greenwood amateur radio society, inc - the signal report · 2019. 8. 3. · picture" applications...

2 0 1 9 C L U B

O F F I C E R S

President

David Russ, K4DWR

Vice President

Adam Shirley, WJ4X

Secretary

George Crane, W3RXF

Treasurer

Tedd Davison, AI4WN

Repeater Trustee

Buddy Willis, W4DEW

Activities Manager

Andy Bagwell, KN4DYV

Editor in Chief

Michael Wills, KA4CSM

The W4GWD

Repeater Network

147.165+ t107.2

Echolink: 584003

443.900+ t107.2

W4GWM/R

145.420- DV

W4DEW/R

146.910- t123.0

WJ4X/R

442.600+ t107.2 / DV

The Signal Report A U G U S T 2 0 1 9 V O L U M E 1 5 I S S U E 8

H T T P : / / W W W . W 4 G W D . O R G W 4 G W D @ A R R L . N E T

A Publication of the Greenwood Amateur Radio Society (GARS)

Infrastructure Update

Analog Repeaters are up. DMR and D-Star is up. Fusion is up. Echolink is down, undergoing technical evaluation. APRS iGate is up. Packet Node is down, when up it is connected to the Carolinas Packet System at 145.010

Downtown Digi is up and operational

Our Club meets at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, located at 2330

Cokesbury Rd, Greenwood, SC. We meet on the 2nd Tuesday of each month

which will be the 13th of August. Meeting starts at 7:30 Sharp.

August 2019 Meeting

P A G E 2

T H E S I G N A L R E P O R T

Chat ‘N’ Chew Every Friday at 11:30am the members of the Greenwood Amateur Radio society meet at a local restaurant. Please check in to our Monday or Thursday radio net weekly, as locations change. Everyone is welcome to have lunch or sip your favorite beverage and chat for a while. Dutch treat.

Weekly Nets Each Thursday night at 9pm on the 147.165+ machine, The Greenwood Amateur Radio Society holds our weekly 2 meter net. Our UHF net on 443.900+ is held Mondays at 8pm Help spread the word for everyone to check-in to our net. If you would like to fill in or be a backup net control please contact Tedd Davison [email protected]

Congratulations

Happy Birthday!

Michael Wills KA4CSM Aug. 9

Sherree Wills fmly mbr Aug. 16

Darrell Manning AF4E Aug. 31

Happy Anniversary!

Mitch (KJ4JGP) & Diantha (N4DLL)

Litwer August 15

Greenwood Amateur Society Recurring Events:

Are you an ARRL Member? Joining ARRL helps protect our rights as Amateur Radio Operators as well as providing education, QSL Bureau, technical advise, and the ARRL VEC. http://www.arrl.org

facebook.com/Greenwood ARS

VE Exam Session The GARS ARRL Volunteer Examiners (VE) Team will have an exam session 7:00pm Tuesday, August 6, 2019 at the Westminster Presbyterian Church. The address is 2330 Cokesbury Rd Greenwood SC 29649-9515 We hope to see you there. Please contact Buddy Willis W4DEW [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

P A G E 3



P A G E 4 V O L U M E 1 5 I S S U E 8


Amateur radio is a pastime that is based on science. It is also based on art. hard science such as physics, meteorology and chemistry gives us the certainty to explain and comprehend much of how amateur ra-dio works. The "art" comes from seeing things in a new light, blending essential building blocks with intuition and creativity to make new "big picture" applications of amateur radio. It is when we master and shape each chosen aspect of amateur radio that we go beyond simple nuts-and-bolts technicians to become true artisans and "radio magicians". Any handbook or textbook will explain the nuts and bolts that we gladly explain, but have you spent a mo-ment to think "outside the box" and grasp a bigger picture? For example, in a phrase or sentence, how do we generate radio waves? No, the answer isn't "Put the batteries into the walkie, press on the PTT switch and talk!" To oversimplify, a radio wave is an oscillating variation of a magnetic field. The key points are oscillation, variation and magnetic. Suppose we had a magnet and could rotate it rapidly. It would cause a variation in the surrounding magnetic field that would be cyclical. That variation would emanate and spread from that magnet. If somehow we could rotate it fast enough, the variation would appear in the usual radio frequencies. We would need to do that thousands or millions of times a second. Rather than physically spin the magnet, what we would really like to do is to pulse the intensity of the magnet. It's not practical to physical-ly intensify or diminish a magnet that fast, but we can use the rela-tionship between electricity and magnetism to pulse a magnet electri-cally. To see this, let's use an everyday illustration.

The Art of Amateur Radio By Ron Hashiro, AH6RH

This 1997 EARC Wireless Dispatch article was recently updated, including some technical feedback provided by Chris Mullis, KH7CL and Mike Burger, AH7R. This article contains highlights of an EARC general meeting program presented on April 24, 1997. Provided by Andy Bagwell, KN4DYV.

