The Club’s monthly activities include a Board Meeting on the evening of the first Wednesday of each month at 7:00 p.m. Everyone is invited to this board meeting, but it is usually attended only by the board. But if you want to have input, you are welcome.

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Venture Crew

Solder Sniffer Activities

As a reminder, our normal meeting times for this group are the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month at 1:00 PM at the Clover Building (our normal meeting spot).

See you there………………Jerry

Click HERE for some recent Solder Sniffer Photos

Some of the suggestions for projects for this group include the following:

• Resurrecting the Direction Finding equipment that the club owns(the club owns three doppler RDF units
• Ray Warren has volunteered to sponsor a few sessions of microprocessor programing on the MSP430 development chip
• Some club members have asked for some instruction and guidance on PSK 31 since building the SC1-6 kit a few months back
• Jim has been looking into some build projects in support of ARES District 10 repeater activities
• Jerry has been looking for simple amplification circuits to use to boost the volume on PC based audio when he finds an audio source too weak to power even AC powered external PC amp/speakers
• Jerry also has the Club’s National NC-173 Receiver that could use some tuning up and tube checking to make it a desirable  unit for sale or other club use
• Ray Rayburn has suggested a tutorial on Power
• Jerry is aware that BCARES is planning to become more serious in its use of portable APRS units for emergency response. This could generate some build projects.  
• Jerry is planning to build a couple fox hunting antennas of the tape measure variety for using in simple within the grounds fox hunting for future cub Scout Day Camp Activity stations.
• Jerry has purchased a simple short range fox kit, also for future Cub Scout Day Camp activities
• Jerry plans to build a simple RF Meter, also for future Cub Scout Day Camp activities
• Jerry is also looking for ideas to safely demonstrate the Jacob ‘s ladder donated by Sebastian, also for potential Scouting events.
• Jerry has built a small project called KD1JV Deluxe Tenna Dipper – simple device to determine whan an antenna is exactly 50 ohms for a particular frequency
• Jerry has an interest in learning how to read schematics and Leonard has some ideas about free circuit modeling programs
• Jerry has purchased a Raspberry PI computer and plans to play with it soon
• At the LARCFest Paul Washa sold out all of his Aguino books – not sure what this is all about
• Doug mentioned a desire to build a 20 meter loop for field day
• A recent QST had a kit for building a keyer for use on VHF/UHF (code practice on a 2m meter net anyone?)
• HF Digital Voice with FreeDV QST-April 2013
• $60 Kit – Da Pimp – Battery Tester / desulfator / charger  (found a you tube video using this device to resurrect old Gel Cells)
• How about the club building/purchasing an ATV transmitter to use for public service events   Jim Andrews site
• How about the club building a 3-D Printer – I’ll bet we can design an object or two for the ham shack and sell them on the web site

• Please feel free to add to add your comments, to this page, with additional ideas for projects ………………………..

Notes:

The club owns two DF setups purchased a few years ago from Dave Sharp (KI0HG) and the club recently acquired an additional setup that was constructed by Sebastian (NS0W)

Recently the club was introduced to, and several members purchased, a MSP430 Launchpad Development Tool. This is an experimenter board that provides a USB-based development and experimenting tool that provides everything needed to launch your own MSP430 (TM) Value Line applications. This kit is still available for $4.30 from this website.  http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_(MSP-EXP430G2)  So, if you are interested in learning about micro processor programming, these sessions might be for you.

 

General Meeting Topics:

2011

Feb.:  Ham radio applications available for Apple Computers.

