Author Archives: Orange County Radio Amateurs, INC

CQ Breakfast from Pittsboro

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by Herb N4HA

Chatham hams assembled for the ritual breaking of eggs at Verlie’s Grill this past Saturday morning. Seven and a half amateurs attended the breakfast.

Terry, KK4JGT, reported that he has had a dozen people respond to his Chatlist posting concerning starting a CERT team in Chatham County. The state authorities have been contacted and the process is under way. Good job, Terry.

Nick, KA1HPM (a.k.a. “Hiram Percy”) had a premonition that he should back up his hard drive about two weeks before his un-backed-up hard drive crashed. He says retrieving the data from his old drive will be very expensive, if even possible. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m backing up mine NOW.

John, KX4P, brought in the chassis of the AM modulator for the radio he is rebuilding. He asked for advice on how to clean the smoke and debris deposits from the chassis, the result of an expired power supply transformer. Nick suggested oven cleaner or putting it in the dishwasher. Nick also brought in adapter plates he had fashioned for the replacement transformer and mic connector.

Bill, N8BR, enjoyed the North American QSO Party, making around 1300 QSO’s for the team of 4 at N1LN’s super station. He is having some trouble getting his new logging software, XMlog, to do right.

Roy, WA2JLW, was able to get a few licks in during the NAQP also. At some point in the conversation – can’t remember where – he reminded the group,”never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity… but don’t rule out malice.”(This is known as Heinlein’s or Hanlon’s Razor).

Pete, K4PHS, has gotten the radio unpacked after his move into his new digs. He has made a contribution of several antique radio pieces to an antique radio museum.

Herb, N4HA, saw two meteors during the recent Perseids shower.

John, KK4VUR, made a brief cameo appearance while breakfasting with another group.

Hope you all will join the fun some Saturday morning.

2016 Verily, Breakfast

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by Herb, N4HA; posted by Dan, KR4UB

Eggs all around were enjoyed by the attendees of the weekly Saturday morning breakfast at Verlie’s Grill in Pittsboro.

Bill, N8BR, is looking for a DB-25 chassis punch and a source for 5 pole 25 throw rotary switches to control his remote station. Nibblers, drills, Dremels, and everything short of hatchets were offered as alternatives to the $200 price of the chassis punch.

Ray, K2HYD, related his entanglement with volunteering to restore a 160 MHz antenna to its original height at the railroad where he volunteers. It seems any change to antenna height, ERP, direction, range, etc. requires a modification in the FCC permit.

Roy, WA2JLW, celebrated his birthday with us and was treated to the dissonant tones of “Happy Birthday” from members of the group. He enjoyed the up-tick in sunspots by having a nice CW ragchew on 30 meters with a Russian ham.

John, KK4VUR, after performing the almost unbelievable feat of singing “Happy Birthday” backwards, told us of his latest project: using a noise generator, a directional coupler, an SDR dongle, and computer, a sweep frequency report can be generated showing the efficacy of an antenna. (I may have the details screwed up; see John for those.)

John, KQ4P, described a clothesline dipole, a folded dipole which can be tuned to resonance by effectively changing the feedpoint. He also posed a mystery regarding the 80 meter tube transmitter he is rebuilding. There is a ‘tickler’ winding on the output of the oscillator which is connected to the doubler. A few possibilities were proffered, but nobody knew. John says have no fear, Wilson, W4BOH, is on the case.

Nick, KA1HPM, is sporting a new callsign license plate. He told of an acquaintance who erected two tilt-over towers; a shorter one to pull up the taller one.

Herb, N4HA, also basking in the sprinkling of sunspots, has been more active on 40 & 17.

Hope you all can join us on Saturday mornings around 8:30 or so.

Ethereal Breakfast at Virlie’s Grill – amateurs share a breakfast and other goings on….

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by Herb, N4HA posted Dan, KR4UB

Eight plucky amateurs braved the parking hazards on Hillsborough Street in Pittsboro last Saturday morning to share a breakfast at Verlie’s Grill.

Nick, KA1HPM, saw two Hammerlund receivers at the Durham Hamfest, they were sold before he could get to his wallet. He is still in the process of replacing capacitors in his Super Pro baby.

Roy, WA2JLW, stopped by after his church men’s breakfast and confessed to making two contacts in the recent CQ WPX contest. His knee appears to be working much better.

Ray, K2HYD, shared his discovery of a suitable telephone interface connection for his emails in the restroom of his european hotel, back in the dark days of modems. He put the lid down.

Terry, KK4JGT, has been teaching women to shoot rifles. Get off the radio and go wash the dishes, men!

Bill, N8BR, discussed several alternatives for ninja antennas in restricted neighborhoods, including a green telescoping flagpole.

John, KX4P, gave us a condensed report of the Dayton hamfest. He also advised distinguishing between a length of RG-8 and a black snake. Ask him for details.

Rick, KI4GND, (is that a great call or what?) described is method of repair on a tailtwister rotator. He’s mounting a Cushcraft beam on his chimney.

Herb, N4HA, still has ringing in his ears from the previous weekend CQ WPX CW contest.

Other topics of discussion were upcoming field day, the Elecraft KX2, the Elecraft KX2, and the Elecraft KX2.

