Observations from a 1st time VHF contester

What I learned for my 1st exposure to the VHF weekend contest.

  1. VHF/UHF/Microwavers are serious hams.

            – They communicate and take these operations very seriously

            – They operate strange expensive radios and antennas from their cars

            – They pre-arrange operating times and coordinate with others

            – They operate big signals and hunt out the little guys

  1. The W5RRR satellite antennas are not fun equipment for this type of contest

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Brrr…Winter Field Day @ W5RRR Jan 27/28 anyone?

Yep, this is last minute, but one of our NOTA sister stations announced their intent to participate in this less popular operating event. So in the interests of partnership, competition, NOTA presence, and plain good ol’ fun, a modest setup will be made in support of this event.  We’re not going for any big scores nor 24 hour ops, but just to kick the tires and make a few QSOs.  Note: we will NOT operate using any W5RRR shack equipment and we’ll be operating outside of the shack.

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John’s CW Decoder Kit – Taking Orders Soon!

As reported in recent 2m Tuesday net traffic, John AB5SS is nearly complete with a nano arduino based CW Decoder project board kit. Many thanks to John for his countless hours in development along with assistance from Stu W4STU, and Mike, N8MTV. John brought the finished kit and demonstrated it at the last club meeting. This is an excellent project for hams who are just learning how to send and copy morse code, or for those who hate CW but want to decode the messages thru this device. Standby for how the club prefers to handle order requests.

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