I want to extend my thanks and gratitude to the following ham radio operators – John O’Mara, W4NF; Mike Trowbridge, KA4RRU; John Elgin, WA3MNN and Stuart Mitchell, WAODJY.   My dear husband Mark Woodruff, N3HF, passed away in August, 2019.  These men have spent countless hours breaking down Mark’s ham station, going through many boxes of equipment, checking the equipment to make sure it still worked, removing antennas from the house and tower and then finally taking the tower down.  W4NF was instrumental in selling most of the equipment to other hams, locally and across the country.  WA3MNN is a friend of Mark’s who spent a lot of time traveling to help with all these endeavors.  Additionally, he and John Creel, WB3GXW are maintaining the N3HF repeater in Silver Spring, Maryland.  The other N3HF repeater in Ocean City, Maryland is… Read more »

Last year,  NOVEC rearranged  the ac power feed to our repeaters hosted at their Lomond Drive location.    When lightning stuck the NOVEC tower next to our repeater shack, some of our equipment was damaged.  Here is the damage that Ken, KE2N found : The D-STAR gateway computer had failed (power supply) The mini-PC we were using for 224.66 Asterisk had failed (judged not repairable) The USB audio interface for 224.66 had failed The aux port on the 224.66 repeater had failed. The existing ac power surge arrester (20+ years old) had both of its “healthy” lamps off Ken found the reasons for why we suffered lightning damage: What I observed was that NOVEC had re-arranged our power feed since my last visit.  The feeder cable (previously underground) was now in a plastic conduit running in an overhead cable tray,… Read more »

On April 16th and 17th,  OVH members supported the Old Dominion Equestrian Endurance race near Strasbourg and the West Virginia line.  The OVH members helping were  Gil, KM4OZH; Duane,  KK4BZ;  Mark,  WA4KFZ and John, KG4NXT.   Net control was Ed, KE4RL and other hams assisting were Zoe, KG4TAM; Tom, KN4UNR and Neil, KE2LEY.  Frank, WB1USN was assistant net control. The event consisted of a 50 mile race,  a 30 mile race and a Ride and Tie race (RT).  The RT event had a team of 2 humans and one horse.  One person rode the horse and the other ran.   At various points,  the horse/human team pulled ahead and tied the horse to a tree.  When  the second person caught up, she got on the horse.  Meanwhile, the first person then became the runner. Most of the communication was on a 2… Read more »

THURSDAY NIGHT NET CONTROLS Every Thursday night at 8 p.m. The Ole Virginia Hams holds their weekly net. This happens on the club repeater at 146.970. Due to the hard work of the technical committee and technology, you can also hear the net at 443.50, 443.500, 53.490, 224.400, and 448.225, DMR at 448.325, TG315148, Echolink 522458 and Broadcastify.com. The net has been active for over 2 decades; the current net chairman is John, KG4NXT. John has been recruiting other club members as net controls and putting together rotating schedules since 2005. Each Thursday the net starts and a script is read by that night’s net control. A recorded ARRL Audio News is transmitted; this covers a wide variety of ham news. Anyone listening is given a chance to call in with announcements, ask for information, sell ham equipment or ask… Read more »

After a pause of about 10 years, OVH operated Winter Field Day at a cabin in Shenandoah River State Park, which qualified us for a bonus of 1,500 points. OVH members participating included Don, WA2SWX; Theresa, KG4TVM; Jimmy, WD4OJY; Cat, KM4PBD; Ron, K3FR; Gil, KM4OZH; Duane, KK4BZ and John, KG4NXT. Al, KB4BHB tried to reach us on 40m phone, but we could not hear him and he could not hear us. Most of the contacts were made on 40m phone and 20m CW. Don and Ron were the CW operators. Don was an intercept operator in a former life. Ron brought a cootie key and did 40m CW. We were using the N3FJP logging software for Winter Field Day and the two laptops were connected by an ethernet cable. The laptop near the 40m station had RF issues but we… Read more »