Monthly Archives: September 2020

NCRC Meeting Reminder: Monday Sept 14 at 7 PM

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Our monthly meeting will be held via ZOOM at 7 PM on Monday September 14th.  Invitations to the meeting will be mailed out to members this weekend.

We will have a short business meeting, including the first reading of bylaws modifications.  After the meeting Wayne Hansen KC1MCW , with some assistance from Mark Rudd KC1LOM will give a presentation on “Flying the beam”, on navigation gear used by aircraft pilots.

Thermal Issues with W1SYE Repeater

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Some of you may have had difficulty using the W1SYE (145.450) repeater recently.  The hardware appears to have developed some thermal issues.  The symptom is you can kerchunk the repeater and it will beep back at you, but it does not pass audio.

However, if you are persistent, hold your PTT and talk for about a minute, then the repeater warms up enough that it starts passing audio (distorted at first, then perfectly fine).  After that, the repeater will work fine until things cool back down.

The repeater committee is aware of the issue, will try to see if it can be fixed, or improved, but has been working on a longer range fix to replace the repeater hardware.

Simplex Communication Drill Thursday Sept 10 at 7 PM

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The simplex test event will be held on Thursday 9/10/20 following the usual Thursday W1SYE net.  Mike Cullen K1NPT has created a form to record results. Would be nice if folks could use it to report what they heard, not not mandatory.
The event will utilize the W1SYE repeater to coordinate the drill, and users should program their gear to use the repeater output (145.450 MHz) as a SIMPLEX CHANNEL.  This is called “Talk Around” and is a good place to meetup with folks if the repeater is not working.  The process will be as follows:
  1. Net Control Station (NCS Ted W1GRI) will poll the known list of call signs and then ask for any others who want to participate in the drill.
  2. Ted will announce the stations in the order they will be called. Please be sure you have / make a list of these stations.
  3. Each station will be called in that order and asked to switch to simplex and broadcast for about 30 seconds (to allow receiving stations to move around if needed).  Be sure to give your call sign repeatedly, maybe like “This is W1ABC, sleepy in Newport calling simplex on 145.450 for the Newport County Radio Club simplex test” repeating that two or three times.
  4. Simplex station will then switch back to the repeater and announce they have finished the simplex broadcast.
  5. Once the list has been completed NCS will ask for any stations wishing to repeat their simplex broadcast, maybe with a different radio or antenna.
  6. The list of repeats will be processed as above.
As each station broadcasts please note their callsign, and how well you heard them as follows:
  • FQ: Full Quieting
  • WR: Weak, Readable
  • HU: Heard, Unreadable
  • NH: Not Heard
Finally, net control will poll each station asking for their observations for each station and any comments.
Hope we can have some fun!
Ted  W12GRI

Parks On The Air Activation

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John K1JSM and Willy W1LY activated Beavertail State Park K-2868, from around noon until about 2:30 this afternoon.  The used both the 60 foot tower as well as a magnetic loop, on 17/20/40 meters.  The loop was highly directional and being off a few degrees was the difference between S1 and S9 signal levels.  The vertical also allowed them to run 100 watts and was omnidirectional, but perhaps not propagating the way they wanted.  This activation covered islands on the air, parks on the air, and lighthouses on the air, whew!

  • POTA K-2868
  • ARLHS USA-048 (new) and USA-1128
  • IOTA NA031
  • US Islands RI007S

John K1JSM (left) and Willy W1LY (on air) at Beavertail State Park

Both the Magnetic Loop as well as the vertical antenna can be seen in this photo. The Vertical is base loaded and sits on a ground field of 4″ wide copper under the grass. Of course those straps may have rotted away in the decades since the antenna was installed.