Frank W4NHJ presents info on his home brew HF KW amp

At the May meeting Frank W4NHJ presented information on his home brew HF KW amplifier. He documented the entire construction task and presented detailed info on the various techniques he used throughout the build process. Frank also brought his amp to the meeting and pulled the cover so members could get a close up view of its internal workings. If you missed the meeting or would like to review Frank’s presentation, please click here.

Andy K1RA also presented final VaQP results after SPARC had posted their score data. Andy converted the SPARC VaQP PDF file into a multi-worksheet Excel spreadsheet and presented the top scorers in each category. It appears FARA will be walking away with 9 plaques this year, a club record! Congrats to all individual plaque winners Dave K3SK (VA SO HP & VA SO HP Phone), Rich K1HTV (VA SO LP), Ross N4RP (VA SO QRP PH-MIX & SO VHF), Andy K1RA (VA SO Mobile), W4VA club station (VA MO MT) and all the club members who contributed to FARA’s win of both the VA Club Combined and VA Club Virginia QSO’s Only awards. You can download and review the Excel worksheets for all categories by clicking here. FARA club members are highlighted in red.

Andy K1RA presents info on VoIP and Echolink

At the April meeting Andy K1RA presented VaQP statistics generated by John KX4O. It appears the FARA club exceeded its all time best VA QSOs Only club score from last year with a new total of 1.252 million points. We had fewer log entries this year so our Club Combined score was only 1.5 million, about 600K below our all time best set last year. See FARA club yearly VaQP stats and FARA members only VaQP stats for a recap of John’s graphs. Andy also presented his KW4VA /M VaQP Day 1 video of his northern and western Virginia roving experience. You can see it on Youtube here.

Andy K1RA also presented information about VoIP (Voice over IP) and the FARA Echolink resource available on the W4VA/R 2m repeater. Andy runs KW4VA-R node #473997 from his QTH and has made it available via the club repeater. To review the presentation please click VoIP and KW4VA-R Echolink node for more information on VoIP technology and details of the local Echolink node usage and policies.

For the VaQP 2012 contest, Mar. 17th 10A-10P and Mar. 18th 8A-8P, FARA members will activate the W4VA call sign from the home of Mike KA4RRU. Mike will provide the club with a multi-operator, multi-station capability. That station will be active on 160m-6m, 2m and 70cm on most modes. Please try and work us on all bands and all modes.

A number of FARA members will be hitting the roads in Virginia to activate numerous counties and independent cities during the contesting event. Below is a list of operators and call signs, their operating conditions and rough routes. Please look for the following mobile stations over the VaQP weekend. Remember they are worth 3 pts per contact and you can contact them once per mode (Phone, CW, Digital), once per bands (160m-70cm) for EVERY county they visit! That’s a lot of potential contacts

Andy K1RA as KW4VA/M – 10 bands: 160-10m (SSB/CW), 2m, 6m, and 70cm (SSB/FM/CW) and 1.25m (FM).
Day 1 on Sat. FAU, LDN, CLA, FRE, WAR, RAP, PAG, MAD, RHM, GRN, ALB and AUG
Day 2 on Sun. FAU, PRW, LDN, MAX, MPX, FFX, FXX, FCX. ARL, ALX, STA, FBX, KGE, CLN, SPO, ORG and CUL

Rich W8KRZ/M – 4 bands: 6m, 2m, 1.25m and 70cm (FM)
Day 1 on Sat. following KW4VA/M above
Day 2 on Sun. following KW4VA/M above

Greg KI4ZKJ as K4G/M – 9 bands: 80-6m (SSB), 2m, 1.25m and 70cm (FM).
Day 1 on Sat. WAR, RAP, PAG, MAD, RHM, GRN, ALB, AUG, NEL, WAX, STX and HIG
Day 2 on Sun. RHM, HBX, SHE, PAG, RAP, FAU, MAX, MPX

Chuck N4YXW/M – 9 bands: 80-6m (SSB/DG), 2m (SSB/FM), 1.25m (FM) and 70cm (SSB/FM).
Day 1 on Sat. WAR, RAP, PAG, MAD, RHM, GRN, ALB, AUG and WAX
Day 2 on Sun. CHX, FLU, LSA, GOO, HCO, RIX, HAN, CLN, SPO, FBX, ORG, CUL and FAU

Neil AB4YK/M – 8 bands: 80-6m (SSB), 2m (SSB/FM), and 70cm (SSB/FM).
Day 1 – WAS, SCO, LEE, WIS, NRX, WIS, DIC, BCH, RUS, TAZ, BLA, WYT
Day 2 – WYT, SMY, GRA, CRL, PAT, FLO, PUL, MON, GIL, CRA, ROA, ROX, FRA, HEN

Tom KG3V as KT4KA/M – 8 bands: 80-6m (SSB/CW), 2m (FM) and 70cm (FM).
Day 2 on Sun. LAN, MID, GLO, MAT, KQN, KWM, CLN, ESS, KGE, WES, RIC, NUM

Harry WB3BIC/M – 2 bands 2m and 70cm (FM)
WAR, FRE, WIX, CLA, RAP

Ross N4RP/M – 4 bands: 6m, 2m and 70cm (SSB/FM) and 1.25m (FM)

Good luck and safe driving to all!

