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Clubs / Youth

K2VUD: “DMR for Beginners” at NE Sci-Tech, June 23, 2020

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New England Sci Tech logoEoghan Bacon, K2VUD, will be leading a discussion on Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) for beginners on Tuesday June 23, 2020. The goal is to turn [New England Sci-Tech] into a DMR repeater and then be able to get STARS members access to a DMR talk group. In order to access DMR repeaters, you need a DMR radio and possibly a DMR hotspot. We will be discussing all of this in a few weeks… In the meantime, sign up for a DMR ID here: https://www.radioid.net/register.  -New England Sci-Tech Newsletter

Clubs / Youth

New England Sci-Tech To Begin Phased Reopening

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New England Sci Tech logoNew England Sci-Tech [in Natick] will begin a phased reopening in compliance with state and CDC guidelines. Beginning Tuesday, June 16, parts of the facility, including the radio rooms, will be open by appointment only. There will be limits on numbers of people in the facility at one time. Strict hand washing rules and use of masks will be in effect. Hand sanitizer dispensers will be prominently located. Certain in-house workshops will be offered, but many of the online workshops will continue.

STARS and other club meetings will continue on Zoom until further notice. Field Day will be held at the facility, but on-site participation will be by limited appointments only so that group sizes remain within guidelines. -NE Sci-Tech Bulletin

Clubs

K1USN Radio Club Meets June 9, 2020

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“Pi” Pugh, K1RV, writes on the K1USN mailing list:

We are pleased to announce that, Rick, N1DC, will be giving us a presentation [June 9, 2020 at 7:30 PM] about his recent (pre-Covid!) IOTA visit to Hutchinson Island, Florida. I’m sure that this will prove interesting especially for any of you considering some sort of portable operation later this month during ARRL Field Day on the weekend of June 27-28.  

[For Zoom conference details, email “Pi” Pugh, K1RV, at pi.k1rv -at- gmail -dot- com.]
Clubs / Operating

YCCC SIG: FT4-FT8 Contesting Talk, June 10, 2020

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Dennis Egan, W1UE, writes on the YCCC mailing list:

Please join us Wednesday evening [June 10, 2020] at 7:30 PM.  Our concentration this week will be on operating FT4/8 in digital contests.

Coverage will include WSJT-x, but it won’t include any of the other variations (JTAlert, MSHV, etc.) as I have no experience with them.  If someone wants to cover them, please let me know and I’ll allot time.

Setup, what boxes to click, and how to operate will all be covered.  See  you then!

Clubs / Technical / Youth

New England Sci-Tech 20-Meter WSPR Beacon Project

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Charlie Bures, WA3ITR, writes in the Wellesley ARS Spark Gap newsletter, June 2020:

New England Sci-Tech WSPR Board

Derek, AK1WI started a NEST group in January to work on a 20-meter WSPR beacon project he is leading. Foolish me signed up to write the construction manual.

The goal was for the group to eventually build it for around $25 per kit – – Stu, W1SHS; Bruce, N9JBT; Mark Seltser; Nicole Deshone; Mindy, KM1DY and others from New England Sci-Tech were part of it, but then it all kinda shutdown in March due to COVID-19. Derek is up to revision 1.6 on his custom PC board and software and supplied me with some parts to try building the older version 1.5 board. He put together a small kit, and last week and this, I soldered the parts, sockets, LED, etc.

Derek designed the board from scratch and wrote the software, which gets loaded into the Espressif ESP microcontroller.

Search for WA3ITR on 20m then click UPDATE. You’ll see where 3 watts in Natick reaches.Tuesday afternoon, I went to Derek’s house and he made the last mod and at 17:45 PM, we turned it loose with his dipole strung around his study area. It has been running ever since, using my callsign, WA3ITR.

https://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map

Clubs

N1DM: “Introduction to FT8 and FT4” at Sci-Tech Amateur Radio Society Online, June 16, 2020

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2nd Tuesdays Lectures Series (on the 3rd Tuesday of June 16th!)
Introduction to FT8 and FT4 by Dom Mallozzi, N1DM
 
“The talk is Introduction to FT4 and FT8. It covers some info on both modes and than shows numerous screen shot of the setup of a FT station and also shows example of actual QSO’s and explains what many of the buttons and pull downs in the software mean. It is intended to help newcomers to the mode to have a gentle introduction.
 
