Monthly Archives: April 2018

OCRA Club Meeting April 9, 2018

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Introductions:

Treasurer Report: 

We have a strong financial balance.  Current membership listing is located under the Membership tab.

Repeater Update:

Dan (KR4UB) explained that installing the repeater at UNC is not cost effective at this time.  The club is seeking a cost sharing arrangement with UNC.  More information will be known later this Spring.

General Reports:

  • Raleigh (RARS) Fest – The Club sold a few items totaling $40 dollars. Thanks to Steve’s (KZIX) $67 donation at the meeting, we added a total of $107 to our savings account.
  • Durham Fest is Saturday, May 26, 2018. Tickets are now available.   – Tickets available.  Link to site with Dates.
  • The Tar Heel 10 Miler is April 21st. The Tar Heel 10 Miler and Fleet Feet 4 Mile run both start at the UNC Chapel Hill Bell Tower running you through the heart of downtown Chapel Hill, the historic Rosemary district, the UNC Campus and the beautiful Gimghoul neighborhood. Steve (W3HAL) has inquired with race management regarding amateur radio support.  We should have an update in the next week or two.
  • A VE Session is scheduled for Saturday, April 14th at the Orange County Emergency Services Center. Thanks to Paul (N2XZF), Nick (KA1HPM), Andy (W4KIL) and Dave (NA4VY) for their assistance.
  • OCRA has experience difficulties managing our emails distribution with Yahoo. As such, earlier this month Dave (W4SAR) transitioned our Yahoo account to Groups.io, which provides a more mature platform providing more features and easier group management.
  • Field Day is approaching…June 23 and 24. We are planning to retain the same band captions, but will move Digital to field, which will make the barn available for more easily accessible stations. We plan to leverage the NCOCRA blog calendar to manage station coverage throughout the event.  Still looking for a “few good hams” to manage the food committee.  If interested, please let Dave (W4SAR) know.

Program:

Vertical T-Wire Top Antenna 80 and 160 Meter Vertical and 80 Meter Dipole

Wilson was inspired by the  Bouvet expedition to build a “T” Top Antenna for 80 and 160 Meter.  While the Bouvet expedition was not successful (Inclement Weather) the “T” antenna was successful.  For more information on the Antenna, please reference Dan’s (KR4UB) blog article, “The Lurid Details of a W4BOH antenna for Bouvet.”

For more information on Low-Band DXing, Wilson recommends John Devoldere (ON4UN) book,  Low-Band Dxing: Antennas, Equipment and Techniques for DXcitement on 160, 80, and 40 Meters.

An overview of the EZNEC design and analyzer measurements of W4BOH’s 160/80M vertical/dipole antenna, as of mid-March is located at:
https://groups.io/g/OCRADFMA/files/Antenna%20Designs/W4BOH%20160M%20&%2080M%20Vertical%20T-Wire%20Elevated%20Radials%20L-Netwk%20&%2080M%20Dipole%20Project%20031218.pdf

Andy (W4KIL) presented a 5W CW Transceiver kit by QRP Labs.  The transceiver is a feature rich, high performing, single-band 5W CW transceiver kit, with WSPR beacon and built-in alignment/test equipment for only $49.

442.150 Repeater to be used for the 2018 Spring Bike Rally – Sunday, April 15th

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The OCRA 442.150 repeater will be used Sunday, April 15th for back-up communications supporting the 2018 Spring Rally Bike Event.

The event will start around 8AM and should run until about 3pm.

If you would like to volunteer to provide communications support for the event you can sign up at at the Ham Public Service website.

The North Carolina Bike Club (NCBC) coordinates this charity ride, typically features 31, 62 and 100 mile courses for the riders. SAGS, as well as Hams assigned to Rest Stops will be needed. More information about the Spring Rally event is available on the NC Bicycle Club website

OCRA Club Meeting Monday, April 9th Presentation – The Lurid Details of a W4BOH antenna for Bouvet

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When the Bouvet Island DXpedition was announced, some of W4BOH, Wilson’s DXer friends ganged up on him and urged him to put up a respectable antenna for 160m, since making a contact with Bouvet on 160 would be a real challenge. Or maybe they wanted company in the misery of not contacting Bouvet.

In any case, Wilson exercised his best management skills and recruited expert assistance from two of the DXer friends to help design and erect the antenna, which turned out to be a 57 foot top loaded vertical with four tuned radials. Always looking for a bargain, Wilson got W3AHL, Steve to adjust the EZNEC model to make the antenna potentially useful on other bands and in other configurations by changing the matching arrangement at the base.

Once the design was done, WA4PSC, Howie visited the Land of Magic and made two magnificent shots with his PBTBL (PneumoBallistic Tennis Ball Launcher) to get ropes over some of the highest trees at the OCRA/DFMA Field Day Site. At least the last two shots were magnificent. Steve then helped assemble some strong wire, of unknown parentage, into something resembling his design and helped pull it up into the ether. Of course his skill and analyzer were used to tune the radials to bring the antenna to resonance in the low end of 160m.

You’ll have to come to the OCRA Monday, April, 9th meeting to learn the lurid details of just what the beast (the antenna) looks like and what it can do on the air. Who knows, there might even be another story about getting a suitable amplifier assembled in time to contact (Or NOT) Bouvet some day.