Tag: #hamxposition

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Northeast HamXposition Schedule, October 10-November 7, 2020

- by k9hi - Leave a Comment

HamXposition logoFrom https://hamxposition.org:

New England ARES Academy

October 10-31, 2020

View the full schedule and sign up at
<https://hamxposition.org/2020/ne-ares-academy>

The first-ever New England Division ARES Academy, originally scheduled for the Division Convention in November, will instead be held over a period of several weeks in October via Zoom. There are five Basic Track classes for those just getting started, and more advanced classes and workshops for those who already have the basics. One-hour classes will be held on weeknights from 7:30 to 8:30 PM EDT, and two-hour workshop sessions will be held Saturday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00 AM EDT.

Just a few of the topics covered include:

* Go Kits
* Hardening Your Station or Repeater
* Expedient Training & Utilization of Volunteers
* Working with Served Agencies (Panel Discussion)

The NE-ARES Academy is an outgrowth of the successful NH-ARES Academy program that ran at the NH State Fire Academy for eight years. The program’s goal is to offer both basic and advanced skills training based in ARRL ARES training standards. Academy Instructors are all recognized experts in their subject area.

Event Details:

Date: October 10th to October 31st
Time: 7:30 to 8:30 PM EDT (weeknight courses), 9:00 to 11:00 AM EDT
(Saturday workshops)
Cost: Free

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HamXposition Virtual Banquet

November 7, 2020, 7PM

Event registration at <https://hamxposition.org/register/register.php>

On Saturday, November 7th, the HamXposition Convention Committee will be hosting our very first Virtual Banquet! Order your favorite take-out or delivery, pull up a chair to your screen, and join your friends for an interesting presentation. The event will be emceed by our very own Mike Raisbeck, K1TWF, and featuring Keynote Speaker Gordon West, WB6NOA.

In addition, there will be a grand prize drawing of a Kenwood TM-V71A Transceiver, Astron Power Supply, and dual band mobile antenna, generously contributed by the Minuteman Repeater Association (MMRA) (must be present during prize drawing to win).

The event is free, but we ask that you please register using the link above. Instructions and a link to join the event will be delivered to your inbox a few days before the event.

Event Details:

Date: Saturday, November 7th
Time: 7:00 PM EST (UTC-05:00)
Location: Your computer or mobile device, anywhere!
Cost: Free

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Ham Bootcamp

November 7, 2020, 10 AM

Sign up on the NARS website at <https://www.n1fd.org/ham-bootcamp/>

The Nashua Area Radio Society (NARS) will again be hosting their wildly successful Ham Bootcamp, recently featured on the cover of QST magazine, on Saturday, November 7th via Zoom.

Ham Bootcamp is a series of activities designed to help newly licensed Technician and General class license holders get on the air and use their amateur radio license, or for prospective hams who are interested in seeing what the hobby has to offer, including:

* Radio Programming Tutorials and Help
* Getting Started with EchoLink
* Joining a Repeater Net
* Putting together a Station for Repeaters
* Building an HF Station including simple HF Antennas
* Putting up an HF Antenna, Feedline, and Ground
* Getting started with WSJT-X and FT8 Digital

… and more!

Event Details:

Date: Saturday, November 7th
Time: 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM EST (UTC-05:00)
Cost: Free

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W1A Special Event Callsign

November 6-8, 2020

Operating schedule and sign up at
<https://hamxposition.org/2020/w1a-special-event-callsign>

The W1A special event callsign will operate from individual operator’s home stations during the weekend of the HamXposition Virtual Banquet. Yours could be one of these stations!

Event Details:

Start: Friday, November 6th 7:00 PM EST (UTC-05:00)
End: Sunday, November 8th 7:00 PM EST (UTC-05:00)
Location: Your shack!
Cost: Free

Emergency Communications / Licensing Education & Training

HamXposition / New England ARES Academy Schedule

- by k9hi - Leave a Comment
(Updated October 1, 2020)

 

The first-ever New England Division ARES Academy, originally scheduled for the Division Convention in November, will instead be held over a period of several weeks in October via Zoom. There are five Basic Track classes for those just getting started, and more advanced classes and workshops for those who already have the basics. One-hour classes will be held on weeknights from 7:30 to 8:30, and two-hour workshop sessions will be held Saturday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00.

