W4OVH and Friends at 2018 Warrior Bike Ride

Wow… it has been a very busy weekend over the 5-6 May Saturday and Sunday! First the outstanding Manassas Air Show and W4OVH attending to promote our Amateur Radio activities on Saturday, coordinated by Kevin Utzy and then the 2018 Inaugural Warrior Bike Ride on Sunday. The 2018 Warrior Bike Ride was hosted by the Serve Our Willing Warriors (SOWW) organization which does such outstanding work in providing a much-needed break for our recovering service members at military hospitals in the National Capital Region.  The average hospital stay is 300 days!  The exhausting, daily routine of surgeries, procedures, therapies, and doctor appointments takes a heavy toll on everyone involved. SOWW provides their Retreat, where our “Willing Warriors” can get away from the hospital environment with family, caretakers, and friends to relax, … Read more >>

Presidents Letter

Presidents Letter: Greetings to all and I hope this message finds you all healthy and well after all of the Christmas and New Year activities. Well, it is that time again where I’d like to remind all OVH members who have not done so already, to renew his / her club membership(s) for 2018.  The club needs the support of all of its members.  A mail-in form to accomplish membership renewal appears later in this Newsletter; you can also renew (and pay) online at http://w4ovh.net under the Membership Application tab; or, you can pay at the upcoming meeting. OVH officer nominations are now being received; there will a vote for a new slate of officers for 2018 at the February, 2018 OVH meeting.  So please be thinking of the best … Read more >>

Sunshine Corner January

SUNSHINE CORNER Welcome to 2018! Starting the year off with a birthday are the following club members:  Justin KJ4LAS, Elizabeth KG4NXV, Chuck W4XP, John WA1STU, Ken KE2N, Ed WD4AVU and Woody N4MQ.  Best wishes to you all for a great year ahead! Many thanks to those that attended our Holiday Party in December and showed up with donations for the Toys for Tots campaign, your support for the kids is amazing. Sad end to the year with two of our club members passing away. Milt N4SN passed on December 20th  and Tom KB1FLK passed away on December 21st.  We will miss them both, please keep their families in your thoughts.  A card from the club and flowers were sent to both services. ARES training is on Saturday, January 20, 2018 at … Read more >>

VP’s Corner

VP’s Corner Jeff Fuller WB6UIE This month we’ll explore what has become one of amateur radio’s hottest high tech topics – Software Defined Radio, or SDR. SDR works by sampling the radio frequency spectrum and turning those samples into a stream of bits.  Sounds simple, but it takes quite a bit of computing horsepower to do so in real time.  Seems like just a few years ago in grad school when this was a computer exercise (submitted on punched cards) and actual SDR was just a pipe dream. Today, with the addition of a digitizer and software, you can have your own SDR running on a PC.  Here’s a short You Tube video covering SDR basics You can listen to a variety of SDRs from around the world via http://websdr.org/  Cascade your sound card’s output to Fldigi to demodulate digital … Read more >>

Become “Radio Active” in 2018

Its 2018 and the Ole Virginia Hams want to help you start the New Year off right by helping you  join an exciting hobby and technology venue by helping you both learn and test for your own Amateur Radio Technician Class License.

The W4OVH club will continue our offering of free Technician Class license preparation courses starting on January 29th at 7PM. There will be a total of 8 weekly sessions of 1 hour each.

This year we are introducing new innovations to the course delivery. The course will be conducted by video teleconference so that you have the convenience of attending from your computer at home.

We have class availability for 9 students using this format.

The specific class schedule and dates beyond the start date of 29 January will be added to the club event calendar when finalized.

Please contact Mark Braunstein, WA4KFZ, direct if you are interested at wa4kfz@cox.net

Amateur Radio – a 21st Century Hobby

The following video is posted by the Radio Society of Great Britain and is posted on YouTube. W4OVH member, Jeff Porter recommended the video as an excellent video for our members to view. The video is posted to YouTube via the Creative Commons license and all credit is attributed to the Radio Society of Great Britain 73, Andy, KJ4MTP

New Club Member Peaches Attending Club Meetings

So it appears as though I have been remiss in introducing a new recent member to our club that has been attending our Ole Virginia Hams club meeting recently and I thought I would correct my oversight tonight via a post. Almost two and a half months ago, a new Ole Virginia Hams member was introduced at our monthly club meeting by Rosalie Fuller, call sign WIFE to our Vice President, Jeff Fuller, WB6UIE. Rosalie brought Peaches to the club meeting and it appears Peaches had an uncanny familiarity with the club and of course fit right in with our members. Since that club meeting in August, Peaches has been religiously attending every club meeting with Rosalie and cheering on the club in all of its endeavors. Please welcome Peaches … Read more >>