Public Information

Larry Krainson, W1AST, writes:

I’m starting a weekly Zoom meeting every Tuesday night at 7:00 pm EDT to discuss all things for the Big E Booth. 

We will start with organization and planning the booth layout as well as the continuation of getting the word out to clubs and volunteers and more. 

Please urge your club presidents to join us too and everyone is invited. I hope to see you on. 

Boston Amateur Radio Club Secretary Joe Chapman, NV1W, will present about Amateur Radio and “The Computer in the Shack” to the Boston Network Users group on June 7, 2022. The meeting will start at 7:30 PM.

The  Boston Network Users Group (BNUG)  provides education and technical forum for anyone interested in computer networking and related technologies. BNUG was founded in 1986.

Our Speaker: Joseph Chapman

Description of the talk: In 1976 I submitted decks of punched cards as homework for my first Fortran class, and earned my entry-level amateur radio license. Over the course of my adult life, as both computer and radio technologies have evolved, the computer has become an essential part of the amateur radio “shack.” I’ll talk about how it’s gone from being used for station control and logging, to supporting digital modes; finally, with Software Defined Radio (SDR), it’s become the radio itself! I’ll also describe some Internet sites used for reporting space weather and making propagation predictions, and online logging, including the public-key signature system used by 112,000 users for the American Radio Relay League’s Logbook of the World.

 Presenter Bio:

Joe Chapman, NV1W, has been fiddling with radios and computers since he was a teenager in the 1970s. After graduating from MIT, he has been involved in more hardware and software startups than Zsa Zsa Gabor has had husbands. His most recent startup having been acquired by Red Hat, he now works on storage optimization in the Linux kernel. In amateur radio he generally works with low power, using Morse code or weak-signal digital modes. He has done two solo cross-country bicycle tours, plays the pipe organ, does calligraphy, and cooks.

Barry Rector-KB1VBE from Nantucket Mass was featured in his local newspaper, the Inquirer and Mirror as an Amateur Radio Volunteer from the 2022 Boston Marathon. He shared his experiences with the newspaper and Amateur Radio was highlighted for providing communications during one of the blizzards that affected the island and was the only path to communication off island for a time when this occurred. The article can be seen here:

Inquirer & Mirror Article – Front Row Seat to the Marathon

Members and friends of the Whitman Amateur Radio Club will operate amateur radio at the Plimoth Patuxet [formerly known as Plimoth Plantation]. Setup time is scheduled for 10 AM on Friday, November 26. The group will operate on Saturday and Sunday from 9 AM to 3 PM.

“We really need anyone who is going to please email us this weekend the days and times you can be there,” writes WARC president Bob Azanow, WA1Q. “I would like to submit the schedule to Plimoth Patuxet on Monday [November 22].”

The Barnstable Amateur Radio Club (BARC) will conduct a special event this Saturday and Sunday, September 18 and 19, 2021 at the Harwich Cranberry Festival in Harwich Center on Cape Cod.  BARC will operate W1MA, the club’s new callsign, honoring BARC member Ed Lajoie who became a silent key on February 3, 2021. 

Operation is expected on 10, 15 and 20 meters with a tri-band beam on a tower.  The operators will engage the public at the entrance to the event.  Talk-in for any hams who would like to drop by will be on the W1MA 146.955 repeater (88.5 Hz tone).

Due to a scheduling snafu, Fred Kemmerer will not be appearing on the Morgan White show on September 18.  A new date is currently being negotiated.

Amateur Radio will be the topic of discussion on the Morgan White show on Boston’s WBZ radio 1030 kHz, on Saturday, September 18 between the hours of 10 PM and midnight.

“With thanks to Cory Golob, KU1U [Sabattus, Maine], he put me in touch with another ham who has us on the Morgan White show–right in the middle of our WBZ special event operation,” writes Hampden County Radio Association President Larry Krainson, W1AST.

The Morgan White interview was organized in conjunction with a special event commemorating the 100th anniversary of WBZ radio. From September 17-19, New England amateurs will use the 1×1 callsigns W1W, W1B, and W1Z, in addition to the Hampden County Radio Association’s club callsign, WB1Z. 

The 50,000 watt, clear channel station is the oldest commercial radio station in New England. It began operations on September 15, 1921 at the Westinghouse Works building on Page Boulevard in East Springfield, Massachusetts broadcasting with just 100 watts. 

