Monthly Archives: July 2014

Supporting NCRC when you shop using Amazon Smile

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John Mills, our ever-faithful treasurer, has registered NCRC as a charity with Amazon, which means that anyone who shops at Amazon, and elects “Newport County Radio Club”  as the charity of their choice, will have 0.5% of their purchase amount credited to NCRC.

You must do two things to take advantage of this:

1) You must visit smile.amazon.com.  The first time you do this you will be asked to select a charity.  Select “Newport Country Radio Club”

2) Anytime you want to purchase something from Amazon, go to smile.amazon.com rather than amazon.com.  When you do go to smile.amazon.com you will see something that looks like this (telling you the charity you support:

AmazonSmile2

 

DON’T FORGET STEP #2 — Amazon is pretty good about this and if you forget they will remind you that you probably want to go to smile.amazon.com

Details about the program can be found HERE.

 

 

NCECT Participates in Multi-Agency Shelter Communication Drill

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NCECTs John King, Ted Wroble, Rick Brendlinger, Dave Brown, Chuck Kesson, Dermid Gray and Bob Beatty, along with three other Red Cross hams planned for and participated in a multi-agency Shelter Communication Drill held this past Saturday at the Middletown and Jamestown shelters.  Willy MacLean was also instrumental in the planning process.

Communication facilities located at the Gaudet School (Middletown Shelter), Middletown EOC, Melrose School (Jamestown Shelter), and Providence Red Cross were utilized.  Participants were from NCECT, Middletown EMA, Portsmouth EMA, Jamestown EMA, and the Red Cross.

By any estimation, the drill was a great success.  It demonstrated an ability to develop and coordinate a multi-agency communication plan, and successfully carry out Shelter to EOC communications using four different communication channels (Landline, Red Cross Repeater, Ham Repeater, and Ham Simplex).  Despite three drill “failures” (Phones down, Red Cross Repeater Down, Ham Radio Repeater down), the plan proved to be resilient, and messages were successfully transferred using NIMS/ICS procedures.

The resourcefulness of Ham Radio was well apparent as one system after another “failed”.  The Ham’s technical skills, and frequency agility came to the rescue.

Hats off to our own John King for all his hard work in developing the plan and setting up the drill.  We know RIEMA was paying attention, and hopefully this sort of drill activity will spread throughout the state.

ChuckKessonShelterDrill

Chuck Kesson, KB1ZZX, passes a message at the Middletown EOC during the July 26 Shelter Communication Drill

Bye Bye Solar Cycle 24

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Sad but true, as of today, July 16, 2014, the sun is spotless.  The last time that happened was on August 11, 2011.  SolarHam.com even compared the spotless sun to an orange today!

ssn_predict_l

You can clearly see the double peak of Cycle 24 on the graph above.  Unless there is another outburst, it looks like the peak smoothed sunspot number of 75.4 was reached during November 2013, which was a first for solar observations (having the second peak larger than the first — the first being 66.9 in Februrary of 2012).

Cycle 24 remains the weakest solar cycle since Cycle 14 in 1906.  By the way, the expectation for the peak of Cycle 25, a decade in the future, is even lower than Cycle 24.

Time for 80 Meter DXing!

The Original 13 Colonies Special Event

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The colony stations will operate from Tuesday, July 1st, 9:00 AM Eastern (1300 UTC) until Sunday Night, July 6th, 00:00 (Midnight) Eastern (0400 UTC July 7th).

ALL Colony states have a SINGLE QSL manager for you to QSL to, listed on our website and on my QRZ.com page under my call (KU2US).Please do not send cards to each individual operator, this is what the state QSL manager is for. It will be faster and easier. An SASE would be appreciated!

All our operators are excited to get this event rolling! We are fully staffed and praying for good propagation.

Home page:  http://www.13colonies.info/

Certificate Requests:  http://www.13colonies.info/CertRequests.htm
**CERTIFICATE REQUEST TO KU2US ONLY! **

  • COLONY STATE OF NY-K2A (QSL TO KU2US)
  • COLONY STATE OF VA-K2B (QSL TO KK4ODQ)
  • COLONY STATE OF RI-K2C (QSL TO W1KMA)
  • COLONY STATE OF CT- K2D (QSL TO N1DN)
  • COLONY STATE OF DE-K2E (QSL TO NY3C)
  • COLONY STATE OF MD-K2F (QSL TO KB3IFH)
  • COLONY STATE OF GA-K2G (QSL TO NF4GA)
  • COLONY STATE OF MA-K2H (QSL TO WB1GOF)
  • COLONY STATE OF NJ-K2I (QSL TO N2RO)
  • COLONY STATE OF NC-K2J (QSL TO W4MPS)
  • COLONY STATE OF NH-K2K (QSL TO AB1OC)
  • COLONY STATE OF SC-K2L (QSL TO KG4RUL)
  • COLONY STATE OF PA-K2M (QSL TO K3MJW)

Newspaper Article and Dave Brown Photographs

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Field Day 2014 is behind us (although Willy is probably still dealing with all the towers/tents/cables/etc.) but two nice things can help us remember what it was all about.

The first is a wonderful collection of photographs by our own Dave Brown, KC1AAA.  You can see those by clicking here.

The second is a very nice story that describes what Field Day is all about, written by the Editor of the Portsmouth Times, Jim McGaw.  Jim came by at the perfect time, when Rob White was helping a couple of scouts at the GOTA tent.  You can see Jim’s article here.