Tag Archives: dlarc

Apr 12

ARRL Trip – 2011

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On Monday a number of us from DLARC (Delaware-Lehigh Amateur Radio Club) took a field trip to the ARRL Headquarters in Newington, CT and also work the W1AW station.

During the 4 hour trip, I worked a number of DX stations on 17 and 20m including Russia and Belgium. Having HF in the car definitely makes the time go quick, but logging becomes the difficult and hazardous part.

Once on-site, our tour guide took us around league headquarters where we visited the Logbook of the world (LoTW) and certificate department as well as Product Test Lab, Marketing & Advertising, and VEC departments. While there Laurie (KB3SIK) was able to find out the status to her recent upgrade, which happened to arrive in the mail that day. In the outgoing QSL card bureau, we found cards destined for NE3F, the local contest station in Reading, PA, which I found rather funny.

We also had a tour of the ARRL employee station, W1HQ which had a decent amount of gear including a SteppIR beam and 6 meter King Conversion amplifier. I’ll be adding W1HQ to my rare DX list.

It was nice to be put faces and names to the ARRL and see what they do from their perspective. They do alot with what they have and make use of every piece of equipment they have; Something quite apparent in the Lab and Art departments.
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After lunch at a local pizza place, we put in some operating time at W1AW, their visitor operator station. W1AW is also the station that provides the on-air ARRL bulletins as well as qualifying Morse code runs. I ended up running their Yaesu FTDX-9000D on 15m for a bit. The station has alot of different gear and operates a number of modes.
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The remainder of the photos and video can be found here.

Apr 04

A new extra in the ranks

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This weekend Laurie and I visited the Trenton Computer Festival where there was some hamfest-like activity in a computer dominate show, but there were a few interesting things. It seemed like a typical computer show, flashing lights, techno music playing from cheap computer speakers and questionable software being sold, but there were some talks on various computer and amateur radio topics. One of the talks I sat in on was presented by two members of the Packrats VHF club on VHF communications.

While I sat in on the discussion, Laurie took her Extra exam, which I’m glad to report, she passed! Obtaining her Extra has been something she’s been working towards on and off over the course of the last year, bringing her up with the top ranks of amateur radio operators, more importantly being a woman with an Extra class amateur radio license. While she awaits the update to the FCC ULS (Universal Licensing System), she’s scoping out vanity callsigns.

While I’m on the topic of Amateur License exams (VE sessions), something that has been a big concern of mine has been the way these VE sessions have been carried out. When Laurie went to take her exam last year at the Wrightstown Hamfest (2010), the session ended up being loud and disruptive with people talking during the exam. Unfortunately she found that the Sunday session at this year’s Trenton computer show was almost just as bad.

I do believe the ARRL has set guidelines on how a VE session should be operated, of which one being a suitably quiet location for someone to take their exam. When I took exams with the Lehigh Valley Amateur Radio (LVARC) and Delaware-Lehigh Amateur radio (DLARC) clubs, sessions were run professionally and in environments appropriate for taking exams. Just something to keep in mind for VE’s running their own exam sessions.

Feb 05

DLARC Hamfest

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Tonight was the 2010 DLARC mini hamfest which brought a great turn out to our monthly meeting. I’m pretty psyched to have come home with about 300 feet of RG8/U. Coax is a non-stop necessity in this shack… At least for the time being. All in an effort to convert from my RG8x to support an upcoming amplifier purchase. For those not in the know, RG8x is a smaller diameter 50 ohm coax cable that serves the HF world very well, but usually has a maximum power rating of 300-500 watts.
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