May 1, 2010 Scout Event and GA Baptist Communications Unit Testing

About a dozen Savannah and Statesboro area HAMs participated in another 100th Anniversary of Scouting event this past weekend.  Philip-KA4KOE did another great job of coordinating our radio operations with this activity.  We had three amateur radio stations set up to demonstrate to the scouts.  Many of them are working on earning thier radio merit badge.  We had a nice variety of radios and antennas in operation.  Philip secured the Special Event Callsign W4S (We're 4 Scouting) once again to identify our operation.

We were also able to arrange to bring the Georgia Baptist Disaster Releif Communications Unit 5C to the event as well.  This unit is prepositioned at the Statesboro Airport and ready for activation and deployment in the event the Georgia Baptist Convention is called to respond to support disaster relief activities.  We like to test the unit periodically and provide familiarization training to new members of the ministry.  So it worked out real well to bring it to the scouting event and show it off while we performed our periodic testing. 

May Issue of Coastal Amateur Radio Society Newsletter Online

The May issue of our club newsletter, Groundwaves, has been released and is available online at our club website.   http://www.coastalamateurradiosociety.net/PDF/GW201005.pdf

April 28, 2010 B-17 Radio Work Day

Steve-K4SDJ, Carroll-WX4Y, and I spent some time today working on the B-17 project at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum. We finalized our antenna placement for the upcoming special event station on Armed Forces Day and next week we will be installing some pulleys and line on a couple of the light posts. This will allow us to hoist up our long wire antenna for HF operation.


Carroll and I also spent some time today performing an alignment on the various stages of the BC-348 Receiver. Carroll thinks we may have greatly increased the receiver sensitivity with this simple alignment. Can't wait to hook the antenna up again and test it out.

We're planning to have this reciever running at the special event station for the public to listen to.

We've also been given the okay by the museum to assess the condition of another BC-348 receiver that is currently on static display. The museum has had the reciever for about 10 years and has no idea of it's history or current condition. We'll fix that! We hope to get our first look inside the radio next week.

What a fun project.

April 21, 2010 B-17 Radio Work Day

Spent some time at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum today planning the logistics for a special radio event that we are having there on Armed Forces Day, May 15th.  Steve-K4SDJ, Mac-KF4LMT, and I arrived at the museum around 2:00pm.  No radio work today as we spent our time surveying suitable spots to set up a radio station, run feedline, and put up an antenna.  Looks like the perfect spot to set up the station will be under the left wing tip.  We'll run our feedline up on top of and along the wing then out the doors that open out to the courtyard.  Looks like we can use a couple of light posts to hoist a dipole antenna (probably a G5RV for multi-band) between.  Next week we'll install some pulleys and cleats on the light posts. 

We have secured Special Event callsign W2W for the event.  I'm working with Jane and Brenda at the museum to create some QSL cards.  Jane is also going to have some photos of the radio compartment blown up for display under the wingtip.  In addition to our amateur radio station, we'll also set up the BC-348Q Reciever that we've been working on so that visitors to the museum can listen to a real WWII radio.  Should be alot of fun!

Skywarn Communications Test Today

We participated in the Skywarn Communications Test today along with the National Weather Service in Charleston.  This was a South Carolina, SE North Carolina, and Coastal Georgia exercise.  NWS Charleston is responsible for 12 of our Georgia Counties here along the coast.  Bobby-W4KSD kicked off the net from the NWS Charleston station WX4CHS.  Several of us were able to check into the SC linked repeater system.  I kicked off a net on the Chatham County ARES frequency of 146.970 to pick up stations in Chatham, Effingham, Bryan, and Liberty counties.  Dan-KF4MND ran a net on the 147.105 to pull in stations in Long and Bulloch counties.  David-KC4MKD called for checkins on the Georgia ARES HF frequency of 3.975.  We had a total of about 20 checkins and I relayed them all into Bobby at WX4CHS.  It was a successful exercise in preparation for tornado and hurricane season.

