Twin City FM Club blogs

Hello to fellow TCFMC members!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:33:10 -0500

Greetings! I recently recieved my renewal notice in the mail which means a year of membership has come to pass. I regret to say that I have not been able to make any of the events or meetings, which is certainly not my intention. Between my evening MBA classes downtown, and the recent addition of our new son, Erik, I have been sort of preoccupied!
I have had the pleasure of meeting WB0N as he introduced the club station to me, but many others out there I have not had an opportunity to meet. I thought I would give a shout out and say hello. I might even catch one or more of you on the repeater one of these days as well.

US Navy Museum Ships Weekend

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:37:59 -0500

Check out the website at http://users.tellurian.com/freddie/nj2bb/ship-event.html. Various US Navy ships will have stations on board on the air from site all around the US commerating D-Day. 0000Z June 7 through 2359Z June 8, 2008

If you work 15 or more of them, you can get a special certificate. USS New Jersey and USS Wisconsin also have very nice QSL cards.

73, Carl WC0V

May 31, 2008, pictures of the weather.

Sat, 31 May 2008 21:24:58 -0500

I have long been a fan of the weather. There are a couple of reasons I am not a storm spotter for SkyWarn, but none of them have to do with not being interested in the weather.

As I type this, I'm uploading a bunch of photos I took this evening. Some of the photos in the album are of the hail that was at my apartment, and some of the damage to the building. (Broken glass) But most of the 22 meg of images going up on Picasaweb are of clouds seen at various locations in the Plymouth/New Hope area.

Tailgate Swapfest

Tue, 27 May 2008 12:36:29 -0500

Hope to see you all at Tailgate Swapfest. Please support TwinsLAN.

CW Alive and Well - Picture is worth 1000 wpm!

Sat, 24 May 2008 15:58:55 -0500

If anyone thought that CW was going bye-bye, take a look at the attached .JPG file. That's the lower 70 KHz of 20 meters this afternoon. Every spike is a contester's signal.

CW - the original digital!

73, Carl WCØV

Couple of Repeaters off the air...

Fri, 09 May 2008 09:08:27 -0500

As you may have noticed two of our repeaters are currently off the air. Both the 146.76 and 444.1 repeaters are off the air as the repeaters and antennas are being relocated.

If my recollection from this morning's breakfast conversation is correct, the antennas have been relocated already and are being fed with new hard line to the new location in the building for the repeaters.

Tim got the message on Wednesday evening that the building was ready to have us relocate the equipment, and he and Roger and another person were busy last night actually moving the .76 repeater from its old location to the new room.

Our mailing lists (reflectors)

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:10:56 -0600

Some folks still call them "reflectors", most now just call them mailing lists. Whatever you call them, you should know that we've got three of them! Take a look at http://lists.duonet.net/ and check out (and subscribe to!) the TCFMC, TCFMC-Announce and TCFMC-Contest mailing lists.

New: Click here to see if you're currently on the mailing list(s).

Echolink and the 146.76 repeater.

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 15:15:40 -0500

lots of possibilities, a few requests.

Echolink is now installed on the 146.76 repeater. It is available to all users of the repeater, and is available for any echolink user on the internet. At the moment there are a few restrictions placed on the node, and as I get those restrictions well documented, I'll post updates here and elsewhere. Feel free to post questions and I'll do my best to answer for you.

Printed Circuit Boards the Easy Way - EHAM.net - great article

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:45:04 -0500

Take a look at http://www.eham.net/articles/16958 for a great description of ExpressPCB, free software for laying out a printed circuit board. You can print out the layout and do the rest of the work yourself or send the saved file to the company who will (for a modest fee) make the boards and send them to you.

73, Carl WCØV

Installing mobile ham gear in today's vehicles - the word from GM

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:11:29 -0500

Excerpts from the ICOM reflector:

After being told absolutely NO by the local dealer, I bit the bullet and had a local two-way radio shop run power, install 5 NMO mounts plus coax, 2 trunk lip mounts, and the coax plus control wires for a Tarheel screwdriver. Total tab: $600. They were happy to do it, and knew how. The local Toyota dealer wouldn't touch the job.

And here's a great link to GM's notes on installing gear:

Comment Spam: we've been hit!

Mon, 28 May 2007 09:00:20 -0500

I knew it was just a matter of time before the world of spammers discovered tcfmc.org, and now it's happened. This morning, a jerk sprayed us with about 100 comments, all spam to push their link count up. I'm switching to approved-accounts only, meaning new users who wish to have an account here need to be personally approved by me.

FD 2007-contest or casual?

Thu, 24 May 2007 11:33:12 -0500

Does this thing actually work?

If so, this is a nice ad-on to the site. Kudos to whoever is responsible for the website, nice design and full of useful features.

I'll start with something I have been ruminating about the last few days - in past years, the TCFMC Field day operation has been (rightfully) categorized as a casual, good time affair rather than an actual contest. it is part of the reason I disassociated myself with the Club FD effort in 2000; I was told things are different now, but it seems to me very little has changed.

handy electronic conversion tools

Sat, 05 May 2007 11:21:00 -0500

Just found these links for electronic calculations and conversions. Should save a lot of time and typos!

1. Capacitor value codes: http://xtronics.com/kits/ccode.htm

2. Calculators of all kinds: http://www.electronics2000.co.uk/

Enjoy.

73, Carl WCØV

RITTY PSK31

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:38:25 -0500

RITTY PSK31
At the club meeting the speaker for the evening was Robert Chudek. He was very informative and inspiring for me. It also brought back memories of my younger brother N0BQV. He also had a huge old clunker of a green machine that to me then was nothing less then magic. He called it the tank, and it really was a tank it would take both of us to move it to another location in the small shack he had in the basement. When little bro put the power to it, it would come to life not unlike the old equipment you see in an old Frankenstein movie. Anyway Bob’s demonstration and hi love of this communication mode had me downloading a few programs that night when I returned home from the meeting. MMTTY & DgiPan 2.

Group purchase of OpenTracker APRS trackers

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:07:52 -0500

The storm tracking and charity event volunteering seasons are almost upon us, and nothing makes situational awareness easier than having a GPS unit and a radio - except having APRS, to tie the two together! For those who are not familiar, APRS is short for Automated Position Reporting System, and consists of three components: A GPS receiver to obtain position information, a 2-meter radio tuned to 144.390 (the national APRS frequency) and a tracker or TNC to glue the radio and GPS together.

I'm organizing a group purchase of OpenTracker APRS kits.