Part 1



Suppose you were at the edge of a pond and had a wooden ball float-ing on the water attached to a string. What happens as you pull the string up and down in a repetitive fashion? The ball would bounce up and down vertically, and induce horizontal waves that move across the surface of the water. What happens when the wave hits another wooden ball nearby? The second ball bounces up and down. If we could detect and harness the movement of that second ball, we would have a smaller version of the original motion. The horizontal wave action has been reconverted into vertical motion. Now, to see the what happens when we transmit through an antenna, view the string as being electricity, the wooden ball as an electron and the disturbed surface of the water as an emanating electromag-netic wave. Like the string, if we attached an RF (radio frequency) generator to a vertical dipole antenna, the moving vertical electric voltage is like the string upon the electric current. It moves electrons (the wooden ball) to create an electromagnetic field that spreads out horizontally from the antenna wire. As the current grows, the field intensifies, expands and spread out. The essentially magnetic field cuts across neighboring electrical con-ductors or wires, and like the wave upon the second wooden ball, in-duces the electrons to move and form a small, minute current in the neighboring wire. And it turns out that the effect works regardless of whether the antenna wire is positioned vertically or horizontally. The magnetic field can penetrate through many objects as well as be reflected or absorbed by other objects. The importance of this will be discussed in the next article. There is also an electric field that ema-nates, and it interacts with the magnetic field, exchanging power and restoring equal magnitude to both the electric and magentic fields. Our jobs as hams is to convert electric current in a vertical piece of wire into horizontal magnetic waves, propagate the waves, and detect it by converting it into vertical electrical current in a second piece of wire. When we amplify that detected current, we have a signal. That is the essence of what we do. The magnetic wave never really disappears. It may be faint, but it is still present. When the transmitter on the Pioneer spacecraft was shut off last month, it was far beyond the edge of the solar system. The received signal strength was one trillionth of one billionth of a watt and took an array of antennae and receivers to detect it, but it was still present and detectable well below the surrounding noise level. Incidentally, the above shows that an electron is like a magnet.

The Art of Amateur Radio (Part 1 continued)

P A G E 6



Since electrons move about in an orbit around the atom nucle-us, they exhibit a current which produces magnetism. By using current flow to move the electron, we've electrically moved and pulsed a miniature magnet. And we use an oscillating magnetic field to excite or move the electrons to generate ra-dio waves. If you use heat to excite and vibrate the electrons, the emissions show up as light. That's the key principle behind incandescent light bulbs. We've seen how we use electric current to generate a (magnetic) radio wave, and used the model of the pond to vis-ualize the big picture and see basics of wave generation and propagation. Next month, we'll look at how we can use this simple model of a radio wave to improve our ability to antici-pate and enhance radio communication and thereby add en-joyment to amateur radio. Part 2 next month

The Art of Amateur Radio (Part 1 Continued)



Many of you have seen this before, if not here it is. Might come in handy to know someday. I know it’s a bit blurry, sorry.

Mike

P A G E 8



For those of you interested in sunspots: http://youtu.be/mg3F13VdRrU

https://youtu.be/mq3F13VdRrU



If you search the Web for the origin of the term "HAM" for radio amateurs, you will find two or three accounts that are evidently most believed. However, this version seems to be the most credible. It was provided to me by a very active and accom-plished HAM, Mr. Cornell D., who is not given to propagating bad information. I tried unsuccessfully to locate an original version of the "Florida Skip Magazine" from 1959. If anyone has a copy that can provide a scan of the article, it would be a great service to all HAMs if you could send it to me for posting. Thanks. All copyrights acknowledged, but unknown Why radio amateurs are called "HAMS" (from Florida Skip Magazine - 1959) Have you ever wondered why radio amateurs are called "HAMS?" Well, it goes like this: The word "HAM" as applied to 1908 was the station CALL of the first amateur wireless stations operated by some amateurs of the Harvard Radio Club. They were ALBERT S. HYMAN, BOB ALMY and POOGIE MURRAY. At first they called their station "HYMAN-ALMY-MURRAY". Tapping out such a long name in code soon became tiresome and called for a revision. They changed it to "HY-AL-MU," using the first two letters of each of their names. Early in 1901 some confusion resulted between signals from amateur wireless station "HYALMU" and a Mexican ship named "HYALMO." They then decided to use only the first letter of each name, and the station CALL became "HAM." In the early pioneer days of unregulated radio amateur operators picked their own fre-quency and call-letters. Then, as now, some amateurs had better signals than commercial stations. The resulting interference came to the attention of congressional committees in Washington and Congress gave much time to proposed legislation de-signed to critically limit amateur radio activity. In 1911 ALBERT HYMAN chose the controversial WIRELESS REGULATION BILL as the topic for his Thesis at Harvard. His instructor insisted that a copy be sent to Senator DAVID I. WALSH, a member of one of the committees hearing the Bill. The Senator was so impressed with the thesis is that he asked HYMAN to appear before the committee. ALBERT HYMAN took the stand and described how the little station was built and almost cried when he told the crowded committee room that if the BILL went through that they would have to close down the station because they could not afford the license fees and all the other requirements which the BILL imposed on amateur stations. Congressional debate began on the WIRELESS REGULATION BILL and little station "HAM" became the symbol for all the little amateur stations in the country crying to be saved from the menace and greed of the big commercial stations who didn't want them around. The BILL finally got to the floor of Congress and every speaker talked about the "...poor little station HAM." That's how it all started. You will find the whole story in the Congressional Record. Nation-wide publicity associated station ""HAM" with amateur radio operators. From that day to this, and probably until the end of time in radio an amateur is a "HAM."

