Category Archives: Uncategorized

A sad day

By Uncategorized

Sept. 11th, 2018

It’s Time to Retire.

It’s been a wonderful 36 years for us at Radio City and we have decided to retire and close Radio City. We are so thankful for the many years of support and we have enjoyed working you, our customers. The technical, intelligent and polite conversations plus advice have been invigorating, thus making this decision extremely difficult for us.

We appreciate all the teachers, Elmers, VE examiners, ham and astronomy clubs efforts in growing new ham radio operators and amateur astronomers into our special community.

We will also miss going to and supporting amateur radio and astronomy clubs all over MN and IA at their events. We will greatly miss all the friendships we have been privileged to maintain with many of our customers.

We plan to exit by this year’s end or a bit sooner as we empty our shelves of new and used materials.

Upcoming Events:

Sidewalk Sale:

Our final sidewalk sale is this Saturday Sept 15th. We are digging deep for this event. It will be held rain or shine. Currently forecasts are calling for a mild 85F with just a 20% chance of showers.

Final Goodbye Tour:

We will be at Smartfest in Cologne, MN on Saturday September 22nd. We will also be in Carlton MN for their Fallfest on Saturday September 29th.

Goodbye Party:

Please come on by on Saturday October 6thfor our good bye party. We will of course have cake and coffee for everybody.

Other Necessary Details:

Service:

We will complete servicing items we currently have in the service dept. We will not be accepting any additional ‘Out of warranty’ items. ‘In warranty’ items will be still be processed by Radio City per normal until about October 31st, 2018.

Consignment :

We will no longer accept more items for consignment. All items that have NOT been sold need to be picked up the week of Oct 13th, 2018. We will consider all items not picked up by then to be abandoned.

In closing we will very much miss all of you and perhaps there is someone out there interested in running the store under New Management.

Thanks again for all your support,

Dan and Maline Fish

 

Pennfest

By Uncategorized

Just a reminder to everyone that this Sunday is Pennfest in Richfield. It runs from 12 to 5 p.m. Once it starts, Penn Ave. will be closed off so if you are able to help with setup than be there early to park, help set up, and than find a close parking spot off of the street. We are going to be partnering with the Richfield CERT group. Our club will be located near the Richfield water tower. Once again anyone who is able to make it to show to the public a little bit of what our club can do and what amateur radio is about would be appreciated. If you cannot make it than please monitor the 444.475 repeater so we can demonstrate to the public how ham radio works.

August meeting minutes

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Thank you to the members who showed up for the August meeting.

The main focus of our meeting was to prepare for Pennfest and our GOTA event in September. For Pennfest we are teaming up with Richfield CERT and will demonstrate what ham radio is. Pennfest is September 16th from 12-5.

Our GOTA event will be the following Saturday, September 22nd from 11-3 at the Richfield community center.

Finally the Twin cities FM club is having their last chance swap meet a at the West Medicine Lake Community Center.

please be sure to check in on our Thursday night next and the next meeting will be September 19 at the Richfield community center at 7 p.m. It is after Pennfest but the Wednesday before the GOTA event. I hope to see as many people come and participate as possible.

July meeting minutes

By Meeting Minutes, Uncategorized

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to the June meeting.

Tom KE0KTD (President)

Paul KE0QXV

Brian KE0MCV

Mike KE0GZT (vice president)

Don KC0TJ (club advisor)

Jeff KG7ONF (secretary)

Sam (future ham radio operator)

Meeting minutes -Field Day was a great success. Thanks to Bill the Fox hunt was a great time. 63 people showed up and we made 187 contacts, 60 of which were from Herman. Lewis had many compliments for his cooking. People were talking about the food after field day and are looking forward to next year. Our club model for field day is a great example that other clubs are interested in following to get the hobby to grow in the community.

we are planning on having a setup for Penn fest in Richfield on September 16th and we are planning a Get On The Air (GOTA) event the Saturday after on September 22nd. It will be from 12-4 p.m. and we are looking to have it at the community center.

Don gave us a demonstration on the HT’s of the second and third harmonics of a Radio signal which was pretty interesting to learn about.

we are still having a problem with interference on our repeater. Keep monitoring the repeater and report it if there is any interference.

Finally the club is trying to get the study group going again. more details to come but let us know if you want to join us.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting and hearing you on Thursday during the club net. Our next meeting is on August 15th at the Richfield community center at 7pm.

Basic operations

By Fun, Uncategorized

Basic Ham Radio Operations…

Simplex…

      Communications method to talk directly to another station with no additional aides. 

