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KS2G: “Ham Radio University 2021” at K1USN Radio Club, December 21, 2020

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k1usn qsl card“Pi” Pugh, K1RV, writes in K1USN Happenings:
 
I’m happy to announce our next Zoom presenter; Mel – KS2G on the upcoming Ham Radio University 2021 session which will take place with us on Monday evening, Dec 21 @ 7:30 PM EST. (Due to some scheduling conflicts we decided to shift this forward one day to be held on Monday instead of Tuesday!).
 
The Ham Radio University program ( http://hamradiouniversity.org/  ), now in it’s 22nd year, is billed as
 
“A day of education to share ideas, experiences, knowledge and fellowship among Amateur Radio operators”
 
Here is a link to the 2020 presentations – http://hamradiouniversity.org/past-presentations/
 
During these difficult times, the 2021 HRU team has decided to be a 100% virtual event and it is expected that turnout will be quite robust.
 
We are hoping that by spreading the word about our presentation that we may have a large number of viewers for our Dec 21st Zoom session. In anticipation of that possibility we are hopeful that we can also offer a livestream option if we end up exceeding our 100 participant Zoom limit.
 
We ask that you tell others about this presentation, but I ask that once you receive the actual Zoom invitation which will be sent out on Saturday, Dec 19, that you do not share that link with others. Simply tell them to send a request directly to me (k1rv@arrl.net) and I will add them to the K1USN Radio Club Zoom invitation list.
 
As I’ve stated before; we have two email distribution lists. You are receiving this via the K1USN Radio Club email distribution list. We have a seperate K1USN Zoom invitation list and if you have previously registered for that you will receive an invitation two days before the Zoom session.
 
As with all of our previous Zoom sessions, we plan to record this one for uploading to our K1USN Radio Club YouTube channel –
*************************************
 
Ham Radio University 2021 logo
Clubs

N1DM: “A Smorgasbord of Radio: The People, Places and Incidents” at Zola ARC Meeting Online, December 19, 2020

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Frank Venture, N1FMV writes:

Announcing the December 19 meeting of the Zola amateur radio group. Everyone is welcome to attend our next meeting on the Zoom video conferencing platform. This meeting will be online only with no in-person component. […] So, make your favorite lunch and get comfortable for another informative meeting.

Agenda (all times EST):

11:00 AM – Introductions and welcome

11:05 AM – Announcements and Q&A

11:15 AM – Our feature presentation will be from Dom Mallozzi, N1DM

He will present, A SMORGASBORD OF RADIO: THE PEOPLE, PLACES AND INCIDENTS

It will concentrate on the period of radios development between the 1880’s and 1930. He will include a discussion of some early radio sites that are long gone. spending a few minutes at the end of my talk on the Titanic and its effect on radio operations.

Dom has been a ham for 48 years starting out in RI as WN1RFT. he is currently active on CW during some contests. and still likes to build equipment and is active on DMR, FT4, FT8 and satellites. Also, he is the radio consultant for Natick Police and Fire Departments for the past 30 years. He retired in 2019 from Raytheon as a Principal Electrical Engineer specializing in the design and maintenance of test equipment. He worked at Raytheon plants in Waltham, Andover, Sudbury and Marlboro over his 38 years with Raytheon.

After our feature presentation we will socialize and enjoy a virtual holiday lunch together. 

[Contact Frank Ventura, N1FMV,  at frank -at- littlebreezes -dot- com for Zoom conference details.]

Clubs

Long Island CW Club: “How to Learn and Have Fun with CW” at K1USN RC Online Meeting, December 8, 2020

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k1usn qsl cardLearning CW does not have to be an arduous or lonely experience. CW is an aural language to be used and enjoyed.  Come listen to Long Island CW Club members Howard Bernstein, WB2UZE, and Jim Crites, W6JIM, with tips and techniques at the K1USN RC online meeting on December 8, 2020 at 7:30 PM. 

To receive an invitation to this Zoom presentation you must send “Pi” Pugh, K1RV, at k1rv -at- arrl -dot- net a request to be added to the K1USN Zoom invitation list.

