Jordan-

I was relying on the node information I found on the K-Link web site. at:

plus others? who stated they could no longer access El Dorado, McPHerson or Hillsboro..? I am unaware of status other than the "live" representation I found at that link above.
Lately I have been the club "go to man" regarding? repeater issues. Our VHF is off the air because of intermittent Spurious emissions and self oscillation. As you know VERTEX was bought by Motorola. Motorola does not stock and spares at all for any Vertex equipment. A plan is in place to improve out situation but requires more funding.

This past year I lost my VHF/UHF station twice. Once to lightening . Then lost my VHF/UHF antenna in that ice storm just over a month ago. I replaced it with a GP9 on Superbowl Sunday as we finally had a break in the weather. I really have not rechecked my ability to hear distant repeaters as before. I was relying on others who called me and said our repeater was not connected, ALLSTAR and KLINK indicated it was.

So thank you very much for correcting me.? Hope to see you at the Febraury 29th event.

WX0ICT has moved to groups.io. If you want to join it can be added to "Your Groups" by folowing "Find or Create a Group" at the top of the header in groups.io

[email protected] Calendar <WX0ICT@...> Feb 25 ? #19?? Reminder: Storm Fury on the Plains - Storm Identification training When: Tuesday, 25 February 2020, 18:30 to 21:00, (GMT-06:00) America/Chicago Where:Cowley Cinema 8 - Cowley Co - Strother Field View Event Organizer: Cowley Co Emergency Manager

--

Mainiac- a person from Maine- This may be a fun event if someone wants to do it- I'd say maybe 6-7-8 months out..It would allow a good checkout of your station. Perhaps Thanksgiving Saturday..

Mark your calendars!

Contest Period: Saturday, March 28th, from 12PM – 4PM

The 2020 Maine 2 Meter FM Simplex Challenge takes place Saturday, March 28th, for 4 hours, beginning at 12pm local time!

Getting started is easy!

Choose a power level from: QRP (5 watts or less), Medium (Greater than 5, but less than 100 watts), or High (100 watts or more), and decide whether to operate as Fixed or Mobile.

The Exchange is 3 items: your call sign, the name of the city, village, town, or township you are operating from, and your power level.

For example, if your call sign is W1ZZ, and you’re operating from your home station in Gorham, and running 50 watts, you’d say: “Please copy, Whiskey One Zulu Zulu, Gorham, Medium Power”.

Suggested frequencies: 146.475, 146.490, 146.505, 146.550, 146.565, 146.580, 147.420, 147.435, 147.450, 147.465, 147.480, 147.495, 147.510, 147.525, 147.540, 147.555, 147.570.

Contacts with an EOC, SKYWARN, Red Cross, or other served agency station are worth 2 points each! Check out the official rules for more details.

Now, get on the air, and have fun!

?for complete rules and details.

Harold and All else interested,

At one point Saturday, the transmitter final would take off - just with power on. I got RF burned disconnecting coax, I had to power down and let it cool. an hour.
Re tuning the duplexers at 11pm after 6 plus hours, was a? bit- "digging my grave deeper"? I had it operating and felt, that unless we gave it some time to see if we were at least status quo, was appropriate.? I was going to return the following day after updating the powers that may be. Further there was a Sunday Morning Brunch scheduled for the room.

It was decided, that we are to meet Monday morning. to tune, install the "Z matcher" and "regroup". The concern we still have is that in the past year, the transmit side of the duplexers have required re-tuning 3 times. I know other installations, 3-5-10 years go by and no duplexer re-tuning required.

It is time to carefully evaluate by various means to a resolution that so far and each time we have attacked it, it seems to continue to cause grief. If the repeater is "stand alone" no one uses it. So problems hide.

If it's active like on ALLSTAR? it sees plenty of use as it parrots the Blind ham talk group -- or for that matter any other of the 10,000 Nodes we were to place it within ALLSTAR. However, the intermittent issue we hear on the repeater- the white noise "arcing" that is especially evident at sunrise and sunset. Is heard on the internet and others there have complained. Thank God the FCC hasn't come a knocking. ? Actions taken have included changing? the Transmitter PL tone to another as to eliminate the transmitter PL to key the receiver. That solution bore no results..We've re-tuned duplexers 3 times with you.? Yet every time the feed-line to the antenna is checked it is barely 1.2 to 1. I am still not convinced it is a "dew" or icing problem even if that, still we have other problems.? Within 200 miles there are 5 other repeaters on the same frequency listed in Repeaterbook. 2 are even showing the same PL code, but not our PL.? I hear a W5? machine often in the mornings. All though they show different PL codes, we don't know. The Repeaterbook is not the bible.? It's a stretch, but our repeater is capable of decoding up to 16 PL tones at the same time. Which is common in commercial community repeater service. Could there be a "glitch" in that controller, that is decoding another PL.. We need someone to spend an hour and try all PL tones to see if we have any falsing. Seems everyone wants to use the repeater, cause it's cool to be able to meet new friends, Rather then build and configure? their own ALLSTAR node. Or buy one ready to go for $295. Our repeater and ALLSTAR provides a service Wichita needs. I so enjoyed my 3 months in Rochester NY listening to 146.76 on the east coast refector? 24x7. Stations from Boston to Orlando. While I painted a 3 bedroom house inside and out. ?