Hope to see you all next Saturday morning around 8:30 at Verlie’s Grill.

Virlie’s Grill – Breakfast of Champions get together Saturday May 21st

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posted on the behalf of Herb N4HA by Dan, KR4UB

The breakfast group this morning welcomed a new face, Nick-KI4GND. He related his dealings with the homeowners committee where he lives and his success at convincing them that what the community needed was a nice three element yagi up a respectable distance.

Other topics covered were auto racing, model airplane flying, science fiction, reminiscences of working for the MAN, and scanning alternatives for video displays. A brief moment of reflection was observed for those who were at Dayton. (Other subjects may have been broached, but memory fails to serve.)

In attendance were: Roy, WA2JLC; Nick, KA1HPM; TOM, KJ4SIN; John, KK4VUR; Nick, KI4GND; and Herb, N4HA. Vlad, KK4MRE, made a cameo appearance as he was breakfasting with his kids.

73, hope to see you all soon.

BikeFest 2014 this coming Saturday August 9th, OCRA 442.150 Repeater will be primary comm

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Reminder:
The OCRA 442.150mhz Repeater (+) (PL 131.8) will be used for primary communications support this coming Saturday, August 9th for the BikeFest 2014 Event.  147.135mhz (+)(82.5) will be secondary.

As mentioned in the event summary below (from the RARS Public Service page), this is a large event in terms of participants, and routes extending through Cedar Grove, Leasburg, Roxboro, Efland, Hurdle Mills, Carr, and with the start/finish in Hillsborough.

Ham volunteers needed for SAGS, rest stops and shadows. You can sign up to support this event on the RARS Public  Service page http://rars.org/public-service.php

Net control ops the Saturday morning 9:30AM OCRA ARES net are requested run an abbreviated net to maximize repeater availability for event radio traffic.

Net control for the event will be John, AI4RT.

See you Saturday!

Dan, KR4UB
W4UNC Trustee

BIKEFEST 2014

August 9, 2014 – Saturday – Hillsborough, NC
The Bikefest tour begins at the Superior Courthouse in downtown Hillsborough, and offers a choice of several rides: a 35-mile half metric, a 62-mile metric century, and a 100-mile English century. The 35 and 62 routes will have 2 rest stops while the 100 mile route has 4 rest stops. Tarwheels donates all proceeds, in excess of expenses, to bicycling related activities in our community. Since 2006 we have donated over $50,000! Previous recipients include Rails to Trails, East Coast Greenways, Chapel Hill Greenways, Triangle Trips for Kids, Lewis Days (bike restoration for children of need) and 78 needy kids who received new bicycles which we distributed through New Hope Elementary School and Durham Social Services.

This is a large 800+ participants. Due to the size and number of routes, we will need about 15+ ham volunteers for SAGs, rest stop monitoring and shadows.

* Ham Coordinator: John (ai4rt)
* Location: Hillsborough Courthouse, 106 E. Margaret Ln., Hillsborough, NC 27278
* Time: 7:00 am – Rollout 7:30 am
* Event Website:Bikefest 2014

OCRA/DFMA Groups.io Photo Upload Procedure

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A new Photo section has been recently activated for all subscribers to OCRA-DFMA@groups.io.

If you haven’t tried it yet and have some good Field Day or other amateur radio event photos, here is a demonstration of the procedure.

If you are logged in to groups.io, this link  https://groups.io/g/OCRA-DFMA/photos will take you direct to the OCRA/DFMA groups.io photos gallery.

Or, from the groups.io home page click on the   tab to go to the photos home page. You will see several albums already on the site e.g. 2018 OCRA/DFMA Field Day, 2018 Field Day Potluck, and others.

You can create a new album by clicking on the blue New Album tab  or you can click on an existing album to add your photos.

A couple of thoughts about opening new albums:

  • The reason the “2018….. ” albums shown above are listed first is that the site lists albums in alphabetical order.
  • If you do choose to open another album the name ought to start off with consistent naming with the albums already in existence, otherwise the albums for the same event will be scatttered though out the whole library of photo albums.
  • Lastly, you might want to consider adding your photos to an already existing album to avoid viewers having to open many different albums to see all the photos related to a specific event. Each photo within an album will show and give credit to who uploaded the photo to the album.

To select an existing album, click on the photo 

To upload a photo(s) click on  and the Upload Photos window will open.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

  • While you may have used a photo image viewer or your operating system file manager to preview  and select the photos you wish to upload, before attempting to upload those photos in the steps below, you need to close those applications. Otherwise those photos can be locked by the open applications and not available to the upload process. There will be no pop up messages to indicate this has occurred. The symptom will be that when you click on the blue “Add” tab below, nothing happens.
  • Lastly if you select a large number of photos to upload, take into account your ISP upload speed. For most internet services, the upload speed is typically 1/10 of your download speed.  So if you select a large number of images, whose size can be considerable with the pixel count of today’s cameras, it may take a while for the upload to complete.

After you have clicked on the above “Add Photos”, click on the “Browse” tab and a “File Upload” window will open as shown below.

Select the photo(s) you wish to upload and then click on the “add” button.

You browser application should give some indication that it is busy uploading.

After the upload process is complete, your newly added photos will be visible in the album.