Clubs / Operating

(UPDATED) First Annual Hams All-Holiday On Air Celebration (W1E Special Event Station), December 12, 2020

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Parks On The Air logoDec. 12: Unfortunately I had to cancel this event – a very unusual occurrence for me. Looks like the weather is a bit uncooperative too.  -KM1NDY

 

Mindy Hull, KM1NDY, writes in the Wellesley ARS Spark Gap newsletter:

Hello Friends! You are all cordially invited to:

WHAT: 1st Annual Hams All-Holiday On Air Celebration (W1E Special Event Station)  

WHEN: Saturday December 12, 2020. Two times: W1E on air from 11am to dusk. Everyone get together from noon to 2pm.  

WHERE:  Meet at Hopkinton State Park. Use the Main Entrance at 164 Cedar St., Hopkinton, MA 01748. Follow the map below.  Same place as November’s POTA!

PARKING: Park in large lot at boat launch. We will meet in a grove of trees with picnic tables near the beach at the end of the parking lot that is the farthest from where you entered it. See maps.  Park as close to the meeting spot as possible in case it’s real cold and we need to use our cars to warm up. 

MONITORING: 147.555 FM

GPS COORDINATES OF EXACT MEETING SPOT: 

42°15’30.7″N 71°31’01.8″W     ( 42.258539, -71.517168 )

WHY: To take back some of what this year stole from us.

DETAILS: We will operate the special event station W1E from about 11am to dusk at Hopkinton State Park on December 12, 2020 for the 1st Annual “Hams All-Holiday On Air Celebration”. We will be celebrating every holiday that anyone missed because of this crazy year! Our goal is to have as many QSOs as possible and then send a greeting card to every contact. We will set up one portable radio station in a heated shelter and operate SSB on 20M early and 40M later. The shelter will only hold one to two people at a time given the pandemic, so expect it to be cold. Bring your own equipment for other bands if you want to operate simultaneously; we have 100-Watt RF band-pass filters available so we can operate on multiple HF bands at once (10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 40, 80M).

If some of you would like to help operate the main station, send me an email with the time you are requesting to be on air.  Or just show up and we’ll see if we can get you on. Or bring your own station. 

If you want to just come hang out with radio people, enjoy some non-Zoom companionship, make a few contacts, and celebrate the holidays in person, show up between noon and 2pm. We will be social distancing, wearing masks, and splitting into smaller groups if there are more than 25 of us. Be prepared for cold!

Also, Hopkinton State Park is a Parks-On-The-Air (POTA) site, so you can activate a park as well! Activation code = K-2440. 

Bring as much festivity with you as possible! We all really really need it this year…

(I’ll send one more update next week!)

Yours, 

KM1NDY

Clubs

K9HI: “ARRL Update” at PART of Westford Online Meeting, December 15, 2020

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PART of Westford logoFrom PART of Westford website:

The [PART of Westford] December 15, 2020 meeting will be held online via video conference, starting at 7:30 PM. Login details will be sent to members via Groups.io. Our guest speaker will be Phil Temples, K9HI, ARRL New England Vice Director, who will talk about ARRL news and happenings.

[To request conference login information, contact George Allison, K1IG, at k1ig -at- arrl -dot- net]

Clubs

K9HI: “ARRL Update” at Billerica ARS Online Meeting, December 2, 2020

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Billerica ARS logoDoug Bruce, KC1MJK, writes on the Billerica ARS web site:

Hello All! Our next [Billerica Amateur Radio Society] meeting will be via Zoom on December 2, 2020 at 7:00 PM. Our guest speaker will be: Phil Temples, K9HI, appointed as New England Division Vice Director:

“09/24/2020–ARRL President Rick Roderick, K5UR, has appointed Phil Temples, K9HI, of Watertown, Massachusetts, as New England Division Vice Director. He succeeds Mike Raisbeck, K1TWF, who was elected earlier this year as ARRL First Vice President. President Roderick made the appointment after consulting with New England Director Fred Hopengarten, K1VR, and the region’s Section Managers.”

