Program for General Club Meeting – February 19, 2016

Our speaker this month will be Orville Beach, W6BI. Orville was scheduled to speak last fall, but the closure if I-5 that evening created a colossal traffic jam, and he was forced to turn back. This time, hopefully, things will be back to normal and Orville will be able to make it to our meeting in good time. Orville K. Beach, W6BI, is a member of the Simi Settlers Amateur Radio Club of Simi Valley, California. Orville claims he is now All Digital, All the Time! He earned his Novice license in 1967 with the call of WN6WEY and has held an Amateur Extra class license for the past 17 years and has acquired the vanity call of W6BI. As an example of All Digital, All the Time, look at his operating style: CW for four years RTTY for 11 years (teletypes, homebrewed terminal units, then homebrewed computer interfaces and programs) VHF Packet radio for about 10 years – helped build up a packet network down the California coast and east to Tucson QRT off and on for a couple of years Pactor for 2 years PSK31 off and on for a couple of years 2014..  Digital Mesh radio on the microwave bands Although he enjoys digital more than analog radio, he says that his principal interests are technical as well as ragchewing. Orville’s  topic will be, “Digital Mesh Networking for Amateur Radio.” This should prove to be one of the more interesting topics we have had recently, so everyone should try to male the meeting. We will be hosting Orville for dinner before the meeting at Cody’s in the Turnpike Shopping Center at 5:30 PM. Everyone is welcome to join is. We hold our Club meetings at the Goleta Union School District, 401 N. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library. Doors open at 7:00 PM and the meeting starts at 7:30 PM. Post expires at 11:00pm on Friday February 19th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.

Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net – January 21, 2016

The audio archive can best followed by downloading the .mp3 file for the appropriate date here and listening with the media player of your choice. You can move the progress slider forward or backward to the subject of interest to you. We had yet another good net tonight with 14 check-ins including 2 new hams, net control (Levi, K6LCM), and some chat room visitors! Tonight’s subjects included: What does resonant circuit mean when related to LC circuits and what has to happen to make them resonate. Which HTs are available that are not too expensive and easy to use. Stealth antennas for apartment, condo, townhouse and HOA considerations. Alpha military antennas. Tune in to the SBARC TM&E Net next Thursday at 8:00 PM (2000 Hrs) and see what interesting questions will arise or ask some of your own! All club members and visitors are encouraged to check in to the TM&E net each week and join in with questions and /or answers to and contribute the knowledge of new and seasoned amateur radio operators alike.

General Club Meeting – January 15th 2016

Our January meeting featured a presentation from Theo, KK6YYZ. Theo’s presentation included a slideshow that illustrated the installation of a home emergency power generator and he went over all the various considerations necessary for proper installation. His presentation was also punctuated by some lively discussion on electrical equipment grounding, electrical codes, and other good questions. You can listen to the audio part of the presentation below: Post expires at 11:12am on Friday February 12th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.

Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net – January 14, 2016

The audio archive can best followed by downloading the .mp3 file for the appropriate date here and listening with the media player of your choice. You can move the progress slider forward or backward to the subject of interest to you. We had yet another good net tonight with 9 check-ins, net control (Frank, K6FLD), and some chat room visitors! Tonight’s subjects included: Repeaters in our area, any lists of them available for programming your radio. Emergency communications practiced in the area by SBARC and ARES. SBARC Rover communications and mobile repeater. Digital modes. Tune in to the SBARC TM&E Net next Thursday at 8:00 PM (2000 Hrs) and see what interesting questions will arise or ask some of your own! All club members and visitors are encouraged to check in to the TM&E net each week and join in with questions and /or answers to and contribute the knowledge of new and seasoned amateur radio operators alike.

Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net – January 7, 2016

The audio archive can best followed by downloading the .mp3 file for the appropriate date here and listening with the media player of your choice. You can move the progress slider forward or backward to the subject of interest to you. Tonight’s net was another interesting one with 12 check-ins and net controller Brian (K6BPM). Topics included: Testing any battery back up or emergency power equipment you may have and making sure it will come on-line if needed. West Mountain Radio products for switching from DC power supply to battery automatically when commercial power goes out as well as products that keep your battery charged to optimum levels when not being used. West Mountain Radio products offer a turn-key solution for back up battery solutions and monitoring. Levi’s (K6LCM) project. Tune in to the SBARC TM&E Net next Thursday at 8:00 PM (2000 Hrs) and see what interesting questions will arise or ask some of your own! All club members and visitors are encouraged to check in to the TM&E net each week and join in with questions and /or answers to and contribute the knowledge of new and seasoned amateur radio operators alike.

Technician Class License Cram Course

There will be a VE testing session on Saturday January 9, 2016. Jay, WB6RDV will be conducting a special three evening class on January 6, 7, and 8 to help anyone interested in getting their technician license. The classes will be held from 7 to 9 each evening at the Impulse Advanced Communications building, 6144 Calle Real Suite #200 in Goleta. Please contact Jay, wb6rdv@sbarc.org if you are interested. Post expires at 7:35pm on Saturday January 9th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.

Play Like the Big Guns – With Little Money

Hello All, I decided to share the details of my HF station here on the SBARC website for a couple of reasons.  The primary reason is that maybe someone out there would find my setup useful in building their own station.  I am very limited by budget and space so I have to figure out ways of making the most of a little bit of everything.  For you HAMS that have $10,000 or more invested in your station, my little station will not compare to your capabilities.  Of primary interest in this article is my all-mode HF radio and the Pan-adapter setup. The first piece of the puzzle came into place about 2 years ago when I purchased the SDRPlay SDR (Software Defined Radio).  I got this before I even got my first ham license.  The radio itself is a marvelous piece of engineering.  It is a receiver that covers the range 100 KHz to 2 GHz continuously.  It has a great front end filter bank for anti aliasing. It samples at rates between 2.0 and 10.66 MSPS.  It has a 12 bit native ADC with a 60 dB SNR. Impressive specs for $150.  I originally was using this radio as a super scanner.  Its great for being able to browse around and see an 8 MHz band at a time.  It works well with all the popular SDR software packages out there, but it is married well with HDSDR.  The free HDSDR software can control the radio and performs all the demodulation you can imagine.  It handles AM, FM, SSB and Digital modes all in software.  It provides some impressive filtering capabilities including point and click notch filters.   You can read more about both by clicking on the following links;      http://www.sdrplay.com/           and         http://www.hdsdr.de/ After being a ham for about a year, I decided I wanted to play with HF.  Needing to stay small, in money and footprint, and after some missteps, I finally ended up with a neat little radio in the form of a Yaesu FT-857D.  This little radio does it all.  It is an all mode ham band 160 meter to 6 meter transceiver with 2 meter and 70 cm thrown in for good measure.  It puts out 100 watts on 160 to 6 meters and 50 watts on VHF/UHF.  Its small footprint made it an ideal choice for my needs. So, having these radios meant… Continue reading