Charles County Amateur Radio Club

We had a great Field day this year, and we will have our logs submitted into ARRL soon!
See you in 2015!

As a reminder, our monthly meeting will be held on July 11 this month due to the fourth of July holiday!

Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

Though it looks like a weekend of camping and continuous radio communication, the ultimate purpose of Field Day is to test the emergency preparedness skills of all who attend.  Stations attempt to operate from non-grid power (typically using generators and batteries) while establishing contacts with other stations participating in Field Day.

Field day will be held June 28-29, 2014 and is the largest emergency preparedness drill in the country!

CCARC will again be holding Field Day at the Laurel Springs Park in
La Plata, Maryland.

View Larger Map

The Red Pin above indicates the pavilion where we will be located. Use the zoom controls on the left hand side for a better view, and scope out the pavilion where we will be located this year!

The event is open to all club members, and the public is welcome and encouraged to stop by.

Visit the ARRL website for more information about Field Day!

Learning several lessons from last year, we aim to improve our operational skills as well as our effectiveness at communication!

The current plan is to operate in the 3A category, which means that we can have three simultaneous transmitters operating from a generator (or other non commercial power!)  Bands that are planned for use are 20M, 40M, and 80M.  Single Sideband as well as Digital operation will be utilized this year!  Below is a diagram showing the intended location for our antennas.  Antennas have been setup to minimize interference with each other as best as is possible.

And a last bit on extension cords: Make sure you have the right size for your power requirements!

See you at Field Day or on the air!

Now current members can pay their annual membership dues online!

Please visit the MEMBERSHIP page here!

Recently the Charles County Amateur Radio Club was advised of a unique opportunity to listen in on some radio signals beamed down from outer space.

From the International Space Station to be exact!

On March 20th, 2014 students from the Forest Knolls Elementary School in Silver Spring had the privilege of having a live chat with astronaut Koichi Wakata aboard the ISS via ham radio. The short duration QSO was hosted as part of the ARRL’s ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) program, which is a cooperative venture of NASA, the ARRL and AMSAT and other international space agencies that organizes scheduled contacts via Amateur Radio between astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS and classrooms and educational organizations.

While it is not possible to have heard the signal beamed out from the Forest Knolls school in Southern Maryland, it was quite possible to listen in to the signal beamed back from the ISS on 144.800 Mhz. Tuned up with an Arrow 4-element yagi aimed at the sky and an Icom IC-R7100 receiver I was ready to try my not-so-steady hand at satellite chasing! Starting at the horizon in the North West, I was able to quickly fix onto the origin of the signal. I slowly panned across the sky, passing through the zenith, and then falling quickly to the horizon in the South East. In total the QSO only lasted about 10 minutes, but with this particular satellite whizzing around at nearly 5 miles per second, its no wonder that the ISS makes almost 16 revolutions of the earth each day! Take a short listen to the QSO recorded from Southern Maryland. The clip has been edited to remove the static during the schools transmission. You will notice the signal fade in and out as I attempted to track as best as one can by hand. At the end, it is clear to hear ‘NA1SS’ Signing off. Most definitely a unique experience!

The event even turned heads on a local news outlet, and a short clip from the actual QSO can be found on The Fox News Website

See the rest of the story on the ARRl website

And don’t forget to check out N3YWZ’s recent contacts made on the SO-50 Saudi Sat!

Good day and thanks for visiting K3SMD.org!

We have some new content posted, including an updated calendar of events as well as a new writeup documenting one of our members experience while making contacts on the Saudi Sat!  The full story can be found under the projects / activities page.

Come by and visit us this Friday, Feb. 7th at 7:00 for our monthly meeting.  Meeting will be held at the Historic LaPlata Train station in downtown LaPlata on Kent Ave.

See you there!

July 2013