May 4, 2017 Club Meeting
Thursday, May 4, 2017 at 7:00 PM Red Cross Building, 60 Hawthorne St., Medford, OR (across from Hawthorne Park)
Program: Echosounding the Ionosphere with SDR, Tom McDermott, N5EG
Tom will describe a relatively simple equipment setup based on Software Defined Radio (SDR) that he used to measure the virtual height and velocity of the Ionospheric F layer above Medford with 6 watts on 80 meters. This was presented at 2015 DCC, published in the 2015 ARRL/TAPR DCC proceedings, and published in January 2017 QEX magazine.
Announced in the May 2017 issue of The Repeater.
Meeting Notes
From the June 2017 issue of The Repeater.
The RVARC meeting for May 2017 was brought to order at 7PM by president Scott Cummings. Introduction of visitors and general discussion was held until 7:30PM, followed by a break for the JCARES net.
Visitors/possible new members:
- Art Davis KF7LET of Shady Cove
- Larry Comella no call Ashland
- Daniel Flood and son no call
- Alex Prince no call yet
- Micah Cardello no call (part of the Hack Lab group)
Treasurer’s report: the recent auction yielded approximately. $390 making the current balance $5358.
Field Day is confirmed for the field next to Science Works in Ashland (same place as last year). We will be combining in some way with both the C.A.R.E. and JCARES members.
A $200 fund for FD was proposed, seconded, and pass by the members present (15 yea to 1 nay).
The Coos County Radio Club’s annual Hamfest and Swapmeet was announced (also in the May newsletter) It will be held July 15, 10AM to 2PM at the North Bend High School. $4 for entry, $15 and up for a vendor table.
Also mentioned was the RVARC annual swapmeet the last Saturday of August.
It was noted in a side conversation that the Hack Lab has changed their meeting date so as to allow RVARC members to attend their meetings. They will now be held 2nd Thursday, 7PM in a conference room of the Medford public library. There is current interest in a ‘mesh net’ using Linksys and other routers to implement an independent wifi net locally.
Jason Davis notes that he recently passed his Extra exam. He is now fishing for an interesting call to replace KI7ITJ !
The main presentation was given by Tom McDermott on his implementation of an ionospheric sounder based on Hermes SDR hardware and Gnuradio software.
The meeting concluded at approximately 9:00 PM.
submitted by Allan Taylor K7GT