“As for me, I retired from Raytheon last year after 38 years as an electrical engineer specializing in measurement equipment. I have been a ham for 48 years starting my ham career as WN1RFT in RI. In addition to FT4 and FT8 over the years I have done various things such as RTTY, PSK31, Packet and OSCAR satellites. Currently I do some contesting and DXing on CW and am also very active on DMR. I still do quite a bit of homebrewing and also act as the Radio Engineer for the Natick Fire and Police Depts. I don’t collect many awards but proudly hold a 160M WAS that was done all at low power.”
Clubs / Youth

Framingham Amateur Radio Association Awards Two Scholarships

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Framingham ARA logoThe Framingham Amateur Radio Association scholarship committee announced the club has awarded the 2020 Bev Lees Memorial Scholarship to  the following two individuals: 

  • Victoria Anderson just finished her sophomore year at University of Massachusetts Amherst, majoring in Business
  • Rebecca Weisman just finished her freshman year at Westfield State University, majoring in Earth Science

Anderson and Weisman will receive  $500 scholarships.

The  Bev Lees Memorial Scholarship was created in 2015  to honor the memory of FARA member Bev Lees, N1LOO (SK) . Lees was a former club president, and was active on the nominating committee, Field Day, and organizing the club flea market.  Her passing was a great loss to FARA.

Clubs

SEMARA Meets Online, June 4, 2020

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Southeastern MA ARA logoMarcel Dumont, W1MLD, writes on the SEMARA mailing list:

Hi Everyone,

Well, it looks like we [the Southeastern MA ARA] are going to have another ZOOM meeting for the month of June. If anyone is interested in attending the meeting, please forward to me your email address. This is the only way I can make sure that your address is correct. We must have a minimum of ten members present to conduct a meeting. This type of meeting will assure that you will not get the Corona virus from the club. Please respond to the following address.

President@semara.org   or   chiefmld@comcast.net

Thanks for your cooperation.

Marcel,  W1MLD

Clubs

Framingham Amateur Radio Association Online Meeting, June 4, 2020

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Framingham ARA logoThe Framingham Amateur Radio Association will hold its monthly meeting on Thursday, June 4, 2020 via Zoom from 7:30 PM to 8:20 PM. 

The business portion of the meeting will include the treasurer and webmasters, report, the clerk secretary’s report, discussion on the Bev Lee’s scholarship awards, repeater report, and election of officers. 

Following the conclusion of the business meeting, Sumner Weisman, W1VIV, will present on Korean War radios.

 

Clubs

Bristol County Repeater Association Meets Online, June 1, 2020

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Margaret Gaffney, KA1BZE, writes on the BCRA mailing list:

This month we will meet on Skype. With Skype we will be able to run the meeting for longer than 40 minutes. As usual the meeting will be held tomorrow June 1 at 7:00 PM.

Use the following link: [email mmgaffney -at- comcast -dot- net for meeting information.]

Note: one of the items to be discussed is field day from home.

Clubs

WB2HTO: “Stories From the Shop,” at Billerica ARS Online Meeting, June 3, 2020

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Andy Wallace, KA1GTT, writes on the Billerica Amateur Radio Society website w1hh.org:

“I’m very happy to announce that our next virtual speaker will be David Kruh, WB2HTO, with his talk entitled Stories from the Shop. David enjoys repairing antique radios – ones using vacuum tubes – and has learned a lot about how they function and also about why they were designed and produced the way they were. I have enjoyed David’s blog posts immensely and he does a great job connecting the dots between the cutting-edge electrical engineering work of today and the heritage that came before. [Full story]

Clubs

Nantucket Amateur Radio Association Web Page now on ema.arrl.org

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New Affiliated Club Service Offered: Your Club on the Web:

 

“We understand it’s difficult to recruit and retain a webmaster for your club. In fact, some clubs’ web sites have fallen into disrepair.  That’s why we’re excited to offer this new service to ARRL affiliated clubs—a hosted page on the EMA ARRL web site. The address is of the form, https://ema.arrl.org/<Your Club Name>. The pages would be maintained by our webmaster, with input from your club officers.”

We’re pleased to announce the Nantucket Amateur Radio Association has accepted this service for its web presence. To view their new site, visit <https://ema.arrl.org/nara>.

Clubs / Youth

Northeastern University Wireless Club Special Presentations

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Adriana Knouf Art Talk:

On May 26th (Tuesday!) at 11am, our faculty advisor Adriana Knouf (KC1EKK) will be presenting live online her art project that was recently flown to and returned from the International Space Station!

She will be speaking about the project itself, named TX-1, and the audacity of thinking about transgender people in space.

For more information about the project itself, see the link below:
https://tranxxenolab.net/projects/tx-1/

The details of how to connect to the livestream will be released on May 26th on the below page:
https://bioartsociety.fi/activities/fragile-life-and-celestial-matter-s

Satellite Communications Seminar:

Are you interested in learning how to work with signals transmitted by satellites?