A big benefit of the on-line schedule is the opportunity to take every single class and workshop instead of having to pick and choose. Weeknight class participants will be able to ask questions and interact with the instructor via chat. The two-hour Saturday workshops are designed to be even more interactive. Academy Instructors are all recognized experts in their subject area.

The NE-ARES Academy is an outgrowth of the successful NH-ARES Academy program that ran at the NH State Fire Academy for eight years. The program’s goal is to offer both basic and advanced skills training based in ARRL ARES training standards.

We plan to continue this program at the Convention once the pandemic is over, in hopes that building a standardized base of training across New England will enhance our ability to provide better local emergency communications, and an effective ARESMAT (ARES Mutual Assistance Team) response across the region, and beyond.

NE ARES Academy Schedule(All classes will be conducted online using Zoom) 

Academy coordinator Dave Colter, WA1ZCN, was the original editor and principal author of ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Course series in the early 2000s, and creator of the original NH-ARES Academy. He is currently ASEC-Training for NH-ARES.

 

Licensing Education & Training

Nashua Area Radio Society’s “Ham Bootcamp” at the Virtual Northeast HamXposition, November 7, 2020

- by k9hi - Leave a Comment
[As a part of the Northeast HamXposition‘s virtual activities (Saturday evening banquet and New England ARES Academy), the Nashua Area Radio Society is offering “Ham Bootcamp” online this year.]

 

From the Nashua Area Radio Society website:

Ham Bootcamp includes a series of demonstrations and tutorials designed to help newly licensed Technician, General, and Extra class license holders get on the air and use their amateur radio license. It is also a great opportunity for prospective hams who are interested in seeing what the hobby has to offer.

Our Bootcamp activities are provided online via a series of sessions geared towards Technicians and prospective Hams and General class licenses and higher Hams. Bootcamp participants will find all of this material interesting and fun no matter what their focus or license level.

We are continuing to provide our Bootcamp program during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are providing Ham Bootcamp in an online format using Zoom. Our online Ham Bootcamp program is available to all licensed and prospective Hams in North America. Please contact us to sign up for our next online Ham Bootcamp via email to membership@n1fd.org.

Repeaters and VHF/UHF Session Activities

  • Putting together a Station for Repeaters – How to pick an HT or  Mobile Radio and an Antenna
  • Radio Programming Tutorial
  • Getting started with EchoLink
  • Making Contacts and Joining a Repeater Net
  • Getting Started with Amateur Radio Satellites
  • Getting started with Fox Hunting

HF Session Activities

  • Putting together an HF Station for SSB, CW, and Digital
  • Picking and putting up an HF Antenna, Feedline, and Ground
  • Operating on the HF bands using SSB Voice
  • Software and setup for Logging Contacts via your computer
  • Getting started with WSJT-X and FT8 Digital
  • Finding DX and QSL’ing – Getting them in the log and confirmed

… and more!

Virtual Ham Radio Shopping Trip

  • Join us for a guided tour of all of the gear and goodies that are available to build or expand your station.
  • Ask questions and get answers from NARS experts on what gear might be best for your situation.
  • We provide the Virtual Shopping Trip via a follow-on Zoom session shortly after Bootcamp. Information on how to join us for this event will be shared at our next Bootcamp session.

Articles About Ham Bootcamp

Are you interested in learning more about our Ham Bootcamp program? We’ve written quite a few articles about Bootcamp here on our Blog. You can read them via this link. Also, check out the article about a recent Ham Bootcamp at the New England HamXposition.

Ham Bootcamp has also been featured in the October 2020 edition of QST Magazine. You can view the article here.

