K6LCM Will Report on His Recent Cuba Trip

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Levi – K6LCM will tell us all about his recent trip to Cuba on the Cuckoo Net on Friday, May 15th starting a little after 7 am. He will report on his trip as part of an educational research delegation to Cuba as part of the new relaxed travel rules. He also met with several hams many of us have communicated with before! So be sure to catch Levi’s report as it is sure to be an interesting one!

Post expires at 9:00am on Friday May 15th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

Club Meeting – May 15, 2015

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Old ham radio stationBy Darryl Widman, KF6DI – What exactly is Old Timers Night, anyway? Well, let’s say that it is an annual event that occurs at our May SBARC Club Meeting. It is a special time where we can once more meet and greet our “most experienced” amateurs. These folks have paid their dues and come this far along life’s journey to a point where they can boast about having had experiences in the great hobby of Amateur Radio that most of us have only heard about.
Yes, we did have Amateur Radio in Santa Barbara in the founding years of our hobby. Remember, SBARC was formed way back in May of 1920 — that’s a good 95 years ago! Radio had only been around for about 10 years at that point in time. Was any of you around back then? It is possible that some of you reading this were actually around at that time but I dare say that there are not many.
This special Club meeting gives us youngsters a chance to be in the presence of some Amateur Radio operators who helped form our hobby, back when Spark Gaps were fading into history and AM modulation was first being used. Today we take speaking into a microphone for granted. We also have access to so many other means of communications that, from that ancient perspective, we are dealing with black magic. But it can all be easily explained. It is fascinating and it does work. But I digress.
Our Old Timers look forward to attending this special gathering so that they can stand up and briefly take us down Memory Lane and let us in on what it was like, at least in their shacks, working with quite primitive gear by today‘s standards. They might tell us about how they acquired their basic building materials to put their stations together as few had commercial products available at that time. They might also tell us about how they wound their own coils, fine tuned crystals to their desired frequency by changing their dimensions and even climbed up into tall pine trees to erect fancy antenna systems. What must it have been like without a local Ham Radio Outlet, Amateur Electronic Supply, Juns or even Radio Shack nearby? At Old Timers Night, we have the chance to hear about how these folks did it.
This night also gives us the opportunity to recognize those hams who have been licensed the longest. As a matter of fact, it has become traditional that we have a giant embarrassment ceremony where the President asks everyone in the room to stand and then asks those who have been licensed for 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 years or less to then sit down, with a pause between each of those numbers. At that point, he asks for those licensed 10 years or less to sit down. This continues along advancing at 5 year increments until we have the king of the evening who remembers when the earth was formed. You don’t want to miss this!
Another fun part of Old Timers Night is where we give our members the opportunity to show off their oldest gear from their stations (whether presently being used or not). We dig through our basements, climb through stuff in our attics and finally, with scraped shins and scratched arms, locate that disgronificator that we used way back when President Hoover gave his inaugural address. Then we bring it to the meeting and display it with duly noted features on paper that we remembered to bring along. And on that same paper, we also tell how and where we used it. It is fun reading about these old marvels. Even if we didn’t actually use this gear in our stations, we still bring old electronic relics and put them on display.
Perhaps you know of an Old Timer who has gotten to a point in his/her life where going out to a club meeting is not possible any more. How about your giving that Old Timer a call and offering a lift to the meeting, or at least arrange a way for him/her to come and be introduced? It would be a distinct honor for members of our Club to meet these fine people who had lived through the earlier days of radio. Do you know someone? I do, and have already made that call.
Remember, Old Timers Night is Friday, May 15. Please come and help honor those who came before us and were a part of Amateur Radio in the past and in some way helped to make the hobby what it is today. 
We still have our monthly Club Meetings at the Goleta Union School District at 401 No. Fairview Ave. in Goleta, right across the street from the Goleta Library. The meeting begins at 7:30 PM but come early and look at all the old stuff your old friends have brought for you to see. That is a good time to shake a few hands and bring in those cookies and cakes you brought along because you are a real neat person!

