Club News

Our Jamie makes Internet news!

Tom Foy clued us in: I stumbled across this post last night on Facebook, in the “100 Watts and a Wire” podcast group.

"Hold on a second while I swing my

beam toward you"

And now I can. At least temporarily. I just put up a portable hexbeam antenna on military mast sections. The 20m element is about 25' in the air. It's a little low, but man, it's a lot easier to talk into Europe and to actually be heard. I'm still only running 100w, but a little bit of forward gain helps. I have two more mast sections that I can use to raise it higher, but with 13 pounds of weight, it flexes enough that I can't push up any more mast sections without some ground helpers using the guy lines to keep it straight enough so I can raise it higher. I'm thinking this will be a nice addition to our week-long scout event in June. - Ed Jones - K8MEJ - Lewis Center, Ohio U.S.A

One can never have enough maps!

Shawn Cray KE8IZX has donated a very nice set of map materials to the club. The planned use is for events when we would like to visually keep track of stations being contacted. For example at the Field Day GOTA station, or at our scouting demonstrations. The map is from National Geographic (who makes the best maps) and it includes the USA and southern Canada. There is a 2x3 foot map board, which is both magnetic and dry-erase, so both techniques can be used. Also included are magnets of various sizes for various purposes. There are some big powerful colorful ones that hold the map and anything else to the board. There are little ones that can serve as markers themselves or hold small notes to the map. Also included are sets of colored dots that can be placed on the map, plus colorful small adhesive notes that can be used to mark a location with the persons name who made that contact. And of course dry-erase pens and eraser. And a “chalk” tray. And wall mounts. Very well thought out Shawn! It was decided that our radio room at Red Cross is already too crowded, so I will store this new board at my house until it is needed. Bob W8ERD