¡¯ll give a talk on Meshtastic.? These nodes use the unlicensed ISM (instruments, science, medical) 900 Mhz band to form a mesh messaging network.? It has interesting capabilities, and deficiencies, all of which I¡¯ll cover.? If you like to tinker, it¡¯s a fun thing to try. If you want to get a head start and learn about Meshtastic early, here¡¯s the official webpage: April 12th Saturday from 9am until 2pm - Spring Cleaning Day at Grace Lutheran Church (GLC).? I do not have details on what we¡¯ll be doing, but I suspect it will dusting, removing cob webs, wiping down surfaces, cleaning windows, vacuuming etc, like we did last year before Easter.? Dress in your house cleaning/work clothes.? If you have a pail and some clean rags, bring them.? The Church invited us to join in a potluck BBQ at noon and they will supply hamburgers and chili dogs while we bring something to share.? IMPORTANT - this is not a K6MEP sponsored picnic.? This is GLC extending thanks to those that come to help clean.?? April 19, Saturday 11am? until 2pm - Portable Radio Operations and Help Session.? The first of once a month Saturday get togethers at GLC to play radio, test your equipment, get answers to your ham radio questions, or try your hand at making a contact on HF, VHF or UHF.? Field day is 2 months away!? Bring your FD setup and work out the kinks.? Are you a new ham and need help programming your radio?? Come on out. ? IMPORTANT - The club is NOT supplying any food.? You are however more than welcome to make this event a picnic for yourself. Sundays, Mondays, Wednesday - our usual nets Sunday 4pm - 10M (Techs are allowed to participate since we are in the 28.3-28.5 freq range) Monday 8pm - 2M? Wednesday 7pm - 40M and sometimes 80M ?
Frequency details are listed in the graphic and link above.? Note that we often have to move frequency for the HF nets due to congestion.? We try to announce frequency changes on Groups.io, so if you don¡¯t hear us, move up and down the dial or check your email. ? Thanks everyone and I¡¯ll see you at the club meeting in April! Dave AI6VX |
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VP Says - April 2025
Our guest speaker for the April 11th meeting will be Dave Schmidt (AI6VX), our club¡¯s President, who will present ¡°Meshtastic¡±. What is Meshtastic? A short description from Meshtastic.org: Meshtastic? is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. This project is 100% community driven and open source! ? A longer description teaser from Dave AI6VX: Meshtastic is open-source software that is installed onto an inexpensive micro-controller board which, using an on-board radio module, becomes a node that can pass text messages to another node.? A direct RF path between the two nodes does not need to exist!? Intermediate nodes will relay the message, using a routing table each node builds, based on the stations it can hear. This ¡®mesh¡¯ arrangement is wholly crowd built, and does not rely on any existing communication infrastructure.? Only text-like messages are sent using an app on your phone.? No license is required if the radio module chosen uses the license-free ISM (instrumentation, science, medical) band.? Messages can be encrypted for privacy. About Dave Dave joined our club in September of 2018 and became a board member in May of 2021, taking Stewart Stone¡¯s position when Steward moved to Arizona. He also became our club license trustee at that time. In June, 2021, after the COVID restrictions were relaxed, we had a picnic and announced the results of our recent election. Dave ran for and was elected to the board. In June of 2022, Dave was appointed ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator by John Kitchens NS6X, ARRL¡¯s Santa Barbara Section Manager. In November, Dave was elected as our Vice President and served from January 2023 to his election as President that November. Dave was re-elected as our President in November of 2024 and continues to increase our club¡¯s membership as well as expand our club¡¯s activities and community service. ? Dave Schmidt¡¯s AI6VX Bio Dave has spent a lifetime of taking stuff apart and is pretty good at putting stuff back together. He loves building, troubleshooting and repairing all things electrical and mechanical.? He¡¯s been commuting to Goleta since 1986, and in that time, he graduated from UCSB, worked as a chemist for an EV battery research company, then as a test engineer for a hard drive head manufacturer, Applied Magnetics Corporation, an optical networking startup company, Calient