Presidents Letter May 2017

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER: Hello to all and I hope this message finds you all healthy and well. It has been a roller-coaster for weather so far.  Now it is time to get active and prepare for an exciting and prosperous year. Let the OVH activities begin!! First of all, the May 15th meeting will be the last one at the Manassas City Public Works Building for about a year.  They will be using the space to do computer training for some of the city employees. We are hoping to be back as it is a great place to hold meetings. Also on the down side, OVH did not take part in the 2017 Manassas Air Show. A number of factors came into play that did not bode well for us. On … Read more >>

Sunshine Corner May

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SUNSHINE CORNER Happy birthday wishes this May to OVH club members: John / KM4VCJ, David / KG4GIY, Bill / WA4FIC, Jack / N4YIC, Carl / KK4ZYX, Craig / WA3UFY, Richard / KM4UXE, Susan / K3SSP, Terry / KC4DV, Don / WA2SWX, Robert / KJ4EOR and last but not least, John / KG4NXT. Hope you all have a wonderful day! Wayne / N7QLK was unable to make the March meeting, the first meeting with the OVH’s new president, Ray / KM4EKR, presiding – so we went to Wayne! John / KG4NXT, Al / KB4BHB and your Sunshine Corner correspondent took an appreciation Plaque to for his great work as OVH President to Wayne at his residence. See picture. Another Mini-Tri is coming up fast on Sunday, May 14th; please let Andy … Read more >>

Karl Berger W4KRL Weather Station Briefing

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Karl Berger / W4KRL giving his presentation about his Internet of Things Weather Station during the April 17, 2017 OVH Meeting.  Karl’s slides are here WeatherStation_w4krl for your reading pleasure.  Additional information about the Weather Station project, including how to purchase a low cost kit of parts for it are available at http://w4krl.com. Karl’s weather station project uses the “free” online Matlab based and provided analytics through the http://thingspeak.com web site – which is worth exploring to find out what facilities are available there and what can be done there for very low cost. His project also uses http://aprs.fi web site.  

VP’s Corner

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VP’s Corner Jeff Fuller WB6UJE One of the more interesting things I’ve seen during my return journey to ham radio has been the marriage of the microprocessor and the radio.  It started with frequency synthesizers.  Easy to net everybody up on one frequency and no more drifting VFOs. And them came digital modes. All those nifty error correcting codes I studied years ago in school were once limited to pencil and paper exercises, or maybe a mainframe lab or two. Now they run on a laptop computer sound card, like the one I used last month in a transatlantic QSO running five watts of PSK31. And, ham radio has joined the Internet of Things (IoT) – a variety of unmanned systems and sensors for monitoring and reporting. Want to learn … Read more >>

Presidents Letter Apr 2017

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER: Well it appears that spring has finally sprung. The season started off with the first Mini-Tri of the year, and the turnout was good. Thank you to all of the volunteers and to Andy (KJ4MTP) for the planning. Our next event is the 2017 Manassas Air Show on Saturday, May 6th (rain-out day: May 7th). This will be our second appearance as an exhibitor at the Manassas Regional Airport. If the air show this year is anything like in past years, it will have about 20,000 visitors and should offer a fun time for the whole family to take in the aerobatic performances, aircraft displays, and the numerous informational booths of various Manassas organizations. Even though it is still in the planning stage, we expect the OVH booth to have HAM radio equipment on display, working ham radio(s), and possibly … Read more >>

Sunshine Corner April

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SUNSHINE CORNER Happy birthday wishes in April to: Brian / KK4CBS, Robert / KJ4SZJ, Jeff / KB4IWD, Gil / KM4OZH, Paul / N4PD, Joe / KI4OHR, Lilly / KK4MXY, Paul / W4ZB, David / KD4DEE and Harry / KC9TXL. Wayne, N7QLK was unable to make it to the March meeting so we went to Wayne! John / KG4NXT, Al / KB4BHB and I took an appreciation plaque over to Wayne for his great work while he was President of the club. (Picture in the newsletter) You still have a day or two left to get your Virginia QSO logs submitted, please make sure you put the OVH as your club on the log! Please send me a picture when you get your certificate would really like to see where everyone … Read more >>

W4OVH Support to Tri-It-Now Triathlon Events

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The first of the TRI-IT NOW Triathlons were held at the The Freedom Aquatic & Fitness Center in Manassas, Virginia on 26 March 2017 and of course W4OVH members were there to ensure participants were always kept under the eyes of W4OVH to help ensure safety and road course security. This was the perfect short-distance multisport event to start off everyone’s season!  The Tune Up Tri is an excellent race for beginners, and also a great opportunity for more experienced athletes to use as a gauge of your fitness early in the season.  It’s a tune-up…for everyone to hone their skills and remember what it feels like to race 3 sports in one event! The event had a slight ‘twist’ on the traditional order of events, designed to allow everyone to get an early-season … Read more >>

Web Site Improvements Coming

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The Web Improvement Committee members gave a presentations on their efforts to give the OVH web site [W4OVH.NET] a “new look”; the attendees at the meeting were enthusiastic about the possibilities. Look for a new web site soon with lots of new features.  One of the primary purposes in addition to updating the look and feel of the web site is to make publishing articles and images much easier so that we may increase our web site content.  All members will be encouraged to provide and post articles, news, general information useful to the club and Amateur Radio and images of the adventures of the Ole Virginia Hams.