Next Ham Radio Class, Saturday, June 16, 2012

The next One-Day Tech Class will be held on Saturday, June 16, 2012 from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, 220 E. Ann St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Immediately after the class, the Technician Class license exam will be administered.

Pre-registration is required, and there is a $10 fee to take the class, but the fee will be waived for anyone under the age of 18. We often fill the class and have to put people on the waiting list. So, if you would like to take this class, send me a check or money order sooner rather than later to reserve your spot. My address is 1325 Orkney Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48103.

There is also a $15 fee to take the test. This fee is payable to the volunteer examiners just before they take the test. DO NOT send me the $15 exam fee.

Prospective students should download the study guide IMMEDIATELY. Read through it a couple of times and take some online practice tests (URLs for practice test websites can be found in the study guide) before coming to class. Studying beforehand greatly increase the chances that you’ll pass the test.

If you have any questions, please e-mail Dan, KB6NU or phone him at 734-930-6564.

Making WA2HOM Less Noisy

Received noise has alway been a bugaboo at WA2HOM. So, after the successful repair to the beam last week, I took it upon myself to reduce noise input to the receiver. We took a big step in the right direction with the purchase and installation of a bhi DSPKR, an amplified digital-signal-processing speaker. Even weak signals are clear now.

Today, Dan and I installed toroids in different places at the Omni VII and I’m pleased to report that putting a clamp-on unit on the coax cable as it enters the receiver reduced the noise level from S6 to S5. That may not seem like a lot until you consider that the forward gain of our three-element beam is 6 dB, which is the equivalent of an S-unit, a fourfold signal gain.

I’m searching around for more ideas to lower the noise even more. Stay tuned!

Ovide K8EV

Beam fixed!

A week and a half ago, my friend, Bob, WD8BNA, came up to me at our Rotary Club meeting and said, “Have you taken a look at your beam lately?” referring to our three-element Yagi at WA2HOM.

“No,” I replied, “what’s up?”

“Part of the antenna’s missing,” he said. “It must have come off during the high winds we had last week.” I drove by the next day, and sure enough, we were missing half the reflector.

Jack, WT8N, who was majorly responsible for us getting the beam up in the air in the first place, jumped right on this. He got up onto the roof, found the missing element, and organized a work party to re-attach it.

The work party was this afternoon. Jack; Ovide, K8EV; yours truly; and Jerry, head of maintenance for the museum and the son of a ham headed up to the roof to lower the antenna and fix the antenna.

Lowering the antenna proved easier than I expected. We unbolted the tilt-over tower from the mounting bracket and it came down relatively easily. Re-attaching the errant element was also pretty straightforward. All the bolts were there. It looks like we just didn’t tighten it down well enough the first time.

Tilting the tower back up proved to be a little more difficult. We first tried it with two men pushing and two men pulling on one of the guy wires. When that didn’t work, we tried three guys pushing it, and one pulling. That didn’t work either.

Ovide then went in search of another helper. He returned shortly thereafter with one young museum employee, and with four guys pushing, we finally got the tower into an upright position. We inserted and tightened the bolts, and now we’re back in business with all of the elements in the right position. Overall, this took just an hour to do.

Despite missing half of the reflector, the beam seemed to work just fine. It tuned up just fine, and was still quite directional. I’m sure with the complete reflector, it works even better, though. If I knew more about antenna modeling, I’d run a simulation and figure out how much directionality we were actually using.

Has anyone done this? If you have, or have some idea what the effect of losing half of a reflector has on a three-element Yagi, I’d like to hear from you.

Busy day at WA2HOM

My friend Denis, WA5TYJ, earned his HOM merit badge today.  I had a succession of young wranglers in the corral today and Denis kept them entertained for nearly two hours on 15 meters!

It was instructive to put some 6, 7, and 8 year olds on the air.  The 6 year-old had a really short attention span and wanted to diddle with the knobs on the TenTec–I deflected him to the PC where he amused himself by going to places that I had never dreamed you could get to on QRZ.COM.  The 7 year-old focused on the radio OK but couldn’t sustain a conversation with Denis.  The 8 year-old learned to operate the TX SW appropriately and had a nice QSO with Denis about New Mexico’s geography and wild animals, the cost of Denis’ radio equipment, who Denis talks to, what Denis likes to do, etc.

I was busy to the point of near distraction this morning, trying to pay attention to the radio operation (glad we found the lock-down instruction for the tuning knob!) and answering questions from various people who stopped by to chat.

WA2HOM to operate in special event mode on Saturday, February 25, 2012

Rotary International

I am a member of the Ann Arbor Rotary Club. The Rotary Club was founded in Chicago on February 23, 1905, and in commemoration of that event–and to promote awareness of the Rotary Club’s End Polio Now campaign–I’ll be calling CQ Polio on Saturday, 2/15/12 at WA2HOM.

I plan to operate primarily on 20m phone on or about 14.280, plus or minus QRM. If you’re in the Ann Arbor, MI area, I’d like to invite you to come down and help me. I plan to be there from 10am until at least 4pm EST (1500 – 2100Z).