Arecibo Moon Bounce Continued

I Didn't hear anything on the moon bounce from the Arecibo station today. They got the amplifier fixed and were running 350w. Kevin-KW4B did hear them briefly on his Arrow antenna right when they switched over to CW.  He distinctly heard KP4.  They made over 100 contacts on SSB and CW. Seems I need a yagi with more elements and a pre-amp. It's still been fun to follow....K4GTM

Arecibo Moon Bounce Update

Kevin-KW4B and I attemped to hear the moon bounce signal from the Arecibo station today with no luck.  Turns out they had an amplifier failure and are in the process of repairing it now.  Should be ready for tomorrow.  They did make almost 100 contacts using low power (50 watts) so that's good.  They are streaming a live feed from the event at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kp4ao-eme.

Tomorrow's window is from 1340 to 1620 local.  We'll be meeting up at our club station tomorrow at the Southside Fire Station to give it another try.

Homebrew 70cm Yagi

I built a simple six element 70cm Yagi antenna today in hopes of hearing some of the mounbounce signals from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico on Apr 16, 17, 18.  Found a simple plan online and I used a piece of scrap wood for a boom and some 12 gauge copper wire that I had left over from another project for the elements.  I trimmed down a piece of RG-58 with a BNC connector for the feedline and soldered it to the driven element.  I then secured my Yaesu VX-7R to the boom with a tie strap.  Connected the feedline to the radio then went outside to give it a test.  I backed the power on the handheld down to low power which I think is half a watt (500mw) and pointed in the direction of the 442.700 repeater.  I brought the repeater up with no problem and had the receive at full scale.  I decided to test the directional characteristics of the antenna by turning it away from the repeater and sure enough just the slightest deviation and I lost the repeater.  That's exactly what I was looking for, a very narrow and directional beam.  We'll see how I make out over the next few days.  Total time of construction and testing was about 30 minutes.

Moonbounce Info

April 14, 2010 B-17 Radio Work

We had a very successful day at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum as we continued our work on the BC-348 receiver for the B-17 project.  Carroll-WX4Y and Guy-K4GTM arrived at 2:00pm to get started with the days work.  Over the last few weeks we have assessed the condition of the radio, tested the tubes, resisters, and capacitors, taken apart, serviced and tested the dynamotor which delivers the power to the radio, put the dynamotor back in and tested the the radio circuits, etc.  Todays primary task was to replace one bad tube (the audio amplifier) and to align the various IF stages.  Once we put the new tube in and powered things up, we connected a signal generator/spectrum analyzer to the antenna input and inputed a test tone on various frequencies to see if the receiver could hear it.  Not only did the reciever hear the test tone, it was spot on frequency everywhere we tested it!  Wow!  Don't really need to do much of an alignment afterall.  This is an outstanding radio for being 65 years old.  Only thing to do next was to hook up an antenna and see if we could pick anything up.  We moved the radio outside to be out of the metal building and away from all of the RF interference inside.  We needed an antenna so I found a spool of wire that was perfect.  We ran the long wire "antenna" out about 200 feet or so across the lawn and over a short tree to give it some elevation (10 feet off the ground at it's highest).  We connected the wire to the antenna posts on the radio and wham, we were picking up a shortwave broadcast station on about 6.100 MHz!  Was probably Radio Havana judging by the signal strength and frequency.  We tuned around and picked up several other shortwave stations as well as some morse code and single sideband voice on one of the HAM bands.  I can't tell you how excited Carroll and I were to the hear this thing come to life.  We are so fortunate to be able to participate in this restoration project.  Plenty more work to be done but this was a major accomplishment today.

2010 Georgia QSO Party

Had a great time over the weekend as our club competed in the Georgia QSO Party from our station at the SSFD.  Folks started showing up around 0800 and we got to work getting the station ready and hoisting up a couple of dipoles for 40m and 80m.  Had everything tested and ready to go by the contest start time of 1400.  We even had time to do a little training of some of our new HAMs and let them get on the air for the first time.  We had many operators come and go throughout the day.  Several of us stayed and operated all the way till midnight.  Lot's of fun. 