For an online VaQP county map for route planning please consider visiting Andy K1RA VaQP Google map overlay.

John KX4O & Andy K1RA present VaQP Info

Andy K1RA and John KX4O presented information about the upcoming 2012 Virginia QSO Party. The presentation covered general information including dates and times, rules, categories, changes, contest exchanges and scoring. Highlights included the FARA club and its members past performance to include awards received and various rankings. Finally, contest ‘hints & kinks’ were presented to give members an idea what to do pre-contest, contest and post-contest weekend to ensure they were prepared for the upcoming radio event.

If you missed the meeting or would like to download and review the PowerPoint presentation (12MB) and various VaQP resources, please click here.

Also discussed at this meeting was the upcoming Roving Club Station. This is a work in progress and is expected to be a monthly Saturday event. The event will involve one club member offering up their radio station to new comers and radio-less club members. The idea is to offer direction, the ability to get on the air and make contacts in a controlled mentored environment. Please keep an eye on the web site for further info.

Harv K2PI presents overview of LDE's

Also at the January meeting Harv K2PI presented information regarding Long Delayed Echoes or LDE’s a phenomena that causes radio signals to be returned to the sender after delays of more than 2 seconds. Harv discussed and presented slides covering definitions, history and audio which demonstrated the more common short/normal echoes one here due to backscatter, or EME as well as some documented LDE’s. His presentation sparked interest and comments from the entire club, both in trying to explain and detect the events as well as presenting their own first hand experiences with such strange radio events.

You can download Harv’s presentation here.

Harv K2PI presents info on his DX world travels

This October Harv K2PI presented a pictorial of his DX travels from over 27 yrs. He discussed the challenges of operating from both common and rare DX locations. Harv covered some excellent information including his 7 steps for success when considering operating from abroad.

To download and review Harv’s PPT presentation (4MB) click here.

Mark KD6AKC presents info on various emergency related services

At the September meeting Mark KD6AKC presented information on several amateur radio emergency related services. This included coverage of ARES, Skywarn, RACES, NTS, ARRL, FARA and MARS, which was covered by Larry K4LLQ. Mark presented both the unique aspects and capabilities of each of these services, as well as the areas in which they overlap.

If you would like to download or review the PPT presentation (2MB) please click here.

Energy Losses of Various UHF Connectors (Red) vs. others (Blue)

John, kx4o, presented measurements made on several examples of ‘UHF’ (PL-259 and SO-239) connectors alongside SMA, N, BNC and TNC connectors. The above charts show the UHF connectors in Red, the other connectors in Cyan and a reference baseline in Black. A particular focus is the idea mismatch loss results from the connector’s deviation from 50 ohms which won’t necessarily show up as heat loss… a concept unknown by many hams.

Conclusions include:

• ‘UHF’ connectors perform adequately at 6m, but begin to have measurable issues at 2m and above.
• There is a large variation in tested ‘UHF’ devices.
• N, SMA, BNC and TNC connectors were consistently superior to ‘UHF’ connectors.
• No UHF connector performed near as well as the SMA, N, BNC or TNC connectors.

The ‘UHF’ connectors show some promise in the way some use them at 2m and above. However, the reasons to accept any performance penalty, however small, are made moot by the introduction of the newer, post WWII, N, BNC, TNC, SMA and other modern connectors.

More information is available on John’s Ham Radio Blog…

• Pretty Lousy? (PL) 259 Connectors
• PL-259/SO-239 Return Loss and Attenuation Test
• Lab Tests: SMA, BNC, TNC and N Connectors
• ‘UHF’ Connector Test Results

Don helping Scouts with Contacts

Donald R. Maziarz, 61 of Warrenton, VA became a Silent Key on July 25, 2011 at Fauquier Hospital after a courageous battle with cancer. He was born on March 24, 1950 in Utica, NY. In 1974 he graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology as an Electronic Engineer. He began a long and distinguished federal government service career in 1974 with the Department of Defense until his retirement in 2005. He later worked for Decisive Analytics where he retired in March, 2011. Don was an avid general aviation pilot for many years, a member of Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), a lifelong amateur radio operator, member and former president of the Fauquier Amateur Radio Association plus a lifelong member of the Amateur Radio Relay League.

Don was a friend to all in the Fauquier Amateur Radio Association. He loved his club and kept a good watch over us newer folks as we continued the growth of the organization he helped mature.

The above picture nicely sums up Don’s ham activities with our club… sharing amateur radio with others.

He lived life to the very end eagerly participating in Field Day 2011… exactly one month ago. He helped set up Tom’s new aluminum mast for one of the stations. Then, providing his usual superb capabilities on Phone, Don was 4th out of over thirty operators in number of contacts made and 1st in HF Phone contacts.

We rejoice Don is free from the suffering of his illness, but will miss him greatly.