February 1, 2024 Club Meeting
Thursday, February 1, 2024 at 7:00 PM Medford Police Department Community Room, 219 S. Ivy St., Medford, OR
Program: Kiwi SDR + DX and Propagation Spotting networks, Scott Cummings, NA7OM; 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Tom McDermott, N5EG
We have two shorter programs this month—the first is on DX spotting using the Kiwi SDR. This is a network of spotting receivers that automatically post sports to various DX clusters.
The second program is on 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The cost of 10 GbE has declined rapidly in the last couple years, and is now readily available and practical for the home network. However 10 GbE has some differences compared to 1 GbE.
The Kiwi SDR receiver is a low cost HF Software Define Radio. A network of these has been deployed to collect HF amateur radio signals, decode them, and send the spots to various on-line databases in real time. These are generally known as spotting sites, DX clusters, Propagation reporting sites, and others.
10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) has declined in cost dramatically over the last few years making it practical in the home network, and for amateur radio applications. For example, a single channel HF digital radio produces about 2 gigabits/second of data, and a dual-channel radio about 4 gigabits/second. This exceeds the capacity of a 1 GbE link. 10 GbE find use in SDR, in home video editing, and in more performant data backup and file copying.
Announced in the February 2024 issue of The Repeater.
Meeting Notes
From the March 2024 issue of The Repeater.
2024-02-01 RVARC Meeting Minutes
7:02pm Meeting called to order by President Don Bennett, KG7BP.
25 attendees
Treasurer’s report: Checking account balance is $5207.09 plus any new member fees collected tonight.
7:07pm New Business:
Tom, N5EG, needs the new members list from Mike by next month.
Bruce, KG7TUO, said the last tech & general class had 12 students to start, and ended with 3 new Tech’s, 1 General upgrade, and 2 new Generals.
Don: next month’s exam is at the meeting location at 5pm, but after that we’ll try to have exams at the Sage Road location on a Saturday, instead of before the meetings.
Mike, W6FFC, asked if we could schedule a swap meet for March at the Sage Rd facility. It is in the works, and an announcement will be forthcoming.
(Editor’s note: CARE has scheduled the swap meet, it will be held behind Star Body Works, see the announcement and flyer later in this newsletter).
2024 Field Day is being organized by the CARE club, and looks like it will be held at Lud’s place in Sams Valley. K7MFR can be used for GOTA, and Amy volunteered to try to get a 1x1 for field day use.
There was discussion on possible broadcast of meetings on zoom or YouTube, each with advantages and disadvantages. Research is ongoing.
Submitted, John, KF7UMK, Secretary