I am sure Phil will provide a great presentation for our Club, so be sure to join us! 73 Doug KC1MJK

Clubs / Youth

MIT Radio Society Update: Station Renewal and COVID Response

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MIT Radio Society QSL/logoMilo Hooper, AI1XR, writes:

One hundred and eleven years after its founding, the MIT Radio Society is flourishing. Student interest in RF engineering, telecommunications, and radio science is growing. And, the pandemic notwithstanding, MITs amateur radio clubs right now are larger than they’ve been in decades.

Now that the “eleventy-first” (111th) year of the club is finally drawing to a close, we’d like to share some of the stories of the last 12 months, both of the challenges the club has faced, and how we’ve been able to continue to serve both MIT and the amateur radio community at large.

Green Building Renovation and the Future of the Station

The Radio Society faced a serious challenge this year. The enclosed station space and large radome located on the roof of the Green Building, the center of many of our activities, had been slated for removal due to a major renovation scheduled to begin this spring. Thanks to overwhelming support from our alumni and friends, MIT is now supporting much of the renovation of our physical space directly, enabling us to focus our resources not just on rebuilding, but on improving our VHF/UHF and microwave contest and research station, W1XM, on the Green Building roof for the MIT community. Our next step is working to preserve the iconic large radome and dish within. The radome and dish are central to our vision for the future of the station. You can read more here about that effort.

We recently circulated an open letter seeking support from the MIT community for saving the radomes, and in response MIT has begun a design study of options for restoration. See our website for the latest news.

Our vision for the station of the future

Our dream for the new station on the top of the Green Building is a space that provides expanded opportunities for students to explore not just amateur radio but the whole spectrum of intersecting fields, from experimenting with radio propagation and learning about the ionosphere, to radio astronomy, signal processing, microwave electronics, and more.

We envision a station with banks of SDRs and servers that students can access remotely and program for experiments; a station that has current state of the art amateur radio equipment for research, contests, general communication, and emergency operations; a space that lends itself to uses we may not yet anticipate, with room for new hardware and experiments students choose to create in future.

Our priority is to expand access to and use of W1XM to as many students as possible to maximize the value we provide the MIT community, both by enabling remote access to the station for its current uses, by providing an improved space on the roof itself for students doing all manner of radio related experiments, and eventually by partnering with other groups at MIT in supporting students exploring radio and communications technologies.

Radio Society Supports Remote Junior Lab Class

Most undergraduate teaching at MIT has moved online, including some lab courses. The MIT Radio Society has been able to help by making our 6m “Big Dish” available to physics students in Junior Lab, one of the most popular undergraduate Physics courses. Students are using the Big Dish for observational radio astronomy at 1.4 GHz (a hydrogen emission line). Check out a sample of the data that students have collected.

New HF Beam for W1MX

After two years of planning, W1MX primary HF beam antenna, a Mosley Pro-96 that has served the club for over 20 years, was replaced with a new antenna of the same model. In the near future, the original guy wire system will also be updated to ensure the tower remains stable and can continue to serve MIT’s amateur radio community for years to come. Plans are also in progress to install new equipment graciously donated by one of our alumni, L. Dennis Shapiro EE ‘55, SM ‘57, to enable remote operation of the station now that the new antenna has been installed. 

Introducing Remote Ham Exams

The MIT Radio Exam Team is pleased to announce that it is now offering fully remote amateur radio license exams under the coordination of the W5YI-VEC. Not willing to let the pandemic stand in the way of getting new hams on the air, the amateur radio community came together to do what it does best: solve tough problems with ingenuity and technology. Since the MIT Radio Exam Team began offering remote exams, it has helped over 250 amateur radio operators obtain their first license or upgrade their existing one. Information about what it’s like to take a fully-remote ham exam with us can be found in our Remote Examinee Info Packet. 

Clubs

K1BML: “Handi-Talkie Review” at Framingham ARA Meeting Online, December 3, 2020

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Framingham ARA logoFrom the Framingham Amateur Radio Association website:

On December 3, 2020, Brian Loverro, K1BML, will talk about some of his favorite Handi-Talkies.

