AmateurRadio.com

I guess you could say that tonight was the first, formal meeting of a new Amateur Radio club. The newly formed South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club (SPARC) now lives.  Up until now, we were an “informal’ club, a loosely knitted confederation of Amateur Radio operators who gathered under the CERT umbrella to provide community service to our town.

But now we have a formal constitution and by-laws and we now fall under the banner and protection of the South Plainfield Office of Emergency Management.  Our major purpose is to provide communications and service to the OEM and the town of South Plainfield, NJ. The club documents were signed by the charter members, of which yours truly, is one.  I was appointed to be Trustee of our Club Callsign NJ2SP., which really is just a continuation of what I had been doing.

Our secondary purpose is to highlight Amateur Radio to the public, as well as to try and introduce Amateur Radio to the youth of our town and the surrounding area.  One of the ways we hope to do that is by sponsoring a prominent Field Day effort in a very public park in town.  Since time is short, it was decided to put forth as simple an effort as possible, so we will be doing a two station QRP setup – one station SSB and one station CW.  Since I seem to be the “QRP Guy” in town, I was made Field Day Committee Chairman. Yikes!

It looks like we’ll be using my two KX3s and some simple wire antennas.  While South Plainfield has its share of parks, there are two in particular that have very high visibility. The first is Spring Lake Park, which is actually part of the Middlesex County parks system.

That gazebo to the left in the picture would offer a nice shelter in the even of inclement weather.  The other possibility is Putnam Park,  a municipal  park which has the advantage of being at the intersection of two major roads in town. It sees a lot of traffic and has lots of tall trees, also. The only disadvantage is the lack of a shelter. We would have to procure some kind of tent, canopy, or other portable shelter.

Time is short, and this is definitely going to be a “fly by the seat of the pants” effort at this point.  The main goals will be to have fun and garner some publicity for SPARC and Amateur Radio in general. Since this looks like it’s going to be a QRP expedition on steroids, maybe I can get the other guys in town to be bitten by the “QRP Bug”.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

• No music this episode.

Welcome, everyone, to a special installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, we catch up with two fellow podcasters and friends: Rich, KD0RG, and Brady, AC0XR of the Low SWR podcast. During the course of our interview, the guys talk about Field Day, contesting, logging software, Point Linux, HamOS, their recent home activities and much, much more. This episode was a lot of fun, and we think you’ll enjoy the informative and interesting discussion as well. Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for being a listener of the show.

73 de The LHS Guys

Back in December of 2011 I got this email from my dad, Larry (KD6EUG) about the severe storm damage to his cabin in Mi-Wuk, California – located in the Sierra Nevadas:

The big pine tree that is located at the corner of the back deck, the one that we used as the center for all our antennas, split in two and about 90 ft of it landed on the back deck and cabin/garage. All the dining room windows and sliding doors are blown out. There is a 6″ separation between the garage and the kitchen. The PG&E power meter and feed lines to the power pole are ripped out. The wind had gusts of over 35mph.

Dad

Here are a few of the picture I received over the next few days showing the destruction:

My dad and I had a great field day from the cabin back in 2009. It was quite a blow to see what nature had delivered.

It has been a long path since December 2011. Through diligence and perseverance, my dad was able to revive the cabin. The work was finally completed this past summer.

We had another scare with the Rim Fire back in August and September. The fire actually came within a few miles of the cabin but fortunately the firefighters were successful in stopping it before it could do any damage.

My dad is now up there enjoying the California QSO Party from the cabin in Tuolumne County (…sometimes a pretty hard-to-get county in the CQP).

We have tried on several occasions to attempt HF QSOs while he has been at the cabin and I have either been here in Kansas or when I was stationed in Virginia. We never had much luck and have primarily used my EchoIRLP node as the best way to chat (IRLP Node 3553/EchoLink Node: KI4ODI-L 518994). Well, our luck changed today. We decided to give it a go prior to the CQP and started at 10Ms and worked down until we got to the 15M band. On 21.400 MHz we had brilliant success in carrying on an HF QSO. I’ve already send out the QSL card to confirm the contact.

With my coming retirement from the Army, I am going to have the opportunity to head back out to the California Sierra Nevadas this next June for Field Day 2014. I am looking forward to that!

Back in December of 2011 I got this email from my dad, Larry (KD6EUG) about the severe storm damage to his cabin in Mi-Wuk, California – located in the Sierra Nevadas:

The big pine tree that is located at the corner of the back deck, the one that we used as the center for all our antennas, split in two and about 90 ft of it landed on the back deck and cabin/garage. All the dining room windows and sliding doors are blown out. There is a 6″ separation between the garage and the kitchen. The PG&E power meter and feed lines to the power pole are ripped out. The wind had gusts of over 35mph.