I wasn't the first person to say Ham's are a bunch of tight wads. Having come from east coast-west coast- Ham radio in Kansas is "dismal" at best. The State convention, 40 people at the 8am start.. . Boxboro- New England convention 6,000. Timonium- Mid Atlantic- 3 days 5-6,000. Findlay, Ohio 3000. I've even been to a winter hamfest in Duluth, Minnesota that was bigger than anything I have attended in Kansas or Oklahoma.. I may go to Irving Texas hamfest March 7th.. 70 vendors. Who ever heard of Port City Amateur Radio Club in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.? At each meeting they have over 100 attend and when I lived there, we were #1 all classes, all modes for ARRL Field Days for 5 years running!!!? The apathy in Wichita Ham Radio screams of silence. Most Wichita Repeaters sit silent for DAYS.. The most activity in the past 3 weeks has been our repeater and 146.52.

In the last 40 years I have been on the technical committee of 3 major repeaters, and owner 4 of which 2 are waiting to be deployed as I work on the VFW machines instead. The VFW is a 20 mile trip each way for me,? and frankly the smoke bothers me. Around thanksgiving I said I was going to look at making it work. Now I know why it sat, as it did for over a year after we paid to have ALLSTAR added to it.

Monday a group of us will work on it . Tuesday is the meeting.? Saturday is the Fund raiser. I spent 2 years on an Island in Alaska 12 hours on,12 hours off 7 days a week. There I did the most hamming I have done in 50 years. There were 3 hams, I was 1 on the Air Force base. The Club was KL7FBI -- so I don't need a big club or have to rely on others. It may be time to be the only active member of the N8NCC Memorial Club. Ask me in a couple of months, maybe June when my dues run out. ?

Harold, I hope you are feeling better. That hospital stay was a @$$ kicker for you... I am blessed with fair health, and longevity in my genes, yet, 10 years ago I was given 10 years by Dr. Hagburg, the professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Since 15 I've been? licensed and waiting to play Ham Radio, not sneak a few hours here and there. Or only operate while driving from 1 customer to another in a business. Kids are raised or gone. Wife passed on 18 years. My closest relative is over 1000 miles away.? I haven't had a CW contact in 5-7 years because I'm too busy to enjoy a hobby and I"m retired now. That's when you're to enjoy your hobby.
So hopefully we'll see you at the Tuesday meeting? or at the weekend fund raiser on Leap year day..

开云体育

Hi Larry:

After you removed the band-pass cavity, did you re-tune the rest of the cavities? That should reduce the VSWR.

Harold

---

The monthly meeting will start at 7PM Teusday 25th of February,2020
If you come a bit early, we will be testing a 17 year old for his Technician License. He will be there with his Father. Let's welcome him the the VFW group and at the same time, show a little respect for a 1st time licensee.. VE's should be able to cover it all with minimum disruption.

The repeater saga continues. The VHF repeater? has a spurious at dawn and dusk. Unfortunately ALLSTAR Blind Hams Talk Group gets the white noise we generate. Literally, moving anything regarding the repeater causes the transmitter to go into self oscillation. I worked on th erepeater from 5pm to past Midnight.

The transmitter cold in a 50ohm dummy load works perfect. Out Antenna and line is 1.02 to 1. The problems are in the 1964 vintage Duplexers. Specifically the 1st cavity, a bandpass. Right now we are running without it. The Transmitter SWR into the 2nd cavity is 2:1.. it works, BUT I'm concerned after heating it will go spurious and we will get complaints again from AllStar people.

I have QUOTES from both TELEWAVE and TX-RX for new duplexers. Shipping is awful as they are crated.. RX-RX shipping is $225.. They are only 90 miles from my Grandkids. In Angola, NY.. About 1200 miles. 2-3 days trip. A possibility is to order them so we can pickup at Dayton..

At this point there is not enough money in the treasury to buy a pair..BTW- both TX-RX and TELEWAVE were within 4 dollars of each other.
Our current duplexers are WACO and a guestimate is thay are 1970 vintage. The service manual is type written and dated 1964.

I am upset with myelf as I thought I could add a Z matcher , and tune it to reduce SWR from the Transmitter and clear up the spurious. Because it was hot to start with it went bonkers and couldn't be tamed till We turned it off for over an hour. That cause the repeater to miss the net.