Brian is President of the Central Massachusetts Amateur Radio Association (CMARA) and also active with the Worcester Emergency Communications Team.  He has a huge collection of HTs and is very knowledgeable about all of them.  He will share some of this knowledge with us so we can make better informed decisions when looking to purchase one.
 

This will be a Zoom meeting and members will receive the zoom meeting details via email.  A limited number of prescreened guests may be able to attend. If you are a non-member, contact our president, John KB1VXY, president@w1fy.org, to request an invitation.

Clubs

VA3MW: “Flex Radio Systems” at Zola ARC, November 21, 2020

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Frank Ventura, N1FMV writes on the MARC list:

Announcing the November meeting of the Zola amateur radio group. Everyone is welcome to attend our next meeting on the Zoom video conferencing platform. This meeting will be online only with no in-person component. Please see the meeting invitation below my signature. So, make your favorite lunch and get comfortable for another informative meeting.

Agenda (all times EST)

11:00 AM

Welcome and Introductions

11:15 AM

Announcements, questions & answers

11:30 AM

We are privileged to have Michael Walker VA3MW, from Flex Radio Systems joining us. If you are not familiar with software defined radios and their basic concepts this is your chance to ask questions. Mike will also tell us about the history, happenings, products, and path forward for FRS.

12:30 PM

Wrap-up and socialization

1:00 PM

Adjourn

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing everyone.

 [Contact Frank Ventura, N1FMV,  at frank -at- littlebreezes -dot- com for Zoom conference details.]

Clubs

KD1CY: “ARES, SKYWARN Update” at K1USN Radio Club Meeting Online, November 24, 2020

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k1usn qsl card“Pi” Pugh, K1RV, writes in K1USN Happenings, November 19, 2020:

Our next K1USN Zoom presentation will be given by Rob, KD1CY, who is our  Eastern Massachusetts ARES Section Emergency Coordinator. The presentation will cover the Skywarn program as well as giving us a wrap-up assessment of the recent ARES Simulated Emergency Test (SET). Rob’s presentation will take place this upcoming Tuesday, Nov 24 @ 7:30 PM.

**Note** If you are not currently on our separate K1USN Zoom invitation list then send me an e-mail ( k1rv@arrl.net ) to ask to be added to that invitation list. Invitations for our Tuesday night sessions are usually e-mailed on the Sunday preceding the presentation so let me know if you want to be added to the list.

We do ask that you do not share the actual invitation specifics due to normal Zoom security concerns. Please do tell others about the upcoming presentation and tell them to request an e-mail invitation directly to me ( k1rv@arrl.net ).
 
Rob’s presentation should be quite informative and actually quite timely according to this article posted in today’s ARRL Letter!

 

Clubs

W1SEX: “Oscilloscopes” at Nashoba Valley ARC Online Meeting, November 19, 2020

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Nashoba Valley ARC logoThe Nashoba Valley Amateur Radio Club’s November meeting is Thursday, November 19th at 7:00 PM. Please note the special start time. This meeting will be conducted via ZOOM (which is a departure from recent meetings). Meeting details are below. Thanks to Jim Hein N8VIM and Medtronics for the Zoom conference.

The November meeting will feature The November meeting will feature Paul Topolski, W1SEX, speaking on oscilloscopes. Paul is an excellent speaker and has presented several times to NVARC meetings in the past. This is sure to be an interesting evening.

Again, Zoom details are below.

Thanks and 73. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

 Bruce, K1BG

978-772-2773 or bruce.blain@charter.net 

Clubs

K9HI: “ARRL Update” at Boston ARC Meeting Online, November 19, 2020

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Boston ARC logoThe [Boston Amateur Radio Club] will hold a general meeting on Thursday, November 19, at 7:30 p.m. on the Zoom teleconferencing platform. New England Division Vice Director Phil Temples, K9HI, will give us an update on ARRL issues. KB1ZFP will be talking about possible new membership options, and an update to our website.