Sign Up for Ham Bootcamp

Don’t miss this twice a year opportunity to learn more about Amateur Radio, improve your station, expand your skills, and get on the air.

Our Fall 2020 Ham Bootcamp session will be held online via Zoom on Saturday, November 7th from 10 am – 6 pm Eastern Time.

See you at Ham Bootcamp! You can contact us to sign up for our next Ham Bootcamp via email to membership@n1fd.org.

Support Ham Bootcamp

The Nashua Area Radio Society provides many training and skills development activities for new Hams and Young People. We also have many programs to enable folks young and old alike to join the Amateur Radio service. Please consider supporting our programs and our work by making a donation via the GoFundMe campaign which follows.

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Northeast HamXposition 2020 Cancelled

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Bob DeMattia, K1IW, Northeast HamXposition 2020 Chairman writes:

Large indoor gatherings such as our convention are currently prohibited by Massachusetts state law. This is highly unlikely to change by November.  Unfortunately, we will not be able to hold a physical convention this year.

However, we do plan some virtual activities, all free.  We are currently working on the details for these and will keep you posted as they develop:

We plan to the operate the W1A special event station over the weekend of October 31st – November 1st. To avoid a conflict with the November Sweepstakes, we moved this to one week earlier. W1A will be operated from the operator’s home stations.  Dennis, W1UE, is coordinating the schedule.  If you would like to be a W1A operator, please contact W1UE by email at w1ue@hamxposition.org.  For those who would like to work W1A, we will be posting the operating schedule once it is ready.  Note that this will give regular attendees the unique opportunity to work W1A (something which would have been more difficult for many to do operating portable from a hotel room).

We will also be hosting a Saturday evening virtual banquet on November 7th, featuring a guest speaker. There will be no charge for this event.  Order your favorite take-out or delivery, pull up a chair to your screen and join your friends for an interesting presentation.  After the talk, virtual break-out rooms will be available for you to converse with your “table”.

The Nashua Area Radio Club will be running an online version of the “Ham Boot Camp”. This is a multisession program for hams young and old to learn about the various activities they can do with their license.  Details to follow.

From the entire HamXposition committee,  we wish you good health, be safe, and we look forward to seeing everyone in person at our 2021 convention on July 23-24-25, 2021.

73,
Bob – K1IW
Chairman, HamXposition 2020

 
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HamXposition / ARRL New England Division Convention Postponed to November 6-8, 2020

- by k9hi - Leave a Comment
Bob DeMattia, K1IW, writes:
 
I hope this messages finds you safe and healthy.   After long consideration, the convention committee has decided to postpone the 2020 convention to the week of November 6 through 8. 
 
There are several reasons for this, the first and foremost is the health and well-being of our attendees.   In addition, there are many logistical problems with holding the convention in July, even under the most favorable conditions of the pandemic emergency being over by then.
 
1. We believe it is unlikely that the state’s ban on large gatherings will be completely lifted by the end of July.
 
2. Even if it were, we believe attendance will be severely impacted due to lingering (and quite appropriate caution).
 
3. Almost all of our exhibitors are unwilling to commit to anything prior to June.
 
4. The convention is subject to penalties for cancellation.  The penalties increase as we get closer to the convention date.  By moving to November, we move out the schedule on these penalties.  This will allow us to reassess the viability of the convention in early August.  By then we will have further insight into  prevailing conditions.
 
5. The November weekend was the only one available to us – and could be lost to another group if we did not act on it.
 
We know that many look forward to attending each year, and have probably grown weary of all the cancellations of events like these.  However, given the reality of the situation, we believe it is in everyone’s best interest to postpone.
 
 
Stay safe & 73,
 
Bob – K1IW
Chairman
Northeast HamXposition 2020
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Major Announcement: Northeast HamXposition (formerly Boxboro!) is MOVING!

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Bob DeMattia, K1IW, writes:

I am pleased to announce that the Northeast HamXposition (formerly Boxboro!) is MOVING!