P A G E 1 0 V O L U M E 1 5 I S S U E 8


http://www.w4qr.org/files/repeater-basics_jon-perelstein.pdf This link leads to an excellent refresher on repeater basics.

http:/www.w4qr.org/files/repeater-basics_jon-perelstein.pdf



Hello Friends and Club Officials I want to ask that you pass along this announcement about this years W4DXCC convention onto your club members and friends, thank you in ad-vance. Hello from W4DXCC 15 DX and Contest Convention. The response to this years event is just Awesome! Plan on attending today! The Website has been updated with the latest News Go Here W4DXCC

Friday is the Ham Radio Bootcamp where we do our best to provide the knowledge to New and Experienced Hams alike. If your new to some of the new digital modes like FT8-FT4 you wont want to miss Bootcamp. After din-ner Friday evening we meet for a special Live Ask The Elmer session in the main convention hall. Come and ask those questions you have from A to Z. Saturday is the main convention where we have 6 presenters giving you the inside scoop on what is going on. Following each presentation we have time for questions if you would like to know more. We have all of the leading radio and equipment manufacturers setup in the lobby with the latest gear for you to twist the knobs or click the mice. More im-portantly you can have a one on one to ask questions about the gear with the company representative in a relaxed environment. We have a fully operational Ham Shack setup where you can come learn hands on with an Elmer to show you the ropes and make QSO's in CW, Phone and different digital modes. The Convention is a great place to meet with your friends. Coordinate with your friends to attend the convention and spend time with them reminiscing of the good old days. We will have VE Testing on Saturday so get to studying for that test and also study for that Upgrade! It is time to make your Hotel reservations for this years convention. Go here to the Website Hotel reservation page Hotel Reservations

The Convention admission includes Snacks and Drinks during Saturdays ses-sion and Lunch. Convention Registration is now Open including Online Ticket Purchasing. There is an evening Banquet that you can attend. When you pur-chase your Convention tickets also buy the Banquet tickets, seating is limited for the Banquet. You can make your ticket purchase anytime by going here Online Ticket Pur-chase

Check out the Website and learn about the W4DXCC DX and Contest Con-vention. Go Here W4DXCC Convention

Best 73

Pigeon Forge, Tn. September 20 & 21, 2019

https://sable.madmimi.com/c/41704?id=38899.354.1.b4a8d90dd3620861b8ab56fd16d4bc75https://sable.madmimi.com/c/41704?id=38899.355.1.ca1c87ecaf0fb36261a72b0bcb86120bhttps://sable.madmimi.com/c/41704?id=38899.356.1.5a09f082f2e10893fca1a70649d3f333https://sable.madmimi.com/c/41704?id=38899.356.1.5a09f082f2e10893fca1a70649d3f333https://sable.madmimi.com/c/41704?id=38899.357.1.e3eeb0a26f1fec3f2c2c3827683c92d9



Classifieds:

The American Radio Relay League protects our rights as Amateur Radio Operators http://www.arrl.org Support for SERA supports proper coordination! http://www.sera.org

Remember your local and regional interest clubs!

Southeast DX Club http://www.sedxc.org

Spread the word GARS weekly nets: 147.165 2m Net Thursdays 9 p.m. 443.900 70cm Net Mondays 8 p.m. * Callsign info http://www.ae7q.com* * Track us on APRS: http://aprs.fi, * Swamp Fox Contest Group http://swampfoxcontestgroup.com

Mike

HAMFESTS & EVENTS

I hope you have enjoyed reading our newsletter. Please contact me at [email protected] with any ideas/comments/suggestions etc.

Classifieds will be run for 3 consecutive months then removed. They may be may be posted again after a 3 month period. 3 on then 3 off.

Greenwood Amateur Radio Society (GARS) Hamfest January 11, 2020 Piedmont Technical College, POC Tedd Davison, AI4WN

Shelby Hamfest, 8-30/31 - 9-1-19 Shelbyhamfest.org

Ken Trapnell, KQ4RB, is looking for a used 2m/440 rig to use as both a base station and as a mobile. If you know of one please contact him here.
http://www.arrl.orghttp://www.sera.orghttp://www.sera.orghttp://www.sera.orghttp://www.sedxc.orghttp://www.ae7q.comhttp://aprs.fihttp://swampfoxcontestgroup.commailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://shelbyhamfest.orgmailto:[email protected]?subject=2m/440%20rig

greenwood amateur radio society, inc - the signal report · 2019. 8. 3. · picture" applications...

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