May 3, 2018 Club Meeting

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Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 7:00 PM New Red Cross Building, 1050A Crater Lake Ave, Medford

Program:

1. How-To: Broadband an 80 meter Dipole, Tom McDermott, N5EG
2. Operating CW, Allan Taylor, K7GT

This How-To program will show several different methods to achieve an acceptable SWR using a dipole across the entire 75 / 80 m band without requiring an antenna tuner.

FT8 CW operation used to the be the main route to ham radio HF operation. CW enjoys a significant performance advantage compared to SSB, and permits contacts with simpler antennas, simpler equipment, and lower power levels. Contesting with CW is usually less stressful than phone due to the narrow bandwidth of CW and narrower receiver filters making the band seem much less crowded.

Allan Taylor, K7GT is the club president and a mostly-CW operator. He is an accomplished CW contester.

Announced in the May 2018 issue of The Repeater.

Meeting Notes

From the June 2018 issue of The Repeater.

RVARC Minutes 2018-05-03 meeting at the New Red Cross Building, 1050 Crater Lake Ave, Medford.

Program1: How to broadband an 80M dipole

Program2: CW & Morse Code

Meeting was called to order at 7:04pm by RVARC President Allan Taylor, K7GT. About 23 members and guests were in attendance.

There was some discussion of finding an alternate location for RVARC meetings, as the new Red Cross meeting room was a bit small and hot, and parking was limited. Nothing better was found as yet.

Regarding our Field Day location, Mike Bach, WB6FFC, said that ScienceWorks will require a fee this year, and he is waiting to hear the amount. The Ashland city permit paperwork has been started.

If we intend to use the 20x40 tent, Mike will investigate if permits are needed.

Other locations mentioned were Dodge Bridge, but it has some bureaucratic problems. Agate Lake was also a possibility.

The East side of Agate Lake will be the location for this month’s 7QP contest, May 5&6. It will start at 6am Saturday.

Treasurer’s report: Bank balance is $4076.17

Scott, NA7OM, made a motion to allocate $150 of club funds for 7QP expenses. Raoul, KD6DKA, seconded. The motion passed on voice vote.

At 7:21pm, 1st Presentation: ‘How to broadband an 80M dipole’ by Tom, N5EG. There are two categories to consider, and their 4 combinations: Easy/Difficult to deploy and Works/Doesn’t Work well. For the 80M band, we need about 13.5% bandwidth and a regular dipole gives high SWR at the band edges. Some options are:

• Use a wire cage: 3’ diameter cage, 130’ long. Too big, too heavy.
• Use a Double Bazooka: twice 43’ coax + end wires. High wind load, Solar deterioration, not good.
• Use an Open Sleeve Dipole: Needs a 9:1 balun, fair SWR over band. (reference: Rudy Severns, N6LF)
• Use a Terminated Folded Dipole: 800 ohms impedance, 13dB loss at 80M, : 950W lost per 1kW of input power.
• Use 3dB Resistive Attenuator: 3dB max loss, < 3:1 SWR over the band.
• Use Coax Broadband Matching: < 2:1 SWR over the band, ~1dB loss, noisy without balun. Easy and Works Well. (reference: “A simple broadband dipole for 80 meters”, Frank Witt, AI1H, p1k.arrl.org/cgi-bin/topdf.cgi?id=88700&pub=qst )

The antenna proper is a center-fed half-wavelength dipole with a 1:1 current balun at the feed-point, and the transmission line is segmented into an electrical one wavelength of 50-ohm coax and an electrical quarter wavelength of 75-ohm coax at the transmitter end. See Frank Witt’s document online for all the details, or your QST, Sep 1993 issue.

At 7:41pm break for coffee and visiting

At 8:05pm, 2nd Presentation: CW & Morse Code, Allan, K7GT. (reference: New Morse presentation May 2018.doc, available from Allan.)

Original Morse code invented by Samuel F B Morse around 1840. It had dot, dash, long dash, and very long dash. Original Morse became known as American Morse, and used the sounder (click-based). Original Morse was changed into Continental Morse in 1865, then became International Morse, which was tone-based. American Morse remained the standard for U.S. landline telegraph companies, as it could be sent about 5% faster than International Morse, and was used for railroad telegraphy in the United States through the 1960’s.

