Author Archives: Orange County Radio Amateurs, INC

Annual Ham Migration

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While the crew at Virlie’s Grill took their annual vacation, the ham conclave met at the Root Cellar in Pittsboro for an enjoyableSaturday breakfast.

Pete, K4PHS, appeared wearing a tee shirt which advised us that there were “two types of people: 1) Those who extrapolate conclusions based on insufficient data.” (Some paraphrasing may have occurred.)

Bill, N8BR, is now selling his supply of RG400 coax in 10 foot lots. Cheap.

Terry, KK4JGT, our Chatham CERT organizer, announced a request for CERT support for a Haw River rescue exercise. He now has over a hundred on his mailing list and there are 21 hams.

Hank, K3YDX, participated in Field Day with a Snow Camp group. Casual and fun.

Herb, N4HA, enjoyed a 20 meter CW stint with the DFMA/OCRA team at W4EZ. Thanks to them.

John, KX4P, worked the Baker dxpedition on 40 meters 11 minutes before they closed up shop. That’s cutting it close, John.

SHOW & TELL TIME! John, KK4VUR, brought his newly constructed antenna amplifier for his satellite work. He added a T-bias to supply power. Does anyone remember what the Lagrangian point is?   

Nick, KA1HPM, brought his duplexer on which he repaired a broken coax center conductor with some electronic brain surgery.  

Hope you will join us and add your ham radio input to our next Saturday breakfast at Virlie’s Grill in Pittsboro. Photos by John, KX4P.

73, Herb, N4HA

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.