The latest NCRC Technician Class began on Monday September 16, with seven students. Classes will be held for the next five Monday, and an exam will be held on October 28th. As we did last session, students who pass the exam and join NCRC for two years will receive a HT once they receive their license.
Remember that the October NCRC meeting will be held at the VFW Post
This past Field Day saw the GOTA station having difficulty due to horrible RFI at the Glen Park Pavilion. The noise was so bad that it even prevented weak signal satellite work near the power lines on 144/440 MHz. With an upcoming JotA event in October, WA1ABI, John King, offered an instructional class in RFI finding techniques using VHF/UHF AM receivers with directional antennas, a KX3 with a rubber duck antenna, and a ultrasonic leak detector.
The RFI levels were high enough, even on 2 meters, that directional antennas were still yielding multiple peaks, and the lack of a RF gain control on the VHF gear further hindered the process. On the other hand, signal levels were more reasonable at 70 cm, and a rather pronounced peak was observed in the direction of one particular telephone pole.
Other participants were “walking the line” with the KX3 set to 6-meter AM, and independently established a rather strong signal level from the same pole. John King then brought out the mystery weapon — a ultrasonic receiver that detects sounds in the 36-46 KHz range and converts them to audible signals (a hetrodyne receiver operating a ultrasonic frequencies). Sure enough, when John pointed his parabolic dish at the pole, he could easily detect arcing, and he observed ivy was growing up the pole’s guy wire and right into the MV 3-phase lines. Fascinatingly enough, a much stronger arcing noise was actually coming from a pine tree that was growing at the base of the power pole. Moving the guy wire could cause the noise to go away or come back.
National Grid will be called in next week to fix the issue, and a second RFI party will check to see if the noise is improved.
Thanks to John WA1ABI, Willy W1LY, Jack K1JG, Rich N3RWB, Dave KC1AAA, Dirmid KB1ZZY, Rob KB1ZZU, Julian N1UHP, and Bob WB4SON who participated in the hunt.
The “Guilty” Power Pole – Observe the Ivy Growing Up the Guy
Ted Wrobel demonstrated one variety of dual-band “roll-up” high gain antenna for use with HTs during our August meeting.
His antenna came from N9TAX: http://www.2wayelectronix.com/
Another source using smaller coax and twin-lead is from Nelson Antennas on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/usr/nelson_antennas
Anyone who has attended recent NCRC meetings knows that we’ve outgrown our long-time home at the ARC. For the past several months the club has been looking for larger accommodations. We are happy to announce that beginning in October, meetings will now be held at the Gilbert-Burton VFW Post, 52 Underwood Lane, Middletown, RI.
This is a much larger facility with ample parking and is located right off of Coddington Highway.
The next meeting of the Newport County Radio Club will be on Monday September 9th at the Middletown ARC facility.
In addition to a short business session, Bob, WB4SON, will give a brief demonstration on the use of Anderson Powerpole connectors. If you have any equipment that you would like Powerpoles installed on, please bring it with you as Bob will have the tools and connectors available (no charge).