CQD had been the maritime distress signal but had proven difficult for green operators. At 12:15 AM on Apr. 15, 1911, the main operator of the Titanic (Phillips) used SOS for the first time.

Weak signal S/N limits in a 2.5KHz BW (From: “Work the World with WSJT-X”, Dr. Joe Taylor): SSB +10dB, CW -15dB, FT8 -21dB, JT65 -25dB, WSPR -31dB

Biggest improvement is going from phone to CW.

Types of keys:

• straight : classic up/down manual keyer
• bug : semi-automatic, dot streams were automatic, dash was manual. (Vibroplex)
• electronic: originally single lever, tube operated from the 1940’s, solid state from the 1960’s, IC based from the 1970’s.
• Keyboard : keyboard to code output via computer logging program, usually
• iambic : double paddle, if both paddles held closed simultaneously it would send alternating dahs and dahs.

Radios in the 1980’s started having internal keyers, but the best external keyers are better. Newer radios have serial-port or USB inputs for keying.

At higher code speeds of above 15 wpm, headphone use becomes mandatory, due to reflections from walls confusing things. Use comfortable headphones, like Sony MDR-V600.

The ins-and-outs of QSK, or full break-in, operation was gone over, and some equipment reviews and recommendations were made. Get the MSWord document from Allan for all the details.

Learning and becoming proficient with CW / Morse:

1. Start young. Sorry, too late?
2. K7QO has a Morse course.
3. Learn by the sound of the characters.
4. Help from SKCC and FISTS CW club.
5. For higher speed help, CWOps and their CW Academy (long waiting list, though)
6. Get on the air and use it. Tech licensees have CW privileges at 200W for 3525-3600, 7025-7125, 21025-21200, 28000-28300 kHz, and in VHF and UHF bands. Also lots of room for local play on all VHF CW subbands. There is significant slow speed activity above 7100 kHz.
7. Go back to 6. Get on the air.
8. Once you have mastered the basics, any of the following trainers will push you along when the bands are dead:
   • a. Just Learn Morse Code ( www.justlearnmorsecode.com/ )
   • b. RufzXP ( www.rufzxp.net/ )
   • c. Morse Runner ( www.dxatlas.com/morserunner/ )
   • d. Seiuchy ( Seiuchy.macache.com )

Allan ended with: CW has a personal touch that digital modes seldom if ever have. After all, it is people rather than machines that matter. Join me in the CW band segments…

At 8:52pm, there was a chance to get hands-on with a table full of keyers and have some Q&A. Comments brought out that having music training in elementary school helped in code learning. And 16 weeks for 0 to 20 wpm with 99% accuracy.

Meeting adjourned at 9:00pm

Board Meeting

A board meeting was held 7:00 PM on Monday, May 14 to decide which Field Day location to use. Board members in attendance were : Allan Taylor, President, John Laybourne, Vice President, Mike Bach, Treasurer, and John Armstrong, Secretary.

The locations considered were : 1) ScienceWorks in Ashland, and 2) The west side of Agate Lake (not the same location as 7QP) .

Allan started with a list of the pros and cons for each location. The list of Pros for the ScienceWorks location was quite a bit longer than the one for Agate lake. The biggest issue for the ScienceWorks site is the fee they will charge this year.

Two RVARC members have offered to reimburse RVARC for it’s pro-rata portion of the ScienceWorks fee for this year. Based on that the board decided to go with ScienceWorks this year only, and will look for a different location in future years.

Mike was asked to start immediately on getting the insurance paperwork designating ScienceWorks as the named insured for the Field Day weekend.

The west side of Agate lake has a much larger parking area, vehicle turn around and open space than the east side. It may prove suitable for future years. It was not available for 7QP weekend due to an RC Airplane event previously scheduled on the west side that weekend.

The board asked the newsletter editor to run a notice in the Newsletter that there would be a vote at the June meeting authorizing nonrecurring Field Day expense(s) exceeding $150.

The board meeting was adjourned at 8:03 PM.