The special event is a joint effort of the Billerica Amateur Radio Society and the Hampden County Radio Association (HCRA). It’s being coordinated by W1AST. [See <https://nediv.arrl.org/wbz100>.]

Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC, President of the Nashua Area Radio Society, has been invited to speak on the show along with prominent Boston-based radio historian Dr. Donna Halper from Lesley University in Cambridge.

Topics to be discussed will include the history of WBZ, the WBZ ham radio special event, and Amateur Radio in general. At this time, it is not known how many minutes of air time will be alloted to Kemmerer and Halper.

“Fred is an excellent speaker. He’ll be a great representative of the ham community,” adds Krainson.

Frank O’Laughlin-WQ1O writes:

Our Cape Cod ARES district exercise “Operation Big Blow” made the Barnstable County web site news page. Thanks to Chip Reilly who is the Barnstable County Emergency preparedness and sheltering lead for being at our exercise. Article link below:

https://www.barnstablecounty.org/2021/08/10/local-volunteer-ham-operators-integral-part-of-regions-emergency-response-complete-summer-field-exercise/

From Southgate Amateur Radio Society News:

The Daily Item reports on a collect of QSL cards going back to the late 1950’s that was donated to the Peabody Historical Society in Massachusetts.

The newspaper says:

Ham radio operation might seem like a blast from the past but, according to the Peabody Historical Society, the pastime is actually still quite popular.

In fact, according to the Historical Society’s Associate Curator, Nora Bigelow, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided people with a perfect opportunity to kindle — or rekindle — their fascinations with it.

To get started with this hobby, one simply has to be a non-professional radio operator. Still, these radio enthusiasts still need to pass an FCC test to become licensed. After that, they are assigned a call sign — in other words, a group of identifying letters and numbers that serves as an address for the radio station’s transmission signal.

Operators also need to have a radio, transmitter and receiver in order to get started. If you were to balk at the price tag of such an endeavor, never fear — some beginners even start by building their own equipment.

The Peabody Historical Society recently received a donation from the estate of longtime resident Michael Schulze, which included a collection of call-sign cards from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Of the peculiar properties of the ham radio, Bigelow noted that it’s interesting that people from bygone eras were able to communicate with both locals and those from farther afield depending on the range of their radios.

“So it’s sort of like Facebook,” she said. “I mean it’s a connection between two people.”

Bigelow said that while people usually conjure up images of the American Revolution when they imagine our country’s history, the call-sign cards offer a more intimate look into Peabody’s own past. She added that by studying ham radio use, we can begin to understand more of how people choose to communicate.

Read the full story at:
<https://www.itemlive.com/2021/08/02/peabody-historical-society-scores-a-ham-run/>.

Boston Globe reporter Gabriella Gage writes this nice human interest story in the May 22, 2012 issue of The Boston Globe:

“On a rainy October night during the pandemic, my husband, David, searches for a faint voice in the distance. He doesn’t know who’s calling, but he knows he wants to speak to them. David adjusts the tuning knob on the decades-old transceiver ever so slightly, as if cracking a safe. Outside, a homemade antenna bobs in the wind. On his computer, pulsating lines tell him the voice is one of hundreds calling out on this busy night. The voice gets clearer: ‘CQ,’ the magic letters he’s been awaiting — the amateur radio operators’ invitation for a response — followed by a call sign. David jumps on his mic, repeating the stranger’s call sign and adds: “This is KB1TOY, Kilo-Bravo-1-Tango-Oscar-Yankee. You’re light but I can hear you!”  [Full story]

Perched atop the MIT Cecil and Ida Green Building (Building 54), MIT’s tallest academic building, a large, golf ball-like structure protrudes from the roof, holding its own in the iconic MIT campus skyline. This radar dome — or “radome” for short — is a fiberglass shell that encases a large parabolic dish, shielding it from the elements while allowing radio waves to penetrate. First installed in 1966, it was used initially to pioneer weather radar research. As the years passed and technology evolved, the radome eventually fell out of use for this purpose and was subsequently slated for removal as MIT began a major renovation and capital improvement project for the building. That’s when the student-led MIT Radio Society, who had found creative new uses for the radome, sprang into action to save it — and succeeded. [Full story]