Charles County Amateur Radio Club

Tonights meeting was a presentation by Jeff, KB3SPH, on his newest acquisition of a DJI drone. He covered the various licenses you may need in order to fly a drone, depending on if it was recreational or more serious stuff. He also covered his study and taking of the Part-107 license. For that, he made use of a site called “Pilot Institute”.

https://pilotinstitute.com/

What is nice is that they also have a link to register for the TRUST (or The Recreational UAS Safety Test). The TRUST is free but you have to abide by 9 rules to be able to fly under this license class. If you can’t abide by all 9 rules, then you’ll need a Part-107 license.

Drones that weight more than 250grams (.55 pounds) need to be registered with the FAA and if you fly under a Part-107, then each drone will need their own registration. The drones also need to be capable of transmitting identifying information, but this capability is built into the newer drones.

Jeff also demo’s some different phone apps that help you determine any restrictions to the airspace, based on your location, along with any alerts and warnings that may be applicable.

He then pulled the drone out of its protective box, set it up and gave a demo in the confines of the meeting area.

On this past chilly Saturday morning (11 Nov), several members of the CCARC descended upon Mallows Bay to operate a special event station

For those not familiar with the area, here is a Google Map showing the general location:

In attendance were: Bob (NW3M), Jeff (Kb3SPH), Pam (KB3SWS), Bill (W8BL), Michelle (N3YRZ), Charles (AA3WS) and Bob (KB3KOW).
After arriving on site, everyone started setting up their respective stations. While the weather for the day was supposed to be nice, it didn’t start out that way with clouds and slightly cooler than expected, however, within 2 hours, the sun was out in full force and made it a great day to operate.
We had 4 radios on the air at any given time across most of the bands with three of the stations running on solar supported systems.

In addition to SSB operations, Bill (W8BL) also worked FT8 and made a number of contacts during the day.

Due to the location and lack of near-by shops, Charles (AA3WS) set up the Chuck Wagon Grill and Pam (KB3SWS) preparred the Buffett Line

We had several visitors during the day including members Joe (KB3HNP), Rob (N2OMC), Debbie (KV3VNF), Tom (W3TOM), Dale (N3ILH), Pat (KB3UYZ) and Angel (N4SNI) who also brought along his daughter and grandson, Sebastian, who joined Rob at one of the stations and worked to make a few contacts.

We started to shut down around 1600 with +/- 200 contacts in the logs.

Tonights presentation was provided by AA3WS and titled “How to modulate your IPOD.”

His main equipment was an IG-42 Heath Kit Signal Gen along with a 20Mhz scope.

Using a series of schematics, he showed how all signal generators are transmitters. The first schematic was of the sig gen which showed the three main areas of the board to include the oscillator, the power amp and then the modulator.

He then showed the schematics of several transmitters and noted how each transmitter contained the exact same areas.

As part of his demo, he connected the scope to the output of the sig gen to show the unmodulated sign wave being generated by the sig gen. Using one of the small FM radios (seen in the above picture to the right end of the table) he tuned into the frequency so we could hear how the unmodulated signal sounds (which is nothing).
He then connected his iPod to an impendence matching transformer, audio amp and an isolation transformer and taking that output, plugged it into the input to the sig gen. As if by magic, we were then listening to the music from the iPod.

Charles then proceeded to provide an example of both overmodulation and under modulation so we could both hear it and observe it on the scope.

Jeff, KB3SPH, gave a presentation on building your own Battery Box.

Items he covered were:
Considerations (why would I need one and where would i use it?)
A Demo of a battery box

Considerations
Where woud I use it?

• installed in shack as a backup power source, maybe as a UPS
• part of a portable go-kit
• multi use — mobile, portable, standby

battery size

• amp hour rating
• physical size/weight

battery type

• flooded lead acide
• lithium ion
• Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4)

Box size/type

• big enought for battery or other stuff as well
• weather seal on box
• plastic or metal

Charging method
how are you going to charge it? be able to remove battery, do you include the charger in the box or wire it to include a charging port.

Options
Binding posts
powerpole outlet
meters
12v outlets
usb charing
power supply nput
power distribution
solar controller integration

He then started his demo. His LiFePO battery is a 35am Bioeno battery (about 8 pounds) compared to a 40ah acid battery (40 pounds).
The Bioeno comes with power poles connections already installed. He then showed his PowerWerk battery box that he had purchased, and which was already built, but then he used that as a base line as he wanted something a bit bigger to also incorporate additional items, such as a solar charger.
He makes use of an ‘Epic PowerGate’ rigrunner that accepts solar, battery and power supply inputs with one output. If there is no draw of current, then the battery will be charged. As current is needed, it will first look for a power supply input. If none are available, then it will make use of the battery.