The 2020 Northeast HamXposition will be held July 24th, 25th, and 26th at the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel & Trade Center, conveniently located in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

The new venue offers us much-needed additional capacity for forums, a larger flea market, and ample parking right in the hotel’s main lot. For those staying at the convention hotel, your room rate includes a complimentary breakfast buffet. We will announce very soon when the hotel is accepting reservations.

For those that like to take a step away from the convention, the Marlborough location has tons to offer, including dozens of restaurants in the immediate vicinity, as well as the new APEX Entertainment Center on Route 20 adjacent to the hotel.

The Northeast HamXposition convention committee members are looking forward to our new home and hope you are too. Stay tuned for additional developments!

73,
Bob DeMattia, K1IW
Chairman
Northeast HamXposition 2020/The ARRL New England Convention

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2020 Northeast HamXposition: New Venue and New Date!

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Northeast HamXposition 2019 General Chair Mike Raisbeck, K1TWF, writes to convention vendors and exhibitors on January 23, 2020:

To all our vendors, past, present, and (we hope) future:

Northeast HamXposition at Boxboro, the New England ARRL Division Convention, is now four months behind us.  The 2019 show went well.  The gate remained steady.  Attendance at the banquets, forums, and flea market was solid, and there were many smiling faces.  We have a formula that works well.

So now it’s time for us to raise the bar.  Some big changes are coming to the Northeast HamXposition.

The biggest is a change of date and venue.  Going forward, the Northeast HamXposition will be held at the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel & Trade Center, 181 Boston Post Rd., Marlborough, MA, on the 4th full weekend of July.  This year, the dates are July 24, 25, and 26.  Reserve that weekend – we have it nailed down for the next 5 years at least.

Why change?  There are several reasons:

  1. The Royal Plaza has considerably more parking, and plenty of flea market space.  It’s a nice, clean, large, and up-to-date venue
  2. The Boxboro site was having trouble making commitments to us for the adjoining parking lot.  It was only a matter of time before we found ourselves, on short notice, without sufficient parking.
  3. The Royal Plaza has an adjacent Trade Center complex.  While we won’t need to use it this year, we want to have enough expansion space that we can hold a National Convention some time in the next few years
  4. The Boxboro facility is, frankly, a getting a bit timeworn.
  5. The Royal Plaza has other adjacent hotels, as well as numerous restaurants and other shops – far more than the Boxboro location
  6. Unlike the current convention, the 4th weekend of July doesn’t conflict with the September VHF contest

We’re scrambling to update our forms and procedures.  I’ll be sending out another message shortly, as soon as these are all in order.

Please reserve the date, July 24-26.  We would love to see you there!

73,

Mike Raisbeck, K1TWF
Northeast HamXposition vendor chair
k1twf@hamxposition.org

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QSL Bureau Services at Northeast HamExposition @ Boxboro, September 7-8, 2019

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Eric Wililams, KV1J, writes on the YCCC mailing list:

Next weekend [September 7-8, 2019] we have a QSL Bureau booth at the HamXposition/Boxboro show. Our booth will be next to the ARRL booth.

You can fund your Bureau account and get answers to your questions about the Bureau.

We will be accepting cards for the ARRL Outgoing Bureau at the booth. Please see the instructions on the ARRL web for sending your cards and the fee structures.  

There is also a simple form to submit with your cards found on the ARRL web. Fee payments can be done by check or exact change cash.

We are just collecting the cards for the ARRL so please give them to us with the funds etc. as if you were mailing them to Newington.