Literally the transmitter configuration is so sensitive that adding a watt meter will allow it to work or not.? We have both repeaters on the same antenna. The second antenna is fed with RG8X which is substandard for? UHF operating. We have coax runs going nowhere. We need a number of work parties. and a plan of action.

Maybe we'll just leave my watt meter in line till we get new duplexers. Duplexers are $1776 delivered. Hence the reason to promote our Dead of Winter Extravaganza next Saturday..?? Hoping all is well with everyone.

Larry W8LM..




?

-- 
Noah Webster

Founding Educator

The most perfect maxims and examples for regulating your
social conduct and domestic economy, as well as the best rules of morality and
religion, are to be found in the Bible. . . . The moral principles and precepts
found in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions
and laws. These principles and precepts have truth, immutable truth, for their
foundation. . . . All the evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition,
injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting
the precepts contained in the Bible. . . . For instruction then in social, religious
and civil duties resort to the scriptures for the best precepts.

(Source: Noah Webster, History of the United
States, “Advice to the Young” (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 338-340,
par. 51, 53, 56.) 

There has been some talk that we are not connected to K-link on the UHF side. Actually we are.
Here is the website to watch the K-LINK network in real time..

At the time I copied this link , KLINK was showing only 4 active repeaters..9 total.

Please note McPherson, Hillsboro, Salina,? El Dorado, and Newton are no longer part of the network. Hence some of the confusion as some of us can activate those repeaters and listen to ours.

Rest assured those all powerful W?VFW elected royality will be working long into the night to assure the best possible outcomes for the group.

The monthly meeting will start at 7PM Teusday 25th of February,2020
If you come a bit early, we will be testing a 17 year old for his Technician License. He will be there with his Father. Let's welcome him the the VFW group and at the same time, show a little respect for a 1st time licensee.. VE's should be able to cover it all with minimum disruption.

The repeater saga continues. The VHF repeater? has a spurious at dawn and dusk. Unfortunately ALLSTAR Blind Hams Talk Group gets the white noise we generate. Literally, moving anything regarding the repeater causes the transmitter to go into self oscillation. I worked on th erepeater from 5pm to past Midnight.

The transmitter cold in a 50ohm dummy load works perfect. Out Antenna and line is 1.02 to 1. The problems are in the 1964 vintage Duplexers. Specifically the 1st cavity, a bandpass. Right now we are running without it. The Transmitter SWR into the 2nd cavity is 2:1.. it works, BUT I'm concerned after heating it will go spurious and we will get complaints again from AllStar people.

I have QUOTES from both TELEWAVE and TX-RX for new duplexers. Shipping is awful as they are crated.. RX-RX shipping is $225.. They are only 90 miles from my Grandkids. In Angola, NY.. About 1200 miles. 2-3 days trip. A possibility is to order them so we can pickup at Dayton..

At this point there is not enough money in the treasury to buy a pair..BTW- both TX-RX and TELEWAVE were within 4 dollars of each other.
Our current duplexers are WACO and a guestimate is thay are 1970 vintage. The service manual is type written and dated 1964.

I am upset with myelf as I thought I could add a Z matcher , and tune it to reduce SWR from the Transmitter and clear up the spurious. Because it was hot to start with it went bonkers and couldn't be tamed till We turned it off for over an hour. That cause the repeater to miss the net.

Literally the transmitter configuration is so sensitive that adding a watt meter will allow it to work or not.? We have both repeaters on the same antenna. The second antenna is fed with RG8X which is substandard for? UHF operating. We have coax runs going nowhere. We need a number of work parties. and a plan of action.

Maybe we'll just leave my watt meter in line till we get new duplexers. Duplexers are $1776 delivered. Hence the reason to promote our Dead of Winter Extravaganza next Saturday..?? Hoping all is well with everyone.

Larry W8LM..




?

W?VFW repeater on 145.27 pl 103.5 is operational and seeing more traffic these past 2 weeks than the past year. We are connected to the BLIND HAMS TALK GROUP.. KD4DYI in NYC has an ALLSTAR to D-STAR- to DMR server. He also has Echolink.. BUT- they have found echolink only works well when there is a 1 to 1 connection. If a second guy connects via echolink both audio's get "fuzzy".