His solar panel is made by Renogy. He built a 10ft powerpole extension cord, so the battery does not have live near the solar panel and then showed how he plans on integrating that into the power box. This resulted in him having to build several adapter cables with powerpoles to allow everything to tie together and still power the original meters that were on the PowerWerk battery box.

He noted that with the LiFiPO, you can get to about 90% depletion before the 13.6v output just dies, whereas with lead acid you can only get to about 50% and then there is the potential for damage the battery.

At tonight’s meeting, President Bob provided a brief that he presented to the senior community center some weeks ago entitled “Amateur Radio Today, no longer your Grandfather’s hobby”.

The format of the brief is aimed at individuals who may have heard about ham radio, either from family members or even from television shows. His brief covered the various services (FRS, MURS, etc) as well as the ham bands, the federal definitions for the various services.

The brief also touched upon QSL cards and the typical information included on each card as well as some of the special awards that can be earned, such as the below “13 Colonies” event held each year.

The brief finished up with how ham radio gives back to the community, which the CCARC has helped with in the past such as the Indian Head 100 (Oxen Hill Bike Club) and the annual March of Dimes/March for Babies.

The CCARC meeting this month was presented by Bob (KB3KOW) and Jeff (KB3SPH) and was an introduction to some various digital modes to include FT8, JS8Call, VarAC and finaly Easypal.

Instead of having radios set up, Jeff and Bob made use of the audio cards on the laptops and ran normal audio cables between the two PCs. One of the audio cables was on a splitter with a speaker attached so that the audience could hear what each mode sounded like.
The first program was WSJT and a demo of FT8. The goal here was to show how automated the process is once someone responds to a CQ. We answered questions as the demo progressed, but one question was “so, you can’t do any chatting on this mode?” which was a good lead into the second program.

JS8Call was used to demo the ability to do weak signal ‘chatting’ between two stations using the JS8 protocol, which is similar to the FT8 protocol. We exchanges some short notes back and forth much as same as sending an SMS message between phones.

We then moved on to VarAC. This software makes use of the VARA sound card modem and allows you to connect directly to another station and transfer files, chat and even leave ‘v-mail’ in the event the other operator is away from their keyboard. We also demonstrated the potential to be able to relay messages between two sites but using a third site as the temporary staging area.

Finally, we tested EasyPal. This is a digital Slow Scan TV (SSTV) software that allows the transmission of some good quality pictures, however, as we were able to show, much like digital TV, it’s either there or it isn’t and if enough packets of information is lost during transmission, nothing shows up on screen like it would using an analog program like MMSSTV

On July 25th, 4 members of the CCARC visited the Senior Center located in LaPlata. Bob (MW3M) had coordinated with the center to provide a short talk on ham radio to any one who may have an interest. We had two people attend the discussion to learn more about local events the CCARC participates in and other ways of getting ‘radio active.’

The brief provided by Bob can be downloaded by clicking HERE

The meeting started with President Bob giving a short presentation on the VoA museum, Bethany Station, obtained from his recent trip to Dayton as well as some pics from his visit to the velocity center, located in Indian Head, for a stem event.

The main presentation was presented by Jeff (KB3SPH) on the topic of Fox Hunting. His topics covered different types of fox hunts, different techniques, mapping your bearings and the different gear that could be used during a fox hunt.

In addition to using the above devices, Jeff also demonstrated a phone app called SigTrax. Not only will it show your current location, but also allow you to set a bearing line with the goal of being able to triangulate the fox.

He also showed various antennas that can be used, including a tape measure yagi, a small directional antenna and a moxon antenna made out of poster board and copper tape:

Good luck to everyone playing in the fox hunt on Sunday (today).

A bit late getting this updated and no pictures 🙁

During this meeting, Bob, KB3KOW, described his home Echolink node set up and how he leaves Echolink turned off until needed, however, he often forgets to start it up before leaving home, so he investigated ways of automating the process.
He is currently using an app called “Trigger Command (Triggercmd)” which allows you to ‘trigger’ different commands on your computer. In this case he configured a trigger to start the Echolink program, but now how to trigger the ‘trigger’ if not at home.

Luckily the TriggerCMD is intergrated into “If This Then That (IFTTT)” web site. In this case, he made use of the ability of send an email, with a specific subject line and body, to the IFTTT system. When the email received and processed, IFTTT then makes a connection to the TriggerCMD on his computer and starts the Echolink programming running.

So far it has been working about 90% of the time with a few glitches, but overall it has been successful.

A number of club members met up tonight to work on building the ARRL radio kit. Breaking out their soldering irons and cookie sheets (to protect the table tops), they got started with mounting the components and melting the solder

In order to test their work, Charles (AA3WS) had set up a low power transmitter playing music:

Based on each individual’s reaction, it appears there was a fair amount of success with the construction.

At the end of the meeting, we were treated to an awesome ‘Show and Tell’ by Ben, who gave us a presentation on his NOAA radio system: