President’s Annual Address - Burt KR9T
Making Ferrite Toroid Baluns for Dummies - John Portune W6NBC
Meeting Link: here
Carl Luetzelschwab K9LA started his radio career as a short wave listener in the late 1950s. He received his Novice license (WN9AVT) in October 1961, and selected K9LA in 1977. Carl is an electrical engineering graduate of Purdue University and was an RF design engineer until his retirement in 2013. Carl enjoys propagation research, DXing (he’s at the Top of the Honor Roll), contesting (he was NCJ Editor from 2002-2007), experimenting with antennas and restoring/using vintage equipment.
He and his wife Vicky AE9YL enjoy traveling, which has included DXpeditions to Syria (YK9A in 2001), to Market Reef (OJ0/AE9YL and OJ0/K9LA in 2002) and numerous trips to ZF (Vicky is ZF2YL and Carl is ZF2LA). He has received the Bill Orr W6SAI Technical Writing Award, the YASME Foundation Excellence Award and the Indiana Radio Club Council Technical Excellence Award.
Carl was the Vice Director of the ARRL Central Division for 5 years – from 2017-2021. He now serves as the Director of the Central Division.
Tonight’s topics:
“Updates on the ARRL” and “Solar Cycle 25”
Please join us for what should be a very interesting evening.
June’s meeting topic was HOA Grounding and Bonding, presented by Cory Gibson W3CDG from DX Engineering. The meeting was recorded and can be seen by clicking below.
At our May virtual meeting, Art Paton N9AE and Dennis Baker, NR9H gave an excellent presentation on the many ways you can work around the HOA rules that have kept many people off the air these days. In Art’s case, he does a combination of multiple antennas in his attic with setting up antennas in his backyard at night, when no one is looking! Dennis Baker, NR9H, built an antenna network that was tucked along the eaves of his house, totally hidden from view. In both cases, they reported good results on FT8 and FT4 — less so with some of the SSB modes, but good enough to have some bragging rights.
Lee Hite, K8CLI, presented a virtual tour of the Voice of America Broadcast Station museum. Lee began with a short history of government promoted high power shortwave broadcasting starting with very advanced German radio in the 1920’s and 30’s and moving to the development of high-power broadcasting in the US, Russia, and China. The presentation included detailed descriptions of the radio transmitters, feedlines, antennas, cooling systems, and support processes that included removing ice from antennas and feedlines, and outdoor manual tuning of enormous antenna systems
Clark, N9APL entertains us with some great videos he produced on the digital modes.
Edgar, K9RE, along with Don KK9H, Clark N9APK, and Mark WA9IVH, teamed up to speak on the history, evolution, and use of the WSJT-X digital modes suite. Don, covered how FT8 came at just the right time during the solar minimum to give a weak signal mode that could be used to work DX, and it grew like wildfire. Able to decode a signal at -24 db below the 4 noise floor, it allowed low power, international contacts for most of the world. Don commented on how useful FT8 can be on 160M and 6M when the band sounds dead, there are usually stations out there you cannot hear, and are on FT8 waiting for a contact. Don also gave 3 tips on making optimal FT8 contacts by finding DX on the display, sending signal report first, and calling stations on a frequency different than they are using.
Clark, N9APK, commented on how important knowledge of Windows 10, computer ports, sound card functions, and USB ports is for successful setup of digital modes. He also showed a video overview of a program covering configuration and setup of computer, application software and radios for digital modes. The link is: https://youtu.be/PVmuOwwFJKI
Clark also commented on the need for an accurate clock and the application “Grid Tracker” for logging contacts visually.
Mark shared his discovery that 17M and 30M have lots of FT8 activity and set a goal to achieve WAS and DXCC on both bands using FT8. Mark described his focus and discipline of tracking his contacts and checking for confirmations on LoTW. He also described the new methods using PayPal to pay for QSL card mailing from stations that do not use LoTW. Amazingly, Mark achieved is goal of WAS and DXCC on both bands, in 5 months, finishing at the stroke of midnight on December 31st 2020. Mark showed the LoTW application and how he tracked his contacts, and the DX Labs logging software he uses.