This fall, Adriana Knouf plans to give a talk about the antennas, hardware, and open source software used to schedule, track, receive, and decode those signals. She’ll also speak about how she used these techniques herself to create an art project using many recordings created through this process!

Please fill out this super quick survey to show your interest. We plan to schedule it sometime during the fall semester, and we’ll release more details then.

Clubs / Licensing Education & Training

Yankee Clipper Contest Club Special Interest Zoom Meetings

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YCCC President Dennis Egan, W1UE, writes on the YCCC mailing list:

Since we can’t meet in person for the foreseeable future, and using Zoom allows us to make some presentations that are hard to do in person, I’ve decided to offer four sessions on operating specific contest modes, as outlined below:

Thur May 28   CW
Wed June 10   FT4
Tue June 23    SSB
Thur July 9      RTTY
??                    VHF/UHF

The Zoom Sessions will start at 7 PM and plan to end at 8:30 PM, although if there is enough interest we could stay on until 9 PM.

I am looking for a moderator for the VHF/UHF session, as I don’t know enough about it to do so.

There will be some prepared material, but my hope is that members will step forward and we can make this a participatory roundtable.  I, of course, have my preferences on how to set up N1MM and operate, but there are others that do it just as successfully.

Some of the topics that will be covered in the CW session:

1. Station Tune-up
2. Operating Game Plan
3. RX Tips
4. Tx Tips
5. N1MM+ Setup/Use
6. Telnet
7. How to Get to Carnegie Hall

If you are interested in preparing some material for any of the above sessions, please feel free to contact me.  I hope these will become sessions with a lot of participation and questions answered.

We will also be recording the session, so you can concentrate on what’s being said without having to take copious notes.  It should be available in the day or two after the session.

Log-in Info for the Zoom meetings will be sent out on Wednesday or Thursday for the CW session.

Dennis W1UE
President, YCCC

Clubs / Field Day

W1MJ: Field Day Presentation at Waltham ARA Meeting Online, May 27, 2020

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This presentation by Eliot Mayer, W1MJ, will include contesting basics, the age-old question about whether ARRL Field Day is a contest, some training for popular logging program N1MM Logger Plus, and some thoughts on goals for FD 2020.

Monthly meeting are now being held online. In order to receive emails with the meeting links, do one of the following:

  1. If you are not already signed up on the WARA Yahoo Group, you may do so by sending an email request to wara64-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
  2. If you only want the meeting link emails and not any other email that might be distributed to the Yahoo Group, send a request to Ron, KG1T, with this form: http://walthamara.org/contact/contactform-president.
[Source: Waltham Amateur Radio Association website]
Clubs

Nashoba Valley ARC Meets Online, May 21, 2020

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The Nashoba Valley Amateur Radio Club’s May meeting is tomorrow, Thursday, May 21st at 7:30 PM . This meeting will be conducted via WebEx. Meeting details are below. Thanks to Jim Hein, N8VIM, and Medtronics for the WebEx conference.

This month’s presentation is by the “Science Program Around Communications Engineering with High Achieving Undergraduate Cadres (SPACE HAUC)” from UMASS Lowell. They have an interest including some elements of amateur radio in their project and will speak about this really impressive undertaking. 

See their website here: 

 https://www.uml.edu/research/locsst/research/spacehauc/ 

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

Bruce, K1BG

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

— Join WebEx meeting (contact K1BG for conference info)

Clubs / Operating

Yankee Clipper Contest Club DMR Net, May 20, 2020

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Reminder: YCCC DMR Net

When: Wednesday, 20 May 2020, 8:00pm to 9:00pm, (GMT-04:00) America/New York

Where: DMR TG NETAC1

View Event

Organizer: ne1b.c6awb@gmail.com

Description: YCCCers!

Join us every Wednesday evening at 8pm ET for contesting talk on the DMR repeater network. There are several methods to access the Net:

 
  • By RF
    Access via 2 meter or 70 cm DMR repeater.  See the list of 91 repeaters near you at http://nedecn.org  The frequencies are in the left menu “DMR Repeaters>New England”.  Use the NETAC1 talk group.
  • By Dongle or Hot Spot
    You can use openSpot, JumboSpot, ZumSpot, MMDVM
  • By EchoLink
    Get the software app on your smartphone or laptop at: http://www.echolink.org/  Contact KM3T or NE1B to put your callsign on the Access List.  Echolink node is K1QVC-L  Connect and RX B4 TX.

73 and see you there!