 

Equipment need:

Is each person needs a transmitter & receiver on the same frequency.

 

(KA∅AAA) TX & RX <————-> 146.520

(KB∅BBB) TX & RX <————-> 146.520

 

Advantages: more private, more local, can be used anywhere, & simple programming

Disadvantages: needs high power, not used a lot, & limited range

 

 

Half Duplex… 

     A common repeater system. This has one common TX frequency & one common RX frequency. 

 

Equipment needed:

Everyone transmits on one frequency & everyone receives on second frequency with another source to receive everyone’s transmitted signals on one frequency and send it back out to another set frequency. 

 

(KA∅AAA) TX ———–> 449.475 (Repeater input)

(KA∅AAA) RX <———- 444.475 (Repeater output)

(KB∅BBB) TX ———–> 449.475 (Repeater input)

(KB∅BBB) RX <——— 444.475 (Repeater output)

 

Advantages: If you able to hit the repeater you can use all the repeaters resources allowing an extended ranges to a weak signals or unheard directly, have more likely to have another person on, & less power needed to talk.

Disadvantages: Repeater must be in a good location, can be busy, doesn’t work everywhere, & may have restricted access.

 

 

Full Duplex… 

     This is most common with telephone calls. You can talk & listen and the other person talk & listen at the same time.

 

Equipment needed:

A low powered transmitter on one band and a receiver another band. with everything reversed on the second station.

 

(KA∅AAA) TX ——–> 147.555

(KA∅AAA) RX <——– 446.000

(KB∅BBB) TX ——–> 446.000

(KB∅BBB) RX <——– 147.555 

 

 Advantages: Have real time updates, may be more exclusive, you can throw off the other persons concentration, send multiple information simultaneously, & kind of fun.

Disadvantages: each person needs 2 radios on 2 different bands, your location needs to be close to the other station, you can get possible feedback, This is harder on the radios & takes a bit of skill.

 

 

Hope this helps everyone. If you want a topic to have posted please email us at: W0RRC.RARC@Gmail.com

Field day and upcoming meeting

By Uncategorized

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it to the June meeting. We went over the final details for Field Day. Field Day was once again a big success. Ben from Radio city came by and took photos of our site and you can them at www.radioinc.com as well as other Field Day sites that he visited that day. Our next meeting is July 18 at 7 p.m. at the Richfield community center. I hope to see everyone there.

iss

By Uncategorized

ISS RXed by KC0TJ early Sunday!

I was scanning on a big VHF band opening early Sunday and I jumped out of my half a sleep slumber when some strange tones came from my radio.  I realized this was SSTV signal (Wow!) I haven’t heard that on radio for a long time. I went to check the freq and it was 145.800? I had thought it might be from out of space? I also went to turn on my other radio to see if I could decode this message. When I was more alert I quickly turned on my MMSSTV program and the sound was set to the wrong radio. (Crap!) I changed that when I was getting nothing on my PC and half the picture was already done. (Crap!) I saw mode was pd140 and then picture stopped. I had no cw ID or other encrypted info. (Crap!) I then try screen copied the partial image in hopes to figure out what I had. Then it started again and I was ready for it all. I had to keep adjusting my squelch to RX.  I went to my cell phone app to find the ISS and it was already starting over Lake Superior. I also tried to Googled what frequencies they used and mode and everything was checked to what I had everything set to. I realized afterwards that I left my antenna aimed North East and it was an extra bonus to get the whole picture see below. This was also one of the ones used by them per the website link below, and I did log it on that website.

 

73 Don KC0TJ

 

http://spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/index.php

 

Some Contest fun after FD

By Field Day, Uncategorized, ,

After Field Day fun!

I, KCoTJ had fun working many contests that was around the forth and all was easy to do. The one I really liked was 13 Colonies and can’t believe it has been going for 10 Years. I did the contest right after my dad passed away. It was my way to learn how to do HF without my Dad’s help and I was better than I thought back then. I worked every station easily I aimed the antenna and tuned up the stations. I was learning that even with a pile-up I was the strong one. I found my dad had a great tuned antennas and made me a quick study. http://www.13colonies.net   However this year I mixed it up a little. I decided that all my cantacts would be 5watts I was very good at that, but the bonus was Great Britain and he was doing a lot of non-phone or voice calls. So I struggled and tried to hear him there no success. He finally near the end went back on voice and I could hear him. I had a phone app that WEBSDR I scanned one that I could hear him and it work fine, but I was noticing that there was no delays from the stations I could hear on both. So my great idea was to see if I could hear myself nope, but he was able to hear me with a 59 report. I RXed him on my cell 57 to 59 and conform my info. Yep-pi a clean sweep, I no longer was qrp but I made all my Qs. So in my haste I found that he was on D-Star earlier, I sent a DXcluster that I was on D-Star REF063B which he was on 10 mins prior. Next thing there he was. I set my radio to 5watts and QRP status was back. Below is a clip of the next station working him. remember this contest is always during the week of 4th of July for 1 weeks time.