[For Zoom meeting information, email Doc Kinne, KE1ML at ke1ml@arrl.net.]
Clubs

Norfolk County RA Donates to ARRL Education & Technology Fund

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At its November 11, 2020 meeting, Norfolk County Radio Association members generously voted to award a $100 donation to the ARRL Education and Technology Fund.

“The NCRA has been making it a tradition to donate to a selected ARRL Fund nearly every year since 2008 for a total of $1,300 to-date,” said Norfolk County RA Secretary Dave Doe, K1HRV. 

The ARRL-affiliated club was established in 1921 and plans to hold a centennial celebration in 2021. 

Clubs

KB1REQ: “Mobile Antennas for Amateur Radio Operation” at Minuteman Repeater Association Online Meeting, November 18, 2020

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MMRA logoFrom the MMRA Newsletter, November 2020:

Jeremy Breef-Pilz, KB1REQ, will present “Mobile Antennas for Amateur Radio Operation” at the Minuteman Repeater Association (MMRA) membership meeting on Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 7:30 PM via ZOOM. Members: login to the MMRA webpage for the link; non-members: send an email to contact@mmra.org.

This presentation will be a wide ranging discussion of mobile antennas used at VHF and UHF frequencies underpinned by some basic antenna theory to motivate an overview of the practical differences in products on the market and installation techniques. Examples will include both products that are aimed at the Amateur Radio market as well as exposure to some from the commercial LMR market. The goal is for attendees to come away with a better understanding of mobile antennas making them a more skilled operator and informed consumer.

Jeremy lives in the suburbs south of Boston and has been a ham since 2008. Hobby interests include repeater installation, VHF/UHF digital modes as well as HF contesting. A graduate of Northeastern University, Jeremy currently works as a systems engineer for Motorola Solutions.

Clubs

PART of Westford Meets Online, November 17, 2020

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PART of Westford logoGeorge Allison, K1IG, writes on the PART of Westford mailing list:

We’ve got room for two or three more Show & Tell presentations for next Tuesday’s [November 17] PART meeting. If you’ve got a project or radio-related accomplishment that you’d like to share with the club, send me an email (K1IG (at) arrl.net) with a short description by November 15.  A formal presentation with slides isn’t necessary; you can hold up your project for your computer camera or send me a photo and I’ll show it while you talk.

Clubs

K8ZT: “FT8/FT4 Setup & Operation” at K1USN Radio Club Meeting Online, November 10, 2020

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K8ZT QSL card“Pi” Pugh, K1RV, writes in K1USN Happenings:

This week our upcoming K1USN Zoom session [on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 at 7:30 PM] will be a presentation on FT8/FT4 setup and operating by Anthony Luscre, K8ZT. Anthony has quite a resume and some of you may have seen some of his presentations during the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo back in August. Anthony is an Ohio Assistant Section Manager for Education Outreach.
 
If you would like to join our rapidly growing list of K1USN Zoom attendees then send me an e-mail ( k1rv@arrl.net ) to be added to the master Zoom list which is separate from the K1USN member list!
Clubs

K9HI: “License Fee NPRM—Filing Comments to MD Docket 20-270” at Norfolk County RA Meeting Online, November 11, 2020

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Dick Bean, K1HC, writes on the Norfolk County Radio Association website:
 
The NCRA conduct its Wednesday, November 11, 2020 meeting at 8 PM using Zoom in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Jim, WJ1R, will be our Zoom host.  Thank you to Jim for agreeing to take on this continuing role!

Phil Temples, K9HI, the recently appointed ARRL New England Division Vice Director, will be joining us for our November meeting.  We will look forward to hearing from Phil, and he will likely raise awareness of the topic of the FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to impose a $50 licensing fee on amateur radio operators, something which many have said will be an impediment to encouraging youth into the hobby.It will be a good opportunity to see and hear our members! 

We have a few business items to cover, including an update on our 2021 centennial operating event and discussion of our annual donation to the ARRL, but we will let everyone have a chance to speak.

Please note that we do need to end the Zoom session shortly after the meeting ends so please be mindful of our host asking us to end our discussion after the meeting closes.  Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding!