On October 20, 2020, the OVH had an antenna party for Butch, W4HJL. Butch has a crank down tower at his house. On the agenda: 1) replace the rotor because control box no longer displayed direction; 2) some of the beam elements were not in same plane as the rest – straighten them; 3) add a 6 meter beam to the antenna. The crew consisted of Gil, KM4OZH; George, K4GVT; George’s brother in law, Tom Schweinfurth, Dick, WN7S; Al, KB4BHB; Bob, W4HJF and John, KG4NXT. Butch, W4HJL, cooked us all a fine lunch. The replacement rotor did not have mounting holes in the right place so the decision was to field repair the old rotor and grease it up. The field repair was handled most ably by Gil. There was a lot of banter. At one point, … Read more »
On Saturday, October 17, OVH ran Jamboree-on-the-Air (or JOTA) at Camp Snyder in Haymarket, VA. One of our members , ROB (W4FSK) was our liaison with the scout camp and was also in charge of the camp that day. We had a troop of boys, a second one of girls and a third troop of Muslim boys. Rob estimates the OVH volunteers worked with about 50 scouts and their leaders, just at Camp Snyder. The scouts that made contacts were given signed contact cards that they can then use for partial credit for several merit badges. John (KG4NXT) brought his IC-7610 so we could have a digital station and both Al, (KB4BHB) and “The Other Ken” (KN4DD) brought their 2 meter mobile stations. The digital station ran FT8 and worked European, Caribbean and US stations. Looking at PSKReporter, the digital… Read more »
Cooler temperatures of fall will soon be here and, along with them, the beginning of the holiday season. I’m sure your family, like mine, has some holiday traditions which have been passed down over the years. We carry them on, not necessarily for practical reasons, but as a means of bonding and connecting with past generations. Learning to communicate using Morse code or “CW” is one such tradition in the amateur radio community. I’m happy to see several of our new hams accepting the challenge. Here are some interesting Morse factoids to encourage you in your studies. Q. Why do hams call it CW? A. CW stands for Continuous Wave, meaning a sine wave produced by an electronic oscillator. The first radio signals from spark transmitters were known as “damped waves” and occupied lots of spectrum. Q. What is… Read more »
On Saturday October 10, The Culpeper Amateur Radio Association (CARA) held their Junk in the Trunk. This was basically a tailgate only hamfest. The following OVH members are seen there: Don, WA2SWX; Al, KB4BHB; Theresa, KG4TVM; John, KG4NXT; Woody, N4MQ; Ron, K3FR & Bill, AF4LL was also there (Bill is a read-in member). The price of admission was more than reasonable – $5 per car, including cars with stuff to sell. We found the prices to be lower than we expected and there was good stuff to buy. Just as importantly, people were taking Covid-19 precautions by wearing masks. If you do not see pictures below – click the title above
The Serve Our Willing Warriors bike ride used ham radio for its communications. The ham radio part was organized by Andy, KJ4MPT and included both OVH and Woodbridge Wireless members. This was actually a 3 in 1 bike ride — there were courses for 58 miles, 30 miles and 13 miles. The OVH members helping included Andy, KM4MPT; John, KG4NXT; Ron, K3FR; Byron, AK4XR; Jay, NQ4T; David, KG4GIY; Greg, KM4CCG; Ray, KM4EKR; and Sandy, KM4JUS. The rest stops were manned by fire department EMTs from several jurisdictions while the water and snacks were provided by a Fairfax church. Ron, K3FR described his experience as follows: “I was on the course as the ham radio operator at checkpoint ROMEO-11 (St Louis Rd and Foxcroft Rd) in southern Loudoun County, so all of my shots are of metric century riders. This was… Read more »
Outside of things like packets bouncing off the ISS, APRS does have a legitimate use other than just playing around with packet. In fact, one of the original uses of APRS by it’s designer, Bob Bruninga, while a research engineer at the USNaval Academy in the 80s, was for plotting the positions of naval ships over HF. He later developed a more advanced version for tracking horses during a 100 mile endurance run. Of course, this was long before the use of GPS that allowed even more accurate position reporting along with automated beaconing. For the SOWW race, there was some very limited APRS usage; a few of the Nam Knights had APRS trackers placed on their motorcycles. The location of our race was quite rural, and there was question as to if the trackers on the motorcycles would be… Read more »
WB6UIE As we begin National Preparedness Month, Hurricane Laura has devastated portions of Louisiana and spawned systems of severe storms as it swept inland. Northern Virginia was fortunate to escape most of its wrath. We may not be so lucky next time. Now is a good time to check your emergency supplies. Do you have enough food and water for you and your family to last several days? You can find information about recommended emergency kit contents at https://www.ready.gov Are your radios ready to go and programmed with local repeater frequencies? You can find this info along with the local ARES op plan and training schedule at http://pwcares.org/ In addition to the damage caused by their high winds and wind driven water, hurricanes often spawn tornadoes and systems of violent thunderstorms extending many miles inland from the eye…. Read more »
The year 2020 has been one strange year. There’ve been times when I thought “up” must be “down” and “left” must be “right”. This is the only way I (“The Other Ken” – KN4DD) could explain to myself how a mostly respiratory disease could cause toilet paper, frozen pizza and bread yeast shortages. And, as I would soon find out, laptop shortages. When I received a broadcast email from John (KG4NXT) back on August 22, asking for ideas on what to do with newly retired XP laptops, I didn’t think I could help. At first, all I could offer was this: maybe some recycler would offer money for the scrap. And so, with the trap set, John sprung it. Would you look into this please? Based on what turned out to be an outdated memory, I agreed. I had remembered… Read more »
