Welcome to the November 2022 LRA Newsletter
From the LRA Board:
Kevin Drissel, N9OIG has been appointed Technical Director after a unanimous vote of the existing board members. Thanks to Kevin for volunteering to fill this important position.
Matt Zajac, AF9Q has been elected by the membership to serve out the remainder of the term of Secretary, LRA. Thanks to Matt for volunteering.
Steve, N9SEB has been appointed by the board to lead a committee tasked with reviewing the existing LRA bylaws. Steve has appointed K9WNG, Brad Richardson, K9WBT, Bruce Taylor, KD9SAW, Fred Sitarski, K9QKL, Jason Bugalecki, N9JOS, Joe Seifert, KD9XNG, Pat Smith, and WB9COW, Robin Maher to serve on this committee. Their first meeting was held on Tuesday, Nov 1.
General meeting minutes and the Treasurer’s report will be posted soon under the MEMBERS ONLY section.
Upcoming LRA Activities
The fabulous LRA Christmas party will be held on Sunday, December 18 at 5:00pm at Tailgaters Restaurant (7641 WI-38, Caledonia, WI 53108). Cost is $25 per person. Please send checks to the LRA PO Box.
The next LRA Quarterly membership meeting will be held on Tuesday, January 24 at the Sturtevant Village Hall / Police station.
Foxhunt: A VHF transmitter hunt will begin at the Meadows restaurant at 10:00am on Saturday, Nov 12. Contact Matt, AF9Q for registration information.
Net Activities:
Net Activities: The Public Service Net is now once a month on the 3rd Wednesday of every month at 7:30pm.
ARES RACES net will be at the same time and dates as the LRA psn nets. Newsline will be played 730 pm every wed on 147.270 @ 730pm except on the night of the net. Then It will follow after the net on those nights
An average of 30 check-ins per day on the Happy Hour Un-Net. This group meets daily on both the 442 and 147 repeaters at 5:00pm sharp. Moderated by K9WBT, K9SO, and KD1Z Fridays and Sundays feature our guest moderators. Join us! A beautiful certificate courtesy of Dave, NP2I, is awarded for 100 check-ins. Over 35 certificates have bee awarded to date. A Happy Hour email reflector group is also available on Groups.io. Contact me, K9SO, or Matt, AF9Q for details.
Member Activities:
LaValle, W9SV, has completed work on his new “Earth station” antennas. Potentially massive enough for moonbounce, he has been using them effectively to reach the multiple linear transponders orbiting the planet. LaValle plans on putting this massive array up on the rooftop in the spring. He has worked the FM birds too and gives the advice to try them in the wee hours of the night to avoid the massive pileups.
Jeff, KC9JOB, and I have been working on antennas to use in the upcoming Foxhunt but our project lacks direction 😉
Dave, NP2I, was undoubtedly the LRA winner of the CQ Worldwide contest this past weekend earning over 50,000 points at last report. Several members reported working multiple new countries on SSB over the weekend and had a lot of fun. Dave was using his new Gap TITAN antenna with great success.
A lot of new antennas have gone up over the past month. Keep improving those stations! Moonbounce, Parks on the Air, Meteor Scatter on 6m … our members are ACTIVE!!! Check into HH and learn about it.
Winlink: Bruce, K9WBT, has started WINLINK WEDNESDAY to promote WINLINK use. Send him a WINLINK email on Wednesdays. Details on the Happy Hour reflector.
Mike, K9MWG, Installed his new SteppIR SmallIR vertical antenna last week and reported that he worked multiple new countries during the CQWW contest with his stratosphere poking new toy. This self tuning vertical antenna gives him CONTINUOUS frequency coverage from 3.5 to 28 MHz
I received an email from Bruce, K9WBT about local APRS activities with Jason, K9QKL, Fred, KC9SAW, and Brad, K9WNG, with help from Kevin, N9OIG. A new APRS repeater station in Union Grove is filling some holes in SE Wisconsin now. Join the fun. Site photos in the attachment:
This October marked my 58th year as a ham. What a fun ride it has been.
Having purchased Kenwood D74s, Jason, Brad and I setup up fill in digipeaters at our homes. We immediately saw a need for a wide coverage digipeater in the area as there was a huge hole on the APRS map between Northern Illinois and Milwaukee.
There was also interest in APRS talked about on the repeater so we felt like this would be a worthy project and something fun for all of us to enjoy.
Kevin offered up a site in Union Grove on HWY 45 & KR; so Jason, Fred, Brad, and I set out to get a station together.
Kevin recommended using a Motorola CDM series along with a Kantronics TNC due to their robustness and reliability. We pooled our resources together and came up with a power supply, a 45 watt Motorola CDM 1250 and an older Kantronics KPC3 (non plus) TNC. The radio was programmed, the TNC configured and we also ham-made the necessary data cable. The station came together nicely.
Kevin’s site already had a GP6 offering 6.5db gain at 80 feet with a site elevation of about 750 feet; complete with feedline that we were able to take advantage of. The digipeater is standalone without any internet. We were assuming that a digipeater in reach of our signal would igate our packets up to the internet and that assumption was correct. We now have a digipeater helping manage packets from Northern Illinois and Southeastern Wisconsin for all of us to enjoy, see K9WBT-2 on the APRS map.
Good DX:
Here’s the latest NASA photo of our HAPPY SUN:
Good Reading:
It’s not often I’ll reference any article from the LA Times, but this one has a great message for all Ham Radio Operators: https://news.yahoo.com/china-declares-war-ham-radio-100003282.html
In The News:
Amateur Radio Operators Invited to Participate in Scientific Experiments
Details of the recent activity at the magnificent HAARP facility can be found here: http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-operators-invited-to-participate-in-scientific-experiments
Did You Know?
You may have heard a couple of members (myself included) clicking the microphone twice after ending a QSO. This is actually an old Ham Radio tradition started in the early days of the 20th century. In the early 20th century, this practice carried over to Morse code. At the end of a QSO, one party would tap out the “shave and a haircut” rhythm, and the other would tap out the “two bits” rhythm, hopefully leaving a smile on both faces. In the more recent era, the “shave and a haircut” part has been dropped, possibly because it’s harder to get the rhythm right with an electronic keyer, but the “two bits” part has survived. A good way to acknowledge that you were still around to hear the last transmission.
73,
Fred Glenn, K9SO
VP, Lakeshore Repeater Association, Inc.