Field Day at Home

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Newport County Radio Club will be participating in Field Day at Glen Park this year as in all years past, however, due to the pandemic, it has changed from a large social event to a strict operating only event.  CW, Phone, and VHF operations will go on as usual with a strict one person per station rule.  If you are interested in operating please contact Willy W1LY@cox.net and let him know.

For those of us who are staying at home out of concern for COVID-19, you can still participate in Field Day personally, and help the club out as well.  The ARRL has modified the rules to make it easier to operate your home station using your OWN CALL as “1D” (Home) or “1E” (Home Emergency Power).  See the Field Day Rules for more details.  You can even work NE1RI (NCRC’s Field Day Station) on the air for points!  When you submit your log to the ARRL, please enter “Newport County Radio Club” in the “Club or Group Name” box.

Many people chose to do electronic logging, and N3FJP’s Field Day Log is what is used by NCRC for our contests. Those choosing to operate CW may prefer to use N1MM+.  And as always, paper logs are fine too (you submit a list of calls worked on each band/mode).

Don’t forget the various bonus points which quickly add up for small stations.  See the rules for a complete list, but the bonus items listed below add up to 750 points:

  • 7.3.1 Emergency Power (for “1E”) 100 points
  • 7.3.2 Local Media Publicity (send an article to the Patch, for example)
  • 7.3.3 Section Manager Message (Bob W1YRC listening on 145.170 repeater)
  • 7.3.6 Ten outbound NTS messages
  • 7.3.8 Alternative Power (battery charged by solar/wind, etc)
  • 7.3.9 Copying the ARRL Field Day Bulletin Friday night
  • 7.3.14 Submitting your entry via the web
  • 7.3.16 Social Media

We hope you can still enjoy Field Day at home and help out the club too!

NCRC June 8 Meeting on ZOOM again

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Last months meeting was conducted on ZOOM and was a resounding success, with more people online than at our usual physical meetings.  As we are still under gathering restrictions, Monday’s meeting will be online as well.

This is the last chance we have to discuss our summer Field Day plans (June 27 & 28).  There have been some interesting developments that will be discussed.  There will be a Round Table discussion on “Stepping down from 10 meters” covering HF topics of interest to new General license holders.

Please be on the lookout for your invitation email and join us at 7 PM on Monday June 8th.

Classes Wrap Up Next Week

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Paul K1YBE and Bob WB4SON have been busy holding online Tech/General/Extra classes using Zoom.  It looks like we will have 27 people taking the Technician exam and 14 taking a General or Extra upgrade during the week of June 1st.  This will likely be a record for most exams given by the club.  We wish all the students the best of luck!

We are also engaged in learning the process to offer individual exams online, which will serve the Amateur Radio community well going forward.

Thanks to the sixteen VEs who have volunteered to help with the exams, and a special shout out to Mary KC1NEB and Kelly K1GKW who heard that we needed help and took their VE Exams by the next day!

Successful Zoom Club Meeting Last Night

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NCRC held its May club meeting via Zoom last night.  Things went very well.  We had 48 people in attendance, which is a bit more than one of our traditional in-person meetings.  It was nice to see members in FLA (Pete W1LAB), PA (Bruce NJ3K), and NH (Art W1AGW) join in as well.  The business meeting ran just about an hour, including a long discussion of Field Day 2020, with two new members being voted into membership.  Congratulations:

      • Paul Perrone, KB1QWY, South Kingstown
      • John Jackman, N1SMX, North Kingstown

After the meeting there was a 30 minute presentation on learning Morse Code given by Bob WB4SON.  The slides can be found here.

Perhaps the best part of the night was the 30 minutes that followed the presentation, with very lively conversation among the 40+ remaining members.  A good time was had by all.

Several folks offered up some interesting books on the history of Morse Code and telegraphy in general.  Thanks (Peter KQ1X and Bruce NJ3K) including these titles:

  • “The Victorian Internet”, by Tom Standage in 1998 and 1999 the later is paperback
  • “A Thread Across The Ocean”, by John Steele Gordon published in 2003
  • “Signor Marconi’s Magic Box”, by Gavin Weighman Published in 2003
  • “Engineers & Electrons A Century of the IEEE 1884-1984”, by John D. Ryder
  • “Mr. Lincolns T-Mails”, by Tom Wheeler
  • “The Telegraph in America”, by David Hochfelder

Meeting Monday May 11 @ 7 PM via ZOOM

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In keeping with our goal to continue to provide fun for our members while remaining safe, our next club meeting will be on Monday May 11th at 7 PM via Zoom.  We will have our usual business meeting along with an extended discussion of our Field Day plans.  Following the meeting, Bob WB4SON will give a brief presentation on Learning Morse Code.

Invitations to join the Zoom meeting will be sent out via eMail.  Usually it is no more complicated than clicking on the link within the email to join.  We will have the meeting opened up around 6:30 PM in case you need some time to get things adjusted before the meeting begins at 7 PM.

To avoid chaos, everyone will be muted when they join.  During the meeting, you can unmute yourself to ask a question or use the Chat feature of Zoom — sort of like sending a text message.  If you do use Chat, please send it to everyone (the default “to” choice).

For those of you new to Zoom, here is a link to a short one minute video explaining how you can join a meeting:  https://www.youtube.com/embed/hIkCmbvAHQQ?rel=0&autoplay=1&cc_load_policy=1

While you do NOT need an account with Zoom to participate in our meetings, you may want to setup a free account anyway by going to this link: https://zoom.us/

If you don’t receive an email with the meeting details, please reach out to WB4SON at GMAIL dot COM