Club activates Martin Creek Lake Park

TSPOTA Certificate

Join the Rusk County Amateur Radio Club on April 5th as we activate the Martin Creek Lake State Park for the Texas State Parks On The Air contest.

We will meet  just before 9:00 a.m. at the park to set up. The contest will run from 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. (local time). Spouses, children and friends are all invited to attend! If this sounds like something you would like to participate in, let me know and we'll start making plans. 

According to the contest's organizers, the TSPOTA contest was conceived with three main goals in mind: to promote public awareness of ham radio and Texas' beautiful state parks system; to contribute to the recognition that Texas has a very diverse and wonderful ecology; and to promote camaraderie within the ranks of Texas Amateur Radio operators. It is with your participation that we believe those goals will be achieved.

For more details: http://tspota.com/. For directions to the Park, click here: Martin Creek Lake Park Map

Longview turns on D-Star Repeater

The Lonview East Texas Amateur Radio Club has turned on thier D-Star repeater system which covers a large part of East Texas. The range covers most of Tyler, Longview and Marshall and connects through the Internet to repeaters in Dallas, Austin and across the country.

For more information on the local D-Star repeater, visit the Longview club's page here.

Rusk County Hams get connecting

Jerry Ritchie gave a very interesting talk on various RF Connectors and their impedance characteristics. Surprisingly the very common PL-259 connector is not even rated for impedance, but is used extensively in the Amateur Radio Service.

The BNC and N connectors can be purchased for use in 50 Ohm feed line circuits. Fortunately the PL-259 can provide acceptable service in the HF
bands but is reaching its upper limits in the 2 meter band and can really degrade an antenna system in the 70 CM band.

Time to renew your club membership!

It's DUES time!

A new year means another chance to learn new skills, meet new friends and hangout on the repeater with some of the best folks in East Texas. But, as always, there are bills to pay and those are covered by your club dues! We couldn't do it without you!

Dues for 2014 are due now, so bring cash or a check to the next meeting. Remember, dues are an affordable $25 for individual hams, $35 for you and your whole family or $10 for a non-voting associate member. Every dollar helps to promote ham radio in Rusk county so dig deep y'all!

Checks can be made payable to the RCARC (or Rusk County Amateur Radio Club).

A little propaganda from Cuba

By W5CWT - It's not every day that you find revolutionary propaganda from a communist country in your mailbox. But hey, last Friday must have been a special day.

Anyone who works 20-meter PSK knows Cuban station are a common site on the waterfall. I've worked several of them. Last Friday I received my first QSL card from one of those Cuban stations, CO2WL. It was sent direct in what appears to be a special self-folded envelope designed specifically for QSL card.

The outside of the envelope contains the phrase, "Federation of Radio Amateurs of Cuba" in Spanish. Also according to the envelope, the Cuban government has passed a resolution approving a special postage rate for QSL cards: 5-cents (actually, not a bad idea).

Fox hunting in Henderson

Craig (KD5YHE), Keith (KN5G) and David (W5CWT) along with a couple future hams--and eventually Dudley (N5SAY)--went fox hunting Saturday morning. The fox, actually a radio inside a weather-proof container, took shelter near the Meals on Wheel building at Fair Park in Henderson.

The fox was built using Craig's BoaFeng HT and a voice recorder on which David had pre-recorded a voice and CW message. Keith brought a couple of large 2-meter yagi antennas which, while great a early one, proved difficult once the group was within a few hundred feet of transmitter. The signal was simply too strong and it was difficult to determine
which direction the null was -- even with an inline attenuater!

Regardless, the whole group learned a few lessons and had a lot of fun. We will work on plans for a larger, more in-depth fox hunt in the near future.

Click "Read More..." below for more photos!

Hamlib and the FreeDV program

By KN5G  Some interesting reading here:Hamlib - Ham Library API. This group has developed a whole suite of dynamic link libraries for various amateur radios. Using the FreeDV application with my Yeasu FT-857, there was not a pick in the FreeDV dropdown that defined the FT-857 and I am using CAT control to key the 857 from my computer.

Quick work around was to click the PTT button on the FreeDV screen and then key the microphone on the FT-857 to put the radio into transmit mode. This worked but was not ideal to say the least. 
With a little help from David, W5CTW I acquired the Hamlib-Yeasu dll file from Hamlib and placed it in the FreeDV Binary folder.

FreeDV: A new way to talk on HF

KN5G in QSO with WB9TLH with FreeDV.

by KN5G - This is a screen shot of the FreeDV, or digital voice software application. This software basically lets you hook up an microphone to your computer, the computer and software compresses and digitizes your spoken words and then sends the digital information to your radio transceiver where the data is transmitted over the air to another amateur radio operator running the same software. Once the data is received it is decoded by the FreeDV software and played back by the computer on the receiving end. This is all done in real time by the way.

So what's the point you might ask?

Ham Radio in a School Zone?

By David Chenault (W5CWT) - In Texas, it's been illegal to use cell phones in most school zones for years, which prompted many hams to ask if their HTs and mobile rigs were off limits, too. Now that new legislation has expanded the area where cell phones are illegal, (and both police and school officials are on the look-out for new violators) it warrants a second look at the ham radio question.

More than five years ago, the Texas Legislature enacted new laws making it illegal to use cell phones while driving through most school zones. The "most" comes from the fact that school districts had to post signs along roads alerting drivers to the law before it could be enforced. Of course, most, if not all, school districts did.

MEETING CANCELLED - NET INSTEAD

The RCARC's monthly meeting in January was cancelled due to freezing precipitation in the area. The next regularly scheduled meeting is scheduled for February 27th, 7pm.