Steve-K4SDJ and Kevin-KW4B showed up around 0800 on Sunday ready to kick things back off at 1000. We operated all through the day on Sunday until the contest end time of 2000. It was a good contest as our club multi-operator station racked up around 250 contacts and Guy-K4GTM's station got close to 100 contacts. Many other club members operating from home during the contest as well.

April 7, 2010 Radio Work on The B-17 Project

Had a very productive day at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum today.  Carroll, Steve, and I arrived at 2:00pm.  Carroll brought along his new 28 volt power supply so that we could test the DM-28 Dynamotor that we serviced last week.  While we had the dynamotor out of the radio chassis, we applied the 28v to the input side of the dynamotor.  It works!!  The motor immediately started turning at the 4400 RPM to step up the voltage to 220v plus.  Carroll tested the output voltage with his multimeter and it was right on.  Wow, were we excited!  We let it run for a while then we took off the endcaps so that we could inspect the movement.  Everything looked great.  We then disconnected the power and re-installed the dynamotor into the radio.  Got it secured in the chassis and connected the wiring.  Then we applied power again to test the receiever under load.  As the dynamotor spun up we watched for smoke.  Nothing fried or blew up.  Yippie!  We let the radio run for about two hours since it probably has not run for decades.  I sure love the sound of that dynamotor.

While we let the radio run we turned our attention to another receiver that Kevin-KW4B donated to the project.  It's a very nice R-26 Command Receiver that operates in the 3 to 6 Mcps range.  Carroll tested all of the tubes with his tube tester and they all checked out fine!  Good stuff.  We need to get a dynamotor for this one and we should be good to go.

Next week we'll install a new tube in the BC-348 to replace the bad one we found last week, then we'll perform an alignment on the reciever using some more of Carroll's test equipment.  Once we're done with that then the next step will be to hook up an antenna and see if we can receive anything.  That will be fun.

To see more pictures and short videos of our work visit our club Facebook page called:
Coastal Amateur Radio Society

2009 Andy Anderson DX Challenge Winners

At the April 5th CARS club meeting the winners of the 2009 Andy Anderson DX Challenge were announced and presented with very nice framed awards!  Thanks to Jere-KT4ZB and PressWorks for the awards.  Here are the winners:

1st Place Rookie Catagory  -  Mac McCormick, KF4LMT

Runner Up -  Paul Esposito, N3PE

1st Place Winner  -  Jere, KT4ZB

Mar. 31, 2010 B-17 Radio Work

Spent a few hours at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum this afternoon with Carroll-WX4Y and Steve-K4SDJ servicing (cleaning, burnishing contacts, greasing bearings) the DM-28 dynamotor from the 65 year old BC-348 Reciever for the B-17 restoration project. Hope to apply power and test next week. Wish us luck.

http://www.mightyeighth.org/b17_restoration.htm

St. Joseph's Hospital HAM Station Test

Kevin-KW4B and I met over at St. Joseph's Hospital today to install and test the new Dual Band VHF/UHF radio and antenna.  St. Joseph's is one our served agencies here in Chatham County and relies on the local ARES operators to provide backup communications in the event of emergencies or disaster in the area.  First thing we did today was to connect the analyzer to the feed line and test the antenna SWR.  1.2 to 1 all the way across the 2 meter and 70 cm bands.  Nice.  Then we set up the new Alinco power supply and Kenwood dual bander and began to test all of the local repeaters.  We gave Steve-K4SDJ a call and he gave us comm checks on all of the local repeaters.  We were also able to hit the repeaters in Jesup, Whitehall, Pembroke, and Rockledge (just east of Dublin).  Not too bad.  Now we just have to wait for the new HF radio and antenna to come in and get it installed and tested.  Productive day.

Mar 27, 2010 Pancake Breakfast

Had a good time and a good breakfast at the Masonic Lodge in Richmond Hill this morning with my friend and fellow radio operator, Greg-N4VAD.  Greg and a couple of his buddies setup three "go kit" style radio stations to demonstrate to the public in conjunction with thier fund raiser.  I enjoyed meeting Larry-AF4MI and David-KD4NUE.  Also had one of our newest HAMs, Charles-KJ4SMZ there to check out the operation.