Jan:   Discussion  and talk on Solar Panels

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2008

Month	Presenter	Topic
February	Jeremy Haley, WG9T	“RF IMPEDANCE AND THE SMITH CHART” Resistance & Reactance (capacitance/inductance) >>> Impedance /Reflection coefficient and SWR Relation between impedance and reflection coefficient / Impedance mapped onto a polar graph Constant resistance circles, constant reactance arcs (circles) / SWR circles, rotation along a 50-ohm transmission line Open-source, cross-platform RF/Microwave software for learning/experimenting: QUCS http://qucs.sourceforge.net Example impedance calculations at either end of the feedline / Impedances of an approximate 40 m dipole at 20 m and 17 m Simple matching circuit calculation for the non-resonant 40 m dipole that could allow 17 m operation.
January	Paul Berge, K0DJV	Amateur Radio at Microwave Frequencies: Hands-on equipment and concepts demonstration of getting on the air at UHF and above. “You will be surpised at how little it takes to get into microwaves. You can build a rig for less than $200.” Example components: discarded satellite TV dish / mixer (~$50) / stable frequency source module (~$50?) power supply for freq. source module (requires -20V @ 1.5 amp) / Your existing VHF/UHF SSB transceiver for use as an IF section, or even a 10m rig could be used. Concepts discussed and demonstrated: rectangular waveguides vs. coaxial cables or twin-lead t-lines polarization near-field and far-field regions in the vicinity of an antenna or aperture power units Watts, milliwatts, dBm, dB, orders of magnitude, signal levels standing waves reflective materials, lossy dielectric materials cut-off freq. in waveguides microwaves behaving like light rays parabolic dish antennas with very high gain and small beam-width interesting propagation effects/unexpected communication paths

 

2007:

Date	Presenter	Topic
October	Rob KA8JBY	Space Weather and its affect on radio propagation. Rob is a Senior Master Sergeant in the United Sates Air Force assigned to Space Weather at NOAA. Rob recently relocated to Colorado from Dayton, Ohio (yes, he knows all about Hamvention). Removed broken Link Aug 2020 Jerry N0OUW Robert Steenburgh (KA8JBY) did the October presentation at the club. He wanted to share this solar hurricane with us.
September	Ray N1IUU	ELECTION OF OFFICERS   Audio Engineering. Ray’s company maintains the sound equipment for the US House & Senate chambers in Washington D.C. Did you ever wonder how echoes are handled in stadiums? Come find out. http://www.soundfirst.com/
August	Wayne – N0LEA	Digital modes and radio control with Ham Radio Deluxe (software) Wayne Smith – N0LEA will present. More info about the software at: http://hrd.ham-radio.ch/
July	Dave – AC7CS	Alternative power, including solar cells. Dave has a cottage 15 miles from the nearest power. Learn how Dave provides all his energy needs from solar cells & batteries, a small generator and propane. These topics apply to Shack-in-a-Box phase IV.
July	Dan KE7TU	Surprise presentation on the Hoover Dam. – ; (Broken Link Removed 3/9/20 N0OUW) Dan was in town visiting his brother Jim (N0IRK) and agreed to show us where he works.
July	Rich KB0ULB	Rich brought show & tell – a base station using an HT. Often times a new ham only has an HT as their first radio
June	Jeremy WG9T	Field Day preparation: How to use the club’s new IC7000. Download the manual. Rmoved Broken Link  Aug 2020 Jerry N0OUW
May	Jamie Riggs Paul K0DJV	Deep Space Exploration Society (DSES)
April	Chris KC0VER	Very Large Array – Radio Telescopes in New Mexico
March	Ray W9LQM	Messenger to planet Mercury mission
February	Leonard KC0WOX	Fiber Optics
January	Ed KI0RU	Amateur Rockets and Radio watch this presentation. Thanks Dan (W3ETA) for converting this presentation to a web format.

2006:

Date	Presenter	Topic
December	Ray W9LQM	Christmas Party Pirates in the Caribbean – BVI sailing
November	Leonard KC0WOX	Field trip to 911 call center
October	Ray W9LQM	Deep Space Network
September		Elections
August	Larry W0QE	Fox Hunting
July	Gordon W0RUN	P1 Expedition to Antarctic
June	Bob WA2EKU	Logging Software (Field Day)
May	Chris KC0VER	Circuit Simulation
April	Vince KC0SZM	Software Defined Radio
March
February	Danny K9DS	WiFi
January	John KF0RQ	Ham Radio in Cambodia

2005:

Date	Presenter	Topic
December	Bob WA2EKU	Christmas Party Tiger Cruise – US Navy
November	Larry W0QE	County Hunting
October	Sebastian NS0W Chris K8CRM	900MHZ operation, radio modifications

This is where we will publish information about the 2012 version of our annual LARCfest