 

I wanted to give a shout out all that make this a fun contest….

K2A, K2B, K2C, K2D, K2E, K2F, K2G, K2H, K2I, K2J, K2K, K2L, K2M, & BONUSES WM3PEN, GB13COL.

13 Colonies Contest

Some of the other things  was…

Calgary Stampede, Battle of Gettysburg Anniversary special event, & THE WORLD BANK GROUP STAFF AMATEUR RADIO CLUB, WHISKEY REBELLION FESTIVAL.

I also tried a different modes that I haven’t done while trying to get GB13COL to my log.

FT-8, D-Star, *PSK31, & *CW

* Never done it before, but watched my Dad do it.

 

 

May meeting minutes

By Uncategorized

I thank everyone who was able to come to this past month’s meeting.

Tom (president) KT0KTD

David KE0INK

Matt (advisor) N0TNL

Craig WB0WXN

Paul KE0QXB

Jeff (KG7ONF)

Hermon W0HJS

Mike (Vice President) KE0GZT

Don (adviser) KC0TJ

Brian KE0MCV

Justin AE0RF

Old Minutes/Old business-went over the minutes of the last meeting. Finer Meats Moblie canteen will be setting up in our parking lot for field day for food for guests. Mike (KD8JIR) will bring his ham radio in his RV for field day for a demonstration for how to use Ham Radio for people who like to travel. Bill from BARA is looking to set up a 3A setup for Field Day. Bill might have side gigs for field day such as moon bounce and CW (Morse code), and Jeff will bring his homemade tape measure yagi antenna to for field day. Coffee will be provided by 5 watt.

New business-Luis will be taking money for ribs up until the meeting before field in Field Day in June. Anybody willing to help with anything for Field Day will be a big help, especially with making sure we have enough supplies for cleanup, setup and take down for field day. Don will be doing demonstrations for programming different radios throughout Field Day. VHF/UHF sprint contest on June 9/10. The model of our club is expanding. A club member who has moved to another state is asking for advice on how to get a club in his area started and model it after our club. Don has met with the President of the ARRL and the President was curious on how we have a growing membership in a hobby that isn’t as popular as it used to be. “Crazy ideas” such as games like Battle Ship on radio make it fun for people to get on the air and play. Check out This Week in Tech. (TWIT) they have a show called Ham Nation, an excellent show about Ham Radio. Celebrities such as Tim Allen have got their license and has made the hobby more popular. Project Intercept is taking youth and trying to give them skills to make them more employable. They want to help kids get their license and Tom has been approached to try and help make this possible. Matt (N0TNL) received the Robert Dunbar Award from the Civil Air Patrol for his work with the CAP in communications.

Our last meeting before Field Day is June 20th. I hope to see as many people as possible to go over any final details of field day. This is our chance to show everybody what our club is capable of doing and get more people involved in this exciting hobby.

Meeting minutes and upcoming meeting

By Uncategorized

Thank you for everyone who attended last month’s meeting.

Jeff KG7ONF

Paul KE0QXV

Tom KE0KTD

Herman W0HJS

Mike KE0GZT

Don KC0TJ

Luis no call sign yet.

We went over old minutes

Went over any old business

New business:

We need to get a count of how many radio’s we have for field day

Lewis is coming again for field day and here is the menu

Ribs (3 bones and 3 sides)

Pulled pork sandwiches

Beans, Mac and cheese, corn bread,

$15 per plate.

We need to monitor our repeater. Tom checked in on a impromptu net on Easter and whoever was running it cut it off as soon as he checked in.There is nothing wrong with other people wanting to do nets on our repeater but our leadership would like to know and it’s a bit odd when people stop the net when someone from our club checks in.

We finally went over the logging software for field day.

Our next meeting is May 16, at 7 pm. at the Richfield community center. We plan on having sign ups for field day for different things that we need for field day. I hope to see a lot of people there to help us plan for field day.