The October NCRC meeting will be on TUESDAY October 15, at 7 PM at KVH.
After our business meeting, where we will review past activations and our soldering class, as well as present a proposed list of officers for 2020, we will have a presentation by Mark Rudd, KC1LOM, about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
**** Don’t forget TUESDAY October 15th ****
Portsmouth and Middletown are teaming up for a Preparedness Event, on Saturday morning November 9th at Gaudet Middle School. Portsmouth Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) will be participating.
If you can offer up help, please contact Mary skylotus1 at cox.net
Mary KC1NEB has setup the artwork for a very attractive black T-Shirt with NCRC logo on the front and the words “Newport County Radio Club” on the back.
If you are interested in ordering a shirt, please go to the SWAG tab.
Our Seventh Hands-on Radio event will be held on October 21st, at All Saints STEAM Academy (915 W Main Rd, Middletown, RI 02842) beginning at 6:30 PM.
Paul K1YBE setup our Sixth Hands-On Radio Event last night and it was a great success. There were 21 people present and enough helpers on hand so that there were 1 to 2 students at each table with a mentor.
The objective of the class was to practice basic soldering skills by soldering some resistors and ICs onto a prototype PCB, then to test a series LED resistor circuit. That took about an hour to complete. The remainder of the class, which wrapped up about 9:30 PM, involved assembling a Offset Mixer Attenuation board used for RDFing. Most of these were completed and many were tested and found to be working. The students had an opportunity to desolder components as the PCB had a silk-screen error that lead to a LED being installed backward.
As one might expect the age of some of the soldering equipment, and the solder itself lead to some issues. Good, clean tools, and recognizing that solder has a shelf life (the rosin goes bad over time – 3 years per the manufacturer), was a valuable lesson.
Students and mentors at work assembling the Attenuator PCB (Mark and Mary in the foreground)
Many thanks to All Saints STEAM Academy for allowing them to use their facilities and to their Science and Math teacher Dr Mike Thombs, W9DAD (also a NCRC member).