Well, it was January and it was winter in Indiana. I think we can all agree on that.
The in-climate weather hasn’t done much for my HF antenna situation. I have this shiny new launcher to play with and short of a couple of test fires, no real progress has been made in getting my end-fed matchbox back up in the air. At the end of the day, I really have no excuse for not getting on the air as I have two attic-mounted dipoles, but I prefer my external one by far. Now that football season is over, I’ll have more time to play on the weekends.
January found me still playing with various repeater projects. I have acquired a second TKR-820 that I’m in the process of tuning up to drive a 100W amp. The machine is online now, but I neglected to tune the receive sensitivity while I had to hooked up to my service monitor and then promptly went out of town for the weekend. So I’ll be rectifying that situation this evening when I get home. I’m also roughing out plans to build a low-profile repeater for the Boy Scouts out of surplus gear I have laying around.
I also acquired a Vertex VXR-7000, but will be looking to off-load that particular machine. It throws a carrier on whatever the programmed output frequency is. I’ve confirmed this behavior with several repeater owners. The common theory is that the exciter is continually operating in a low power mode as many repeater do and that radiation is coupling with the internal wiring to get outside of the shielding. We’ve configure with at least one machine via an RF mV meter that the carrier is not coming from the TX line. The mysterious part of it is some units exhibit this behavior and some do not. But since this machine lives at my house it is significantly annoying enough to make it unusable for my needs. The 33cm Quantar is up and running and waiting on a break in the weather for an antenna installation.
I had my first official outing with the WD9BSA group in January. Randy Biggs (K7BSA) and I manned the ham radio booth during the University of Scouting. Our purpose was to demonstrate how Amateur Radio could benefit a a troop and to further awareness of the WD9BSA station. We had some hardware on display including a few HT’s and a Yaesu FT-847 as well as a few QSL cards. I did not have the honor of being a scout, so this was a bit new to me, but I spent a Saturday representing a hobby that I love and had a great time doing it.
In addition to my general efforts with WD9BSA, I also joined their VE team. Our testing session on 2/8/14 will be my first outing with them and I’m looking forward to it. Given that there are two other VE sessions in the city on the 8th and, as I write this, we have ten registered participants it looks be a good time.
I was able to spark interest in an 8th grader over the weekend in regards to computers, amateur radio and electronics. I’ve planted a few seeds and embarked into a gentleman’s agreement. More on that next month.
