February 1, 2018 Club Meeting
Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 7:00 PM Red Cross Building, 60 Hawthorne St., Medford, OR (across from Hawthorne Park)
Program: History of Radar, Mike Bach
History of Radar, beginning from World War 2. Mike has access to the MIT Rad Lab journals dating from the time of the invention and industrialization of Radar, an incredible resource. Much of the technology was heavily classified during WW2, and declassified in later years.
Mike Bach currently is an engineer at Scala/Kathrein systems working on antennas. Mike has a wide collection of interesting RF hardware, from HF to Microwave, including high power RF.
Announced in the February 2018 issue of The Repeater.
Meeting Notes
From the March 2018 issue of The Repeater.
2018-02-01 February Rogue Valley Amateur Radio Club Minutes
President Allen Taylor, K7GT, called the meeting to order at 7pm. 27 members and 3 guests were present.
Guests:
- David Rose, KB7A, was at JPR for 7 years.
- Rickard Van Hoose, WB6HII, runs IRLP node #3560 at 147.445, PL 103.5
- Carrie Sammons, the Red Cross interim Disaster Program Manager, said the Red Cross Administrative Offices were going to move by around Feb. 28, as the building is being sold to United Way. As far as she knows, RVARC could still hold meetings here for maybe 6 more months.
Old Business: The Cascade Amateur Radio Enthusiasts (CARE) dual membership option is in process, and a Family membership option was discussed. Perhaps an extra $5 or $10 dues for dual membership over single, and maybe $5 extra for Family membership was considered.
Past President, Scott Cummings, NA7OM, wondered if anyone wanted to vote for a past-president’s stipend. The room became silent. (No motion was made).
New Business: It was reported that the Red Cross building would probably be sold to United Way within the next 60 days, so the challenge was made to be looking for other possible locations to hold the club meetings. Currently, club donations to the Red Cross of about $250-$300 per year have been made for use of the room.
Treasurer’s Report: Mike Bach, WB6FFC, reported that the 2018 officer changeover caused the bank to require that the club be registered as a non-profit with the state, and that was accomplished. Bank balance was $5005.04 and there was $100 in petty cash.
Business completed at 7:20pm.
Programs:
- 7:20-7:50pm: A summary of programming the Ubiquiti Nanostation M2 for use as a wi-fi mesh network node was presented by John Armstrong, KF7UMK, and some discussion ensued regarding the Rogue Valley Mesh Networking node-rollout effort currently underway. More info will eventually be available at the roguemesh.org website.
- 7:50-8:05pm: Break for coffee, snacks and eyeball QSO’s.
- 8:05-9:00pm: A tutorial on Antenna Modelling with the 4NEC2 software was presented by Tom McDermott, N5EG, and we got to see how to set up the antenna geometry and settings, for modelling some dipoles at various heights above ground. The program then displayed the feed-impedance, SWR, and 3D radiation pattern. Frequency sweep X-Y plots of impedance and SWR were also shown, as well as Smith-charts. Tom mentioned that the antenna modelling accuracy is good, but is generally an upper limit, and that any boasts of better-than-modelled real-world performance should be viewed with skepticism. Interest was shown for more tutorials on 4NEC2, and currently, a hands-on class is being offered at 6pm on Tuesday, Feb 20 at the Naversen Meeting Room of the Jacksonville Library, 340 C St.
Meeting was adjourned at 9pm and informal discussions continued on for some time.