If you’re not in the are, I’d like to invite you to work us. We’ll send out a commemorative certificate to anyone who’d like one.

If you’d like to know more about Rotary, you can go to www.rotary.org.  If you’d like to know more about the End Polio Now campaign in particular, go to  End Polio Now section of the Rotary website.

WA2HOM: Championship Contest Station?

In the mail today, I received something totally unexpected—a certificate proclaiming WA2HOM to be the first place finisher in the multi-operator, single-transmitter category of the 2011 CQ World Wide WPX contest.

CQ WPX Certificate

 

With such a low score, I don’t supposed that we had many competitors in that category, but it’s still pretty cool.

New Countries Verified!

The mailman yesterday brought me an envelope full of QSLs for WA2HOM. Here are QSLs from two new countries. We may have them verified on Logbook of the World, but these are our first “real” QSLs from these countries.

 

8R1RPN QSL

 

5R8WW QSL

 

Five New Countries Logged

WA2HOM is far from a contest station, but we do enjoy participating in the contests, especially now that our beam makes gives us a decent signal on 20m, 15m, and 10m. Why? Because it’s fun. There are several ways to enjoy amateur radio contests even if you’re not a “big gun.”

Last weekend, for example, the CQ World-Wide (CQWW) SSB DX contest was on. So, what we did was take advantage of the contest activity to add countries to our DXCC list. Over two hours of operation, we managed to make 63 contacts, including at least five new countries. The new countries that we added to our log included Iceland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Cayman Islands, and Madeira Island.

None of these is rare DX, but for whatever reason, we hadn’t worked them before. Now, we have.

Operating in a contest is also a good test of our radio and antennas. It’s true that contest signal reports are basically meaningless, but if DX stations regularly hear you on your first or second call, then chances are your antennas are working well. If they’re continually asking for repeats or never hear you at all, it’s a good bet that you need to do some antenna work.

We were working most stations on the first or second call. I even tried calling CQ for a while. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very successful with that, so I went back to the “search and pounce” technique. This tells me that we still have a ways to go compared to the big contesters.

We also enjoy working the smaller contests, such as state QSO parties. One reason for this is that they are a lot more friendly and laid back than the big contests like CQWW. Phone operators, for example, will often comment on your signal or even offer a bit of information about their QTH. One thing’s for sure. You learn a lot of county names.

In the end, it’s all about having fun. We have fun working contests, even if we don’t have the time or the equipment to be truly competitive.

Jim Eller, K8ELR, SK

Jim Eller, K8ELR

From AnnArbor.Com

James Eller, K8ELR, born May 25, 1951 in Detroit, Michigan, passed away suddenly at home on October 8, 2011. Jim was the epitome of a good man. He was deeply loved and will be missed beyond words by family and friends.

Jim grew up in Detroit with his brother David and later moved to Milford Michigan where he worked for Williams International for over a decade as a Quality Assurance Engineer and took additional college classes. During that time he met his wife, Patrice, when he taught dog training classes on the side and she brought her puppy for his help. They married in 1988 and brought up two cherished and beautiful sons, James Kenneth Eller and Benjamin Matthew Eller.

Jim left engineering and started his own business in computer support and continued that expertise by working for others including Ford and the Ann Arbor District Library. He retired from the paid workforce in 2006 when he had a stroke but never let that stop him from living life to the fullest, making him a role model for all of us.

He took advantage of the opportunity and volunteered to share his time and energy with multiple organizations that he cared about including the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living, the Cancer Support Community, the Hands On Museum where he helped visitors learn about Ham Radio and the Huron Valley Humane Society where he comforted the cats.

Jim was curious about many things which led to a wide range of passionate interests over his lifetime including becoming a hot air balloon pilot, scuba diving, showing and training dogs, breeding Killifish, Ham Radio, fishing and making sure the neighborhood hummingbirds were well taken care of. He loved reading including anything about history and he enjoyed just about any kind of music.

In addition to his brother, David and sister-in-law Sheila Fox; wife, Patrice and sons, Jim and Benjamin; Jim is survived by his beloved nieces, Sydney, Stacey and Stephanie and dear nephew, Spenser. He was predeceased by his father, James and mother, Norma Eller.

If desired, donations in Jim’s memory should be to the AACIL, 3941 Research Park Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48108, Cancer Support Community, 2010 Hogback Road, Suite 3, Ann Arbor, MI 48105 or Huron Valley Humane Society, 3100 Cherry Hill Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105.

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Jim really was a great guy.. He was always willing to help out in any way he could with WA2HOM, and he was great with the kids. We owe a great deal of our success to Jim’s efforts.

I used to joke that he was our “digital specialist,” because he enjoyed operating the digital modes, including PSK31, Olivia, and anything else that our software would do. He got that part of the station all set up and running for us.

Another joke that we used to share was how he came to get his Extra Class license. He used to claim that he just memorized all the answers to the questions and didn’t really know all that much. He knew a lot more than he claimed, though, and was always learning new things, and in the process, becoming a better amateur radio operator.

We’ll all miss you, Jim.