Dad

Here are a few of the picture I received over the next few days showing the destruction:

My dad and I had a great field day from the cabin back in 2009. It was quite a blow to see what nature had delivered.

It has been a long path since December 2011. Through diligence and perseverance, my dad was able to revive the cabin. The work was finally completed this past summer.

We had another scare with the Rim Fire back in August and September. The fire actually came within a few miles of the cabin but fortunately the firefighters were successful in stopping it before it could do any damage.

My dad is now up there enjoying the California QSO Party from the cabin in Tuolumne County (…sometimes a pretty hard-to-get county in the CQP).

We have tried on several occasions to attempt HF QSOs while he has been at the cabin and I have either been here in Kansas or when I was stationed in Virginia. We never had much luck and have primarily used my EchoIRLP node as the best way to chat (IRLP Node 3553/EchoLink Node: KI4ODI-L 518994). Well, our luck changed today. We decided to give it a go prior to the CQP and started at 10Ms and worked down until we got to the 15M band. On 21.400 MHz we had brilliant success in carrying on an HF QSO. I’ve already send out the QSL card to confirm the contact.

With my coming retirement from the Army, I am going to have the opportunity to head back out to the California Sierra Nevadas this next June for Field Day 2014. I am looking forward to that!

Episode #110 Audio (Listen now!):

Introduction:

The Guys get ready this episode to reveal who gets the coveted BeagleBone Black.

Mini-Topics:

• VE2XPL’s Field Day
  • https://picasaweb.google.com/112211098677110580583/FieldDay2013#5894894919835301842

• K5TUX’ Field Day
  • Spent doing non-ham stuff.

• 1st of July
  • Canada Day Celebrations in Gf. Pk / Ottawa / Hemmingford
  • RAC holds a Canada day contest every year on July 1st

• Happy 4th of July to the USA

• Pete, VE2XPL, is a published author!
  • https://www.rac.ca/files/tca/tcajuly2013.pdf (Page 13)

• Manjaro v.0.8.6
  • http://manjaro.org

Main Topics:

• GIMP 2.8.6 Released
  • http://www.gimp.org/

• Retro News:  Leisure Suit Larry Debuts on Linux

• AV Linux 6.0.1
  • http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html

• Mozilla’s New Firefox Logo is a lot like the old Firefox Logo
  • http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/27/firefox-gets-a-new-logo-rolls-out-desktop-and-android-beta-upda

Announcements & Feedback:

• Beaglebone Black Raffle Winner Announced
  • Congradulations to Jonathan Nadeau for winning the Beaglebone Black.

Social Media Roundup:

• Twitter:
  • NF7T Jake Gier @StibniteLad (Idaho)

• Facebook
  • James George

• Google+
  • Paul Schwan N4FTD

• Subscribers and Donations
  • Walter WN3LIF (Yearly Subscription)
  • JonTheNiceGuy (Yearly Subscription)

Feedback:

• No feedback this time.

Credits:

• Thank you to our monthly and yearly subscribers.
• Thank you to all of our listeners, live and quasi-live.
• You can reach us at [email protected].  You can leave us voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (547-7469).
• Please subscribe to the mailing list.  A link is on the Web site.
• Go to CafePress and Printfection and buy some of our show merchandise.  Each purchase helps out the show.
• Listen live every every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central.

Music:

• “Rex Mundi” by Studebaker’s Blacksmith Shop (Germany, June 2010) from the album Nebula, courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Little Sister” by The Very Unknown Friends of Jane Doe (Germany – Wahlstedt, june 2011) from the album The Very Unknown Friends of Jane Doe, courtesy of Jamendo.

July has been a bit of a rough month for Linux in the Ham Shack. Pete, our illustrious Canadian cohort, takes an extended break with his family during this time, leaving him little room for podcasting. That is to say, none at all. In the meantime, Russ has been dealing with a series of health problems which has kept him away from the microphone and editing computer. Despite this, Episode #110 is finally done and coming to you now. In this episode, the guys chat a bit about Canada Day and the 4th of July (two holidays now long past for this year). Then there's stuff about Field Day, The GIMP, Manjaro Linux and more. And yes, there IS a winner of the illustrious Beaglebone Black. If you weren't around for the live drawing, now you can find out who won. Thanks for keeping the faith, dear listeners. We'll be back on track soon. Promise.

73 de The LHS Guys