Post expires at 10:00pm on Friday May 15th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

Satellite Amateur Radio Club Swap Meet and BBQ

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The Satellite Amateur Radio Club at Vandenberg will be having its annual swap meet and BBQ on Saturday, 20 June 2015, the weekend before Father’s Day. The swap meet will start at 8 am.

Many south coast hams get together at Ellen’s Danish Pancake House at 272 Avenue of the Flags in Buellton around 6:45 am for breakfast the day of the event.

Please check out http://www.satellitearc.com for more information.

Digital Mode Emergency Communications

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Last evening (May 5th) we were introduced to digital mode software that is used for emergency communications during the ATV Digital Modes Net . While digital emergency communications use essentially the same types of software and protocols as popular digital modes, additional software is used in emergencies when it is necessary to send specially formatted information and when accuracy is vitally important. The official name for this is NBEMS, or Narrow Band Emergency Communications Software. Many amateur radio operators involved in everyday digital HF communications are also proficient with NBEMS as well. It is a good skill to have, and it is not just limited to HF. Many times 6m, 2m and 440 FM are used for NBEMS as well.

ARRL RAdiogram

ARRL Radiogram

Last night we focused on the most familiar of these formats, the ARRL Radiogram. If you took your technician test in recent years, you were probably introduced to the radiogram and how it is used. If you don’t remember it, that’s okay, because hardly anyone actually knows how to send or receive one. You send it from one station to other stations monitoring the frequency. What they receive actually looks like a regular telegram! It can be printed and delivered, or the recipient can follow the instructions requested by the sender.

So how is a radiogram used? Let’s say there was a major earthquake and Santa Barbara was cut off from normal landline and cellular communications. How would you let friends or relatives know you were okay? Well, you could get on HF if you have that capability and try and contact another ham somewhere and ask him to relay the information to someone for you. Hopefully the other operator will get the information right the first time, because it entirely possible you won’t be able to contact that same operator again.  But what if you could send the equivalent of a telegram? Then you would be assured that phone numbers, addresses, whatever information you need to pass would be sent with 100% accuracy and the message relayed to your friends or family. This is the purpose of a radiogram.

Emergency communications are important. At least a few people in Santa Barbara should know how to send radiograms and use the other emergency message protocols. In an emergency there may be a need to send accurate data to a distant location and have confidence that it will arrive where it is intended. If this interests you, check out the ARRL website for more information, and tune in to future ATV Digital Modes Nets on Tuesday evenings at 8:00 pm and listen in on our discussion. Or better yet, check in and learn how to participate!

Equipment Sale to Benefit Club

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A sale of donated test equipment and other misc. equipment will take place on Saturday, May 9 between 9:00 am and 12:00 pm. The sale will include oscilloscopes, audio test equipment, and other misc. items from the 50’s through 70’s.  The sale will take place in Goleta at the 907 South Kellogg where the Sunday Swap Meet is held. All proceeds will benefit SBARC.

Help is also needed to load and unload items, so if you can spare a little time to help out, please contact Dave – K9KBX at 805-896-8823.

Post expires at 1:00am on Sunday May 10th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net April, 23 2015

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Yet another successful net last Thursday night (4/23/15) with 11 check-ins plus net control (K6HWN). The net began with Jim (KK6SXB) asking if and how he could interface his HT with his computer. It seems that Jim has been having trouble de-linking the 224.08 repeater with his Wouxun HT and was thinking of a work around that might work. Brian (K6BPM) had a couple of ideas and I suggested purchasing a 1.25 M mobile radio with more power and using it as a base station from home. You can review the audio here.

Next Garrett (KJ6RQ) wondered if there antennas or if you can design ones to radiate a certain way depending on terrain, propagation, etc. Shackmaster Dave (K6HWN) started the ball rolling explaining general classifications of VHF antennas in that they are almost always omnidirectional (horizontally) or directional as in your classic Yagi. The conversation evolved into types of antennas and how the number of wavelengths effect the gain of the antenna, antenna modeling, etc. You can review the audio here.

Tune in to the SBARC Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net next Thursday at 0800 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 Technical Mentoring and Elmering net each week and join in with questions and /or answers to and contribute the knowledge of new and seasoned amateur radio operators alike.