Also, we will be hosting the DXCC card checkers.  You will need to do the application process online before the show.  There will be a checker at the booth Saturday from about 11 AM to 3 PM and all morning Sunday. You can also leave cards with us for checking when the Card Checkers are not there.  You can authorize someone to pick them up for you or work with me for another way to get them back to you

73,  Eric  KV1J

W1 QSL Bureau Co-Manager

Licensing Education & Training

Dayton Hamvention Radio Club of the Year to Hold Ham Bootcamp at New England Convention

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From ARRL Web:

“The Nashua (New Hampshire) Area Radio Society (NARS) will conduct a free Ham Bootcamp at the ARRL New England Division Convention next month to encourage and assist new and inexperienced radio amateurs in becoming more active and engaged in the various facets of ham radio. NARS, the Dayton Hamvention® Club of the Year for 2019, operated a guest exhibit for ARRL at this year’s show. It will also sponsor a Ham Expo for Young People at the New England Division Convention, with hands-on activities, videos, and displays about Amateur Radio and wireless communication.” [Full story]

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Northeast HamXposition @Boxboro 2019 Forum Schedule Now Online

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Bob DeMattia, K1IW, writes:

The forum schedule for the Northeast HamXposition @Boxboro! 2019 is now available on our website.  On it you will find a wide variety of topics – everything from antique radio to the newest technology.   There are technical presentations and speakers that will tell you about all sorts of ham activities.

All new for this year is “Ham Bootcamp.”  Just got your license, or know someone who just got theirs and doesn’t know what to do with it?  Join the bootcamp and join the fun!

Another new addition this year is Sunday morning music band and brunch.  The Millis Berfield Band will be playing in the hotel atrium Sunday from 10 AM to Noon. Bring your own brunch or buy some at the hotel restaurant breakfast buffet – then enjoy the music.

Licensing Education & Training

ARRL Volunteer Exams at Northeast HamXposition, September 7-8, 2019

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ARRL VEC logo/bannerThree volunteer exam sessions will be conducted by an ARRL VEC-accredited team at the Northeast HamXposition (“Boxboro”) at the following times:

Saturday, September 7, 10:00 AM-1:00 PM
Saturday, September 7, 1:00 PM-5:00 PM
Sunday,  September 8, 10:00 AM-1:00 PM

All sessions will be held in the Deck Room of the Boxboro Regency Hotel & Conference Center (Formerly the Boxboro Holiday Inn), 242 Adams Place, Boxborough, MA 01719, Phone: 978-263-8701.  No pre-registration is required.

For more information, visit https://hamxposition.org/get-licensed.

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Dan Barstow, KA1ARD, Keynote Speaker at Northeast HamXposition, September 7, 2019

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Dan Barstow, KA1ARD, will be the featured keynote speaker at the Northeast HamXposition @ Boxboro’s Saturday Grand Banquet September 7, 2019.

Barstow is Senior Education Manager for the International Space Station National Lab. In this role, he supports large-scale use of the ISS by students, teachers and the public. He does this work through the Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and the Space Station Explorers program. Dan has a long-term interest in ham radio and its space connections. Through Space Station Explorers, he supports the Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS) program to connect students with astronauts, and has developed software to facilitate direct ham radio communications through the ISS.

For banquet tickets and more information, visit https://hamxposition.org/grand-banquet.

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HamXposition @Boxboro, Online Ticketing Open

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Bob De Mattia, K1IW, writes:
 
The doors are open on our online ticketing system.  Please visit our website to find out more about our [September 6-8,] 2019 program and to purchase your general admission, flea market vendor, and Friday and Saturday dinner tickets!
 
 
================
We still need about forty more volunteers to help out on 2 to 4 hours shifts. Receive a $10 lunch voucher for each day you help out.
 
To volunteer, please see our simple 30-second signup at:
 
================
And it you are interested in being a forum speaker, please see our speaker
signup at:
 
 
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New England QRP Club Program at HamXposition, September 6-8, 2019

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The New England QRP Club has announced its agenda for the Northeast HamXposition convention (formerly known as “Boxboro”) September 6-8, 2019. 

The three-day program kicks off with a Friday breakfast followed by setup of the special event station WQ1RP on the hotel grounds. Throughout the weekend is a pizza party, a “night owl” gathering, a kit build-a-thon, breakfasts, a full symposium of talks, and more. 

A full description can be found by viewing the attached flyer.