ALLSTAR is proving to be best option for hamming on the internet. DMR-P25-D-Star- Fusion, and others (yes there are other modes)? can find their way to ALLSTAR.. We will be talking more about it at the February 29th Event. You can access ALLSTAR via the Repeater, a hot spot, just a computer or android phone and there is even an 800 number you can dial on a land line to get in. CD quality audio and "full duplex" meaning you can talk and listen at the same time.
What a great time to be in Ham Radio.. All kinds of new adventures WSJT-X, JS8CALL, MMDMV, SHARI, DINAH, IC705, NanoVNA. and RPI4B.? 3 dates to mark your calendar:
February 25th, 2020? -W?VFW Monthly meeting - VERY Important you attend. 7PM start . eyeballs before and after.
February 29th, 2020? 2nd Dead of Winter Extravaganza. VFW post 3115 NOON to 5pm. Raffle-Prizes Demo's See flyer in Files section
April 10th & 11th, 2020 Green County Hamfest - Claremore, OKLAHOMA..
The BEST Hamfest for 500 miles!!!? I've been going 14 years.? OVER 250 Tables... Here is the website:

$1000's in Prizes, 20+ Commercial Vendors... and today 80% of the tables are sold...?
I bought 3 tables, If someone wants to share, I can get by with 2.? ??????????????????????

?
?
?	?
?

This Sunday is the Makeup meeting at 1PM.? VFW post 3115.
The VFW Auxiliary is having a Brunch from 8:30 till Noon.

I am planning on going to the Brunch, and thought about the time between the brunch and the Meeting.. I will probably get there for the Brunch 9:30 to 10am... The remainder of the time, 11am to 1pm;? I will bring with me a couple of things for Show and Tell.

#1. My NanoVNA - antenna analyzer plus. Same one as the RAFFLE 2nd prize for our Dead of Winter Extravaganza.
????? a.? Sweep range out of the box is 50kc to 900Mhz. New Firmware allows additional functions including sweep to 1500Mhz.
????? b. These instruments can do more out of the box for about $55 than a 20 year old MFJ-259B that still sells for $259.
????? c. All though imported and inexpensive they are capable of 70 dB range and 0.5ppm accuracy. This is 1 in 10 million!! Good enough for amateur work.
????? d. Enhancements all ready include USB connection to PC's and Android-iphones, Software allowing you to save and print results.
????? e. Future Enhancements include larger display screen, better battery capacity and? even greater range over 2.5Ghz.
?????
#2. My SHARK RF Openspot 2. designed and built in Estonia, North-east Europe. It offers Digital hams wireless connectivity to the internet PLUS Cross Digital Mode connectivity. Perhaps the easiest Hot spot to set up. It looks like a PC mouse. All though there are other Hot Spots, and many are less expensive or do it yourself. The OPENSPOT is a favorite of hams around the country. SHARK RF is now offering another newer more full featured OPENSPOT 3 which we can discuss.




?

It is important we let everyone know in the Wichita Area that we are Hosting our 2nd DEAD of WINTER EXTRAVAGANZA on leap year day FEB 29th

I contacted WARC Grounded Grid people and sent them copy of our flyer on December 15th by email. I expected perhaps a mention in January but absolutely ., for their February Grounded Grid and they must of missed it. So we need to get the word out. They did list all their nets, and their GROUNDED GRID newsletter can be found here, as mine arrived today..


Let's make sure everyone in "earshot" is aware of our event FEBRUARY 29th this year...
As everyone knows, W?VFW group supports all aspects of Ham Radio and groups such as AAMRON who among other things realize the importance of emergency communications.?

If you need a copy of the flyer, it can be found in our files here in the W?VFW groups.io

We have "EYEBALLS" informal get togethers at 6-7pm and after the meeting for those who want to stick around etc.?

To me WX does not look bad, but I have a big old 4x4 diesel with brand new oversized Goodyear tires on it.. The base of the antenna on the roof is 7 feet..

Lot's of activity on 146.52 simplex in the evenings especially when the WX is keeping people inside.. or since it's January.. NO MONEY...

The National Weather Service Forecast? for this evening dictates we Cancel the meeting Scheduled for TONIGHT at 7PM..
A certain number of our members travel over 20 miles to our? meetings and few have ice skates..or tutu's to go with the ice skates.

Stay tuned- we will either reschedule the meeting or perhaps offer a meeting on the air. It will be posted when decided upon.

Meeting tonight- Weather has been diverted by royal decree. 7PM See you there, much to talk about.
Additional Leap year Day 2nd Dead of Winter Extravaganza Fliers will be available.

ATTENTION ALL ARRL VE EXAMNERS-

We have registered all VE exam sessions for a year. All exams will be held by reservation during the regular monthly meeting every 4th Tuesday at 7pm in 2020.
FROM THE ARRL:
Thank you for registering your exam session(s). Your exam session(s) will be posted to the Find an Amateur Radio License Exam Session page within 5-7 business days.? For immediate responses or questions, please call 860-594-0300 or contact the ARRL VEC.

Thanks,
ARRL VEC
Licensing, Education & Training >>
Volunteer Examiners >>
Register an Amateur Radio License Exam Session >>
ARRL Exam Session Form