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Presidents Letter Feb 2013 |
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Written by Vinny, KB2PSI
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 Greetings to all club members, Friends of the KCRA and fellow Ham’s!
January we lost a good friend and a member of the KCRA, John KC2UHA. He will be missed. John was a master machinist, carpenter and self taught electrical engineer, who designed his own circuit boards. Gary, Mike and myself, were amazed at the amount of experimentation and design work he had done out of his small apartment. One of the marvels he left us with is a custom made, and very neatly done ATV equipment. We hope to demonstrate how it works, as soon as we can figure it out ourselves!
For those who missed HAM Radio University last month, as usual the 25 forums were filled to capacity! Gary KB2BSL ran the server and WEB cameras to do “Live Streaming Video” from the main conference room all day. This was the first time it was successfully done at HRU. Good work Gary!
The last meeting we started discussions on moving the club towards a 401 C 3 status. We will be sending out a document soon, outlining the changes we need to implement, and asking members for input. We also announced plans for replacing the 35+ year old repeater antenna.
The next club meeting, February 19th, Gary will be discussing the new features of our repeater, IRLP, Echolink and control functions that are available to members.
Next month, March 2-3, we will be holding a free Technician class, open to the public. If you know someone that is interested, please read the article about the class on our WEB site.
I know it’s early, but we need to start planning for Field Day! We lost the field we were using off of South Beach. It was washed away by Sandy, now we need a new one! We are looking for one that hopefully doesn’t require a permit.
73’de KB2PSI, Vinny
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President's Message - November 2012 |
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Written by Vinny, KB2PSI
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Greetings to all club members, Friends of the KCRA and fellow Ham’s!
The KCRA’s annual Holiday Party is next month, and will be a Sunday Brunch in the Historic Fort Hamilton. All Members and Friends are invited to our festivities. It will be Sunday, December 16th at 11:30 am. It's $25 per person. For more information and to RSVP, please use the clubs event registration system on the website.
We would like to congratulate Mike, N2YBB for being elected as the new Hudson Division Director! The voting turnout for Mike was outstanding! He was declared the winner, with 836 votes.
Mike, N2BMU and Gary, KB2BSL will conduct a presentation on solar power at the November 20th KCRA meeting. The demonstration will include how to solder Power-Film solar cells as well as monocrystalline solar cells. We will also show you how to connect these to a solar charge controller and a battery. The first 15 attendees will receive a CD containing various videos and documents on making your own solar panels.
The November meeting is also when we formally elect the nominees for the clubs Board of Directors for 2013.
We will also be discussing what the members did to in preparations for Hurricane Sandy. Gary tried running a freezer with Gel-Cells… and also what not to do... Mike had lots of LED’s, I had batteries, Laptop, AM/FM radio and HAM radio ready… but forgot one thing…
You will have to come to our next club meeting to hear the discussions on being prepared in the event of an emergency!
Attention, if you are going to HAM Radio University, we are looking for people to help with our table, and ride share! This is a great learning event to help new HAM’s with the hobby, and teach old HAM’s new tricks!
73’de KB2PSI, Vinny
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President's Message - September 2012 |
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Written by Vinny, KB2PSI
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Greetings to all club members, Friends of the KCRA and fellow HAM’s!
All members and friends are welcome to or next meeting. We will be demonstrating low power portable (QRP) and Emergency Field operations. Joe N2TEE and I will be showing off our portable HF/UHF/VHF radios, antennas. We will go over options for powering your station and distribution strategies. For those not familiar with Anderson Power Pole connecters, procedures for proper crimping will be shown. Examples of field capable antennas will be displayed as well and put to use for on-air demonstration purposes. We will have a very interesting collection of different types of telescopic whips, tapped loading Coils, folded dipole and other antennas. Members are invited to bring in their equipment for demonstration.
September 12, I will be doing a special 911 event from Governors Island using portable equipment. We will have two stations set up, one on 20M and 40M depending on band conditions, we may also be on 10m. I will post what frequencies we are operating on at the end of this article during the event. We will also be monitoring the KC2RA repeater. I hope to be operating from sometime after 11:00 am until 3:30 pm.
August 18th, we held our annual International Lighthouse & Lightship weekend at Coney Island on the grounds of the Norton’s Point Lighthouse. It rained until around 10:00 am, but the rest of the day was sunny! We did get in as much ‘air’ time as we hoped. Gary’s WEB camera was in operation early in the morning showing our progress in setting up! I made contacts with other Lighthouses from Old Fort Niagara NY, several from Canada, Maryland and other states using a simple homebrew antenna. I would like to thank our guests that stopped by to support the club’s event, and make it more enjoyable.
Last month’s meeting, we had a special guest speaker, Jack KB2BCC, who shared his (30+) years of experience with test equipment, and best electrical practices. Jack gave an excellent lecture, and put together a folder of CD’s, charts, and reading materials for us to look over.
73’de KB2PSI, Vinny
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President's Message - August 2012 |
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Written by Vinny, KB2PSI
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On August 7th, we held our bi-monthly VE session. I would like to congratulate the (5) new HAMS, and (3) upgrades! There were (5) Technician, and (3) General licenses granted..
For those that missed it, that evening, club members were also at National Night Out at South Beach on Staten Island. We had a good showing, and made some great overseas contacts.
This coming weekend, Aug 18 1300-2100 UTC (9-5 DST), we are having our annual International Lighthouse & Lightship weekend. We will be at Norton’s Point, Coney Island, operating from the Light keeper’s cottage on the beach. It offers an amazing view of the harbor. This is one of the events I always enjoy, easy to set up and operate a radio, with the help and support of the community. Come on down and join the club at the historic Lighthouse. We will be streaming this event on the KCRA website, for those that can’t make it, but want to see what we are up to.
We have a special guest speaker for our club meeting this month, Jack KB2BCC. He will be sharing his (30+) years of experience with test equipment, and best practices. |
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