January 3, 2019 Club Meeting
Thursday, January 3, 2019 at 7:00 PM Medford Police Department Community Room, 219 S. Ivy St., Medford, OR
Program: VHF/UHF Base Station Antenna, Edison Fong, WB6IQN
Edison Fong will present on VHF and UHF base station antennas that you can build yourself.
Biography: Ed Fong was first licensed in 1968 as WN6IQN. He later upgraded to Extra Class (passing the 20 WPM CW) with his present call of WB6IQN. He obtained the BSEE and MSEE degrees from the Univ. of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. from the Univ. of San Francisco. A Senior Member of the IEEE, he has 12 patents and over 40 published papers and books in the area of communications and integrated circuit design. Presently, he is employed by the University of California (previously at Berkeley and presently at Santa Cruz –Silicon Valley) as an instructor teaching graduate classes in RF design and High Speed interface design. During his 35 year career he has performed worked for Motorola, National Semiconductor, Phillips Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices.
Announced in the January 2019 issue of The Repeater.
Meeting Notes
From the February 2019 issue of The Repeater.
2019-01-03 RVARC Meeting Minutes Medford PD Community Room
The meeting was called to order by President John Laybourne, W8WOM at 7:08pm
We had around 21 attendees, with at least one visitor, Jeff Louie, KJ7BQL. Welcome, Jeff!
We got right into the presentation, via skype, from Edison Fong, WB6IQN, currently at UC Santa Cruz teaching graduate classes in RF design. The subject was on his Dual- & Triband J-pole antennas, their history and design. The DBJ-1 and DBJ-2 are Dual-band (144-148 MHz and 440-450 MHz) vertical and rollup antennas. The TBJ-1 is the triband, vertical antenna for 2m / 1.25m(220 MHz) / 70cm. (Patent #9 608 336)
Some key points made were:
- Just matching the antenna impedance (a low SWR ) does not automatically mean good antenna performance.
- Ground plane radials are not absolutely necessary for good performance of a vertical antenna.
- Watch (design) that the elevation pattern of the antenna has a maximum near horizontal, for best terrestrial propagation.
- A choke at the feedline is necessary for the safety of your rig’s output if the SWR gets too high, but it is better to know your antenna-system characteristics and stay inbounds, rather than unnecessarily waste RF heating your choke.
All three antennas have good performance, small size, and are low cost, so may be worth having for your portable needs.
The volume of information presented was too much to show here, so refer to these web links for the details:
A copy of the Feb. 2003 QST article on the DBJ-1 can be found at: http://www.work-sat.com/Antennas_files/FONG-DBJ1.pdf
Articles from Feb. 2003 QST, March 2007 QST, March 2017 QST, Summer 2012 CQ VHF, Presentation slides and more can be found from the Durham FM Association at: http://www.dfma.org/pdf/EdFong2017.pdf
Also, you can look up ‘Ed Fong’ on Youtube for recordings similar to our presentation, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_IBni6vvMc
Ed’s antennas, various accessories and the CountyComm GP-5/SSB will also be the subject of a group-buy at the upcoming February meeting. Don’t miss this opportunity.
With the presentation completed at 8:10pm, the meeting took a break for coffee, snacks, and visiting.
Meeting resumed at 8:39pm with the treasurer’s report. Treasurer Mike Bach, WB6FFC, reported a bank balance of $4407.47, plus $45 petty cash and $10 paid dues for 2019 memberships, totaling $4462.47
Old Business:
Scott, NA7OM, said Ellis’ callsign K7MFR was available until July and Mike, WB6FFC, said he will pursue it.
Tom, N5EG, said W7DTA was renewed for Logbook of the World.
Pat, KD7MPA, and John, W8WOM, each had over 100 contacts at the FT8 roundup, Dec. 1-2, and noted that WV4P logged 693!
New Business:
There is the ARRL RTTY Roundup contest the weekend of Jan. 5-6, with FT8 now allowable using the new WSJT-X 2.0 program’s contesting features, described in the ‘Quick Start Guide to WSJT-X 2.0’ at: http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Quick_Start_WSJT-X_2.0.pdf
More info is also available at: http://www.arrl.org/rtty-roundup
Pat, KD7MPA, announced that the Rogue HackLab is planning their ‘Electronics and Old Technology Swap Meet’ at the Armadillo Technical Institute, 106 N. Rose St., Phoenix, OR, but recent schedule conflicts have required finding a new date. So far, Feb. 23rd is looking likely. see http://oguehacklab.org/pages/events for updates.
All were happy to hear word that Dan Curtis, N6WN, is having improving health. Yea!
Don Bennett, KG7BP, asked for more VEC helpers. Contact him if you can volunteer.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:54pm
Board Meeting
RVARC held a board meeting on January 8th, 2019. Started at 7:00 PM, went to about 8:30 PM.
Three board members and two guests were in attendance:
- John Laybourne (President),
- Scott Cummings (VP),
- John Armstrong (Secretary),
- Pat Cunningham (guest),
- Tom McDermott (guest).
Topics:
- Details of the club group purchase from Edison Fong was discussed. The deadline, and how to handle payments was discussed. This was confirmed with Mike Bach (treasurer) after the meeting.
- The rest of the meeting was taken up brainstorming potential programs for the rest of the year.
- A total of 16 programs were discussed, many of them won’t ‘make’ but hopefully 8 will.
- John Laybourne has contacted several hams that offer Skype programs to secure commitments for various meeting dates.