Networks and finally for the past 16 years at Teledyne FLIR, finally attaining the position of Director of Production Test Engineering. Within this time span, he also ran a home-based electronics side business for about 25 years, DSchmidt Technologies. ? Dave¡¯s life-long hobbies are electronics, computers, shortwave and scanner listening. Although he passed his 5 WPM code test in 9th grade, he never got his license as he didn¡¯t think his parents would take him to Long Beach to take the written test.? Dave earned his technician¡¯s license in 2000 just to buy a particular PCB layout software at a discount, then got his Tech/General/AE in 2017, FINALLY using his license for ham radio use. For HF, he¡¯s usually using FT8 on 10 through 80 meters using an EFHW antenna with 131' of wire strung across his yard. His antenna height is a paltry 15-20 feet high as he doesn't have tall trees in the yard. His HF rigs are an Icom 7300 (used most of the time), FT817, Yaesu FT891, Kenwood TS-430s, TS-520, or his QRP Labs QDX transceiver. For VHF and UHF, he¡¯s usually on 2M and 70cm on the SBARC or PVARC repeaters, or on DMR TG 31073. Sometimes he¡¯s using his radio-less AllStar node, too. He has an Anytone 868uv, 779UV, TYT MD-380, TH-350, Radioddity GD-77, Kenwood 281a, Midland DBR2500, Yaesu FTM7250, and a FT-4XR. ? When he¡¯s not working with data, electronics, or wrenching on cars, he uses the other half of his brain trying to convince large animals to move in fancy patterns and sometimes sends them over jumps of various heights. ? Here¡¯s a table of our speakers and/or activities for this year (completed is grayed out): ? 73, Robert Shank KM6RSS Vice President, VCARC |
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Re: Group Buy - Ed Fong WB6IQN Antennas
Here is the list as of 3/30.? One more day before I close the group buy.??
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Also, I have 2 pieces of information for those ordering the uSDX.? #1 - I emailed Ed Fong to let him know our order is imminent and he said that he doesn't have enough uSDX units on hand.? He said he will contact his source for more and they would be delivered separately from the antennas.? #2 - Robert KM6RSS bought a uSDX from Ed early and has been having difficulty getting it to sound acceptable on transmit (audio is distorted).?
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Until Robert's unit is figured out and working okay, I will holding back the orders for the uSDX.? I just think it's risky at this point until we know more.
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IF YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR ANTENNA ORDER because of the uSDX situation, please let me know asap.
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Thanks,
Dave AI6VX
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Re: Pacificon 2025 Hotel Room Block Available
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýOk - conference registration page seems to be working properly. ?I just registered and paid successfully. ?I¡¯m book for the conference and hotel, now.73 -- Matt N3AR
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Re: Pacificon 2025 Hotel Room Block Available
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýI¡¯d wait a little bit for actual registration - looks like their reg page is still being worked on, even though it¡¯s up. ?It¡¯s asking for previous registration information rather than having you register as new.73 -- Matt N3AR
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Re: Pacificon 2025 Hotel Room Block Available
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýRegistration page just went up -?73 -- Matt N3AR
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Pacificon 2025 Hotel Room Block Available
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýHey all -I just got an email that the hotel room block for Pacificon this October has opened up ¡ª?. ?It doesn¡¯t look like the conference registration page is yet available, but they are much more likely to run out of rooms in their room block than they are to run out of registration tickets (pretty sure they don¡¯t have a limit for the latter). ?$174/night is not bad for a nice Marriott in NorCal. The event was a lot of fun last year, and CalQRP is expected to have an even bigger presence this year than last year (Doug Hendricks is doing his magic bringing people together). 73 -- Matt N3AR |
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Robert Shank KM6RSS
Kaufman, Matt - N3AR