Amateur Radio From Loudoun County VA

From the March Meeting:

Field Day preparation:

    - We have secured the Ida Lee site

    - Site selection committee to meet before April meeting and give final report

    - NC4S has offered use of his Cushcraft A-4 tribander if the club will help him refurbish it.

    -  Chris ??? has offered the club the use of his AP-8 multi-band vertical

    -  Charlie and Dale were appointed to be in charge of this year’s FD

Tom, KF4FXT, will represent LARG at the next ARES meeting on 4/13 and will report back at the April meeting

Paul, N4PD, brought up starting training classes for amateur radio license examinations at Ida Lee Recreation Center in Leesburg. Several club members agreed to help Paul teach the classes and share the workload, and the club voted to go ahead with this activity. LARG plans to start with novice & no-code classes in September and then conduct upgrade classes in the spring

Gary, NC4S, showed the candidates for the club logo contest. A vote by those present choose Norm’s, AI2C, design, with some suggested minor modifications that were adapted from Otto’s, W4QBC entry.

All 18 LARG members who attended March’s meeting heard a most enlightening and educational talk by Wes, WA4TSC, on the construction, operation, and care of repeaters. Wes showed us an example of one of his first 2-meter repeaters and explained the inner workings of the receiver, transmitter, and control circuitry. Wes’s electronic expertise has allowed him to modify and adapt a variety of commercial tranceiver components to repeater duty. We learned that only the sturdiest commercial antennas can survive duty on a high ridgeline exposed to icing and high winds! He also touched on issues such as the various ways to “link” repeaters in order to set up communications across large distances. Our club is fortunate to have someone as knowledgeable as Wes as a resource.

As a last minute ad hoc effort, six LARG members, WB3AKD, K4LJH, NC4S, W4AU, KF4FXT, and N4PD decided to make up a team entry for the Virginia QSO Party, which took place the weekend of March 15-16. Tom, WB3AKD, was the most venturesome and operated as a portable rover on HF, VHF, and UHF throughout many counties in northwestern Virginia. Tom, KF4FXT, operated as a portable VHF station in the region, too; while the rest of group pounded out QSO’s from their home QTH’s. They all agreed that it was the most fun that they have had in a contest in a long time, and maybe next year we can plan further in advance and convince more club members to take part in this fun event.

At the April meeting we will have a brand new video of the recent Heard Island Dxpedition, which took place a few months ago. Since many club members worked VK0IR when they were on Heard Island, it will be good to see exactly what conditions they had to endure to hand out all those QSO’s. Also, Paul, K4MSG, will be bringing some of his recent bug and keyer acquisitions to show us

Calendar of Events: