CCARC NEWS 12-32

CCARC Club News 15/09/2012 | 0

CCARC NEWS 12-32

THE PERIODIC NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTRAL COAST AMATEUR RADIO CLUB

ISSUE No 12-32 15th. September 2012

In this Issue:

WHATS HAPPENING AT THE CCARC ?? !!
Oceania DX Contest sponsorship.
New Contests Manager.

1. WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE CCARC

– KIT BUILDING – THAT’S WHAT!

As mentioned in the last edition of CCARC News, the projects team is looking at kits that members can build in a short time. While the Genesis SDR transceiver was indeed a great product when finished, it was a long and complex project. It has been agreed to promote several small projects, that you can see the results from in a couple of weeks or so.

Several of these are planned or actually on-the-go. Some members have leapt in to be the “guinea pigs”, to test the kits and to build up knowledge to how the units should be built so that they can help other members.

Jim VK2LC has completed a 40m SSB QRP transceiver over a period of just over a week – probably only about 5-6 hours of construction time. He aligned it at the project group meeting last night (Friday 14th. September) and it is an impressive unit for something so simple. The receive side when connected to the clubs 80m OCF worked fine and we “think” we were partially heard by a US special event station in the middle of a pile up (and that’s with only 10w output). More testing and comparisons in a portable configuration are planned.

Last night I started building the 20m “brother” of the 40m kit Jim built which had arrived with me earlier in the day. I hope to have this finished before the next Project team meeting in two weeks time on Friday 28th. from 7:30pm at the club rooms, so we can align and test this unit also.

Details of both these kits are here – if you decide to order one, please mention that you heard about it through the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club – you wont get any discount unfortunately but you may get faster supply (both Jim’s and my kits came in 5 working days – which is very good).

Col. VK2ZCO is well on with his antenna analyser, this is not a complete kit of parts you can buy rather a magazine article from a few years ago. This means a printed circuit board needs to be created and how we can help other members (who don’t like etching PC boards) is being looked into.

Col. VK2ZCO also has a Jaycar kit for an 80m DSB transceiver that he promises to build as well, so we’ll have QRP rig kit options for 20, 40 & 80m (if the Jaycar kit is still available or can be reproduced).

Last but not least is Sam, the team leader who has found a Frequency counter kit (FC3) (here) for just $60 plus shipping and is asking any members who wish to order the kit at the same time as him to contact him via email as faber.sam @ gmail.com so that he can see if he can negotiate a discount or at least a combined shipping cost.

So you can see there are lots of thing already moving but we also have some other suggested building actions in some cases related to the kits above, for example Col. VK2ZCO is working on a design for a switchable 1:1 and 4:1 Balun to use with portable wire antennas.

Jim VK2LC has suggested we should create some squid pole vertical antennas that can be used with the portable QRP rigs. Discussion has been around how best we supply lightweight 13.8V power for the QRP rigs when portable as well. So as you can see LOTS HAPPENING!

Why not get involved? Please contact any of the people mentioned above, or Leon VK2BLV or myself and we can tell you where to go from here.

All of this activity needs to be recorded for posterity and that is planned to happen in a new regular Projects Column in the club’s Smoke Signals quarterly magazine. It will go into far more detail than is possible here with more pictures and experiences of the builders.

For those comfortable with technology, we also have a Projects Forum on this website (here) where technical questions and/or issues can be discussed between the project team meetings. Suggestions for new kits can be made there as well.

In Short

G E T B U I L D I N G W I T H Y O U R F R I E N D S F R O M T H E C C A R C !

2. Oceania DX Contest sponsorship.

The CCARC has been accepted as a sponsor for the “Top entrant from VK in PHONE Single Operator All Band Low Power” category of this long running and well respected and one of the most active ANZ+Pacific islands contests that occurs each year in October. The SSB section on the first full weekend of the month and the CW section on the second. Our sponsorship money pays for an attractive plaque to be created and sent to the winner of the section. See the type of plaque and list of sponsors here. Previously there was no award for this section of the contest, specifically for QRP stations. Why not get on during the contest and give some points out on one of the weekends? The full rules can be found here and the OceaniaDX contest website is here.

3. New CCARC Contests Manager.

Still on the contest theme, I have been asked to take on a new “contest manager” role for the club, which I am happy to accept as well as enjoying contests, I feel one way to publicise the CCARC more is through our operation in contests. Don’t worry the club will never be a “pure” contest club and I doubt if we’ll ever win any of the large contests. Contests do provide the opportunity to get the club name and call signs out there to existing radio amateurs in the area who are not members of the club or who left in the past and may consider coming back to the club. Do you realise how many aspects of Amateur Radio the CCARC covers? – QRP, QRO, Contests, Repeaters, kit construction, ATV, digital modes, Wicen (through association with WICEN CNC of several of our members). Those are just the ones I can think of, I’m sure there are more.

You know, this club has a LOT TO OFFER, we just need to tell people!

For clarification, the Contest Manager role does not control the radio shack, that is in the very capable hands of Tim, VK2AAA as Station Manager.