Help ASA With School Club Roundup

6th grader Breena talking to ham radio operator Lou in Florida on Monday and now wants to earn her license.

N1ASA, All Saint’s Academy in Middletown, requests the favor of a contact with them this Thursday and/or Friday between 4 and 5 PM to help them with their “School Club Roundup”

Students will be listening to 146.550 MHz simplex and mapping all the towns they contact using their 2 meter station.

You can also contact them Thursday/Friday between 1:30 PM and 5:15 PM on 40 meter or 20 meter voice/PSK.

23 ASA students are currently enrolled in a Ham Radio class and hopefully will be licensed by mid June.  The School Club Roundup contest is a great incentive for them to continue their hard work.

Pixie Nights Begin – Monday Feb 13 @ 7 PM

Just a reminder that our monthly meeting will be Monday February 13 at 7:00 PM at KVH Manufacturing: 75 Enterprise Drive, Middletown, RI

PLEASE check the website before you leave for the meeting — there is a small chance that we might get hammered with more snow Monday morning.   We always post the meeting status in the news section of the website.

So what are Pixie Nights?

For the next three club meetings, in addition to a very short business meeting, we will be working on a Club Build project — A “Pixie”, which is a small, inexpensive, low power transceiver kit that can be used by anyone holding an Amateur Radio License.

For February’s meeting we will be holding a hands-on tutorial in soldering skills (and desoldering skills too).  KVH has been nice enough to setup a large number of solder stations with tools for us to use.  This is a unique opportunity, especially for those who have never done any electronic kit building.  Mentors will be on hand to guide you through the process.

In addition, John, WA1ABI, will be giving an introduction to the Pixie hardware to give you a good understanding of how the circuitry works.

Subsequent meetings will cover assembly of the Pixie, as well as Debug and Test.

For $10, you can’t go wrong, and will be able to point to the tiny Pixie radio, knowing you built it with your own hands, and have a low power transceiver that members have been using to make contacts hundreds of miles away.

If you would like to purchase a Pixie kit and join the fun, we have them in stock. This is really a very fun assembly project, and we will be working with you hand-in-hand to teach you how to solder, how the kit goes together, and help get it on the air.  To purchase your Pixie, please use the Paypal button on our website at this URL:

https://w1sye.org/?page_id=3054

Rich Bredlinger – Silent Key

It is with regret that we report the passing of Rich Brendlinger, N3RWB.  Rich, was a resident of Jamestown and is survived by his two sons and daughter, as well as his sister. Rich often helped at NCRC events, and last joined us for Thursday Breakfast just a few weeks ago.  Rich lost his battle with Cancer early this morning, after battling the disease for several years.

In addition to his love of Amateur Radio and DX hunting, Rich had an exciting life as a sailor — having single-handed a sailboat around the world, and skippering several large sailboats.  He was also a private pilot.

At Rich’s request there will be no services.

73 from your friends at NCRC.  You will be missed.