The Chawed Rag – July 2023

President’s Update

Greetings RWK!

Well despite the multiple 100+ degree days, I hope you have been able to get in some fun radio activities. We had the annual 13 Colonies Event, The CQ VHF Contest, and the IARU World Championship, so hopefully there was something to get you on the radio.

Locally, we had what I believe to be a record foxhunting weekend last week. Between Fox#1 and Wheatley, we had 41 finds! That’s the most that I can remember for a single weekend, of course it helped that there was a large post Hungry Hams Breakfast hunting group with at least two new people. As a reminder, if you’re unsure how to get started with Foxhunting, most any of the regulars will be glad to help you get started, and after the monthly breakfast is a great time.

If you operated Field Day from your home QTH (in addition to the RWK Field Day event), you’ve got just a couple of days to submit your entry. As of now, we have 15 entries that have tagged “Richardson Wireless Klub”.

For those that missed the Field Day 1:1 Choke Balun build that Bob KG5WRY wrangled, we have a few kits that are available for sale (at meetings and lunches) for $30. With Bob’s well-documented instructions, you can build this (for less than half the price of a commercial product)! It’s the perfect starting piece for building your own fan dipole

I hope you enjoyed this month’s QRV Tech presentation on SDRs (Software Defined Radios)? There were around 30 people, which is right on target for this series. There are lots of notes and a copy of the slides on the QRV Tech post on our website. Unfortunately we had some technical difficulties in recording the session, but I’ll be happy to re-record it if there is interest.

And speaking of meetings, Dr. Fong has again offered RWK the opportunity to make a Group Buy of his antennas at sale prices. Let Michael WT9V know if you are interested or check the RWK website for an announcement as soon as we are ready. Next month’s meeting should be something that it of interest to most all of us – finding and mitigating various sources of HF noise.

Thanks for being a RWK Member! – 73 de KD4C (feedback: president@k5rwk.org)

Please share any interesting ham-related stuff you’ve seen or have been doing. Doesn’t matter how raw or badly written, we’ll make you look good and help you show off what you’ve been doing – see the right column for details. With over 300 members, if everyone in the klub sent just one contribution to the Chawed Rag each year, we would have plenty of content for each issue.

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This Month’s Chawed Rag Features

ARRL Board of Directors Votes to Raise Membership Dues and Modify QST Delivery

By Chip Coker KD4C

The ARRL Board of Directors recently completed their second annual meeting and, as foreshadowed by the member survey held in May, they have voted to increase member dues to $59 per year starting January 1, 2024, as announced by President Rick Roderick K5UR. They also voted to make a print subscription to one of their four publications (QST, On The Air, QEX, or NCJ) an added surcharge above basic membership. The amount of the surcharge was not included in the statement. On-line access to all of the magazines will continue to be available as a basic member benefit. Also included in the announcement was that Life Membership applications would be “frozen” until the “revenue neutral” cost of the memberships could be determined.

CEO David Minster NA2AA stated during the member survey that the ARRL has been operating at a loss for several years against rising operational and printing costs and that membership dues had not increased in many years, so this announcement is not unexpected.

Note: The following is my opinion.

As I have stated previously, I still see the need for a National Ham Radio organization and I still think that you should be a member of ARRL if you can afford it. That said, these changes make it even harder to do that.

There’s a need for a national organization to monitor and fight for our precious spectrum rights, as evidenced by the recent discussions around the recent High-Speed Stock Trading NPRM that has gotten some publicity as of late. That’s just the latest example of how organizations with deep pockets can do endless lobbying to the FCC and Congress to get their hands on some precious spectrum. While this latest NPRM does not go after actual amateur radio allocations (and I’m not sure that the “hype” around this specific NPRM is justified), if it *had* gone after ham allocations, it likely would have succeeded and we would have lost spectrum. Why? Because lobbying the FCC and Congress is a VERY EXPENSIVE proposition. ARRL used to have a full-time attorney/lobbyist on staff (his name escapes me) to interface with the FCC and select members of Congress. Now, I believe they have outsourced that function to an outside law firm on just a part-time basis. Would I pay more in membership if I thought it would support better legislative affairs for ham radio? You bet!

The other failing effort within the ARRL is support of local clubs, which I believe are the lifeblood of promoting and extending the life of a somewhat-endangered hobby. ARRL has a “member services” function, but they do not seem to provide many services to clubs, which are the best collections of active members in the hobby. They could really leverage their effectiveness if they could find a way to make local radio clubs an extension of a well-functioning national organization. Instead they have increasingly isolated the organization behind a publishing firewall in Newington, leaving clubs to attempt to do the work of promoting ham radio on their own. Once again, would I pay more if I though this would change? You bet!

Do I think that any of that will get better? I have hopes that it will. But steering a aircraft-carrier-sized 100 year old organization like the ARRL take a lot of water.

There is a NEED for a national organization for ham radio – A big need. Is the ARRL what we need, and is it worth the money? Not today, it’s not. But I have hopes that it can change to be more efficient, more responsive, and more focused. So I will continue to be an ARRL member, and you should too, if you are able. Canceling your membership and strangling the only organization we have – even if they aren’t quite on track – doesn’t seem like the best plan to get what is needed.

Coupled with that, I will continue to voice what I think needs to be done to change the current ARRL into an organization that does what is needed for ham radio for the next 100 years.

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RWK Membership

Summer of DX for a Couple of RWK Members

By Chip Coker KD4C

A lot of RWK members work DX but not many of us actually get to BE the DX. A couple of RWK Members have gotten a taste of being the DX this summer.

Ed W8QH has a place in Belize that he’s been working on and he goes there 2-3 times a year. Last year he spent time fighting with the weather to get an antenna up and this year he seems to have improved it significantly. He’s been in Belize for several weeks and has managed to make 1800 QSOs down there as V31XE.

Shawn KI5PXG recently was planning a family vacation to Turks & Caicos (close to the Dominican Republic in the outer gulf) and, after all the POTA activities we’ve had, started thinking seriously about trying to get on the air from VP5-land. He even managed to find a resort next to an official POTA park (that has had no activations up until now)!

I won’t steal his thunder (in hopes that he will write it up for a future Chawed Rag) but I think he’s had fun and a new appreciation for what it’s like to be on the other side of a pile-up!

Has anyone else had similar experiences in being DX? Please let us know!

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Projects

A Simple HP Server Power Supply Mod Creates The Perfect Shack Power Supply

by Josh Barfield

Everyone needs a good power supply for today’s solid state HF and VHF radios. 20 years ago, your only option was a bulky, hot and heavy linear power supply from Astron or similar (which are still great supplies), but 35 amps of 12 volt DC weighed about 15 pounds and put out a bunch of heat as well. Thanks in part to the advances in computer servers, switching power supply technology has improved greatly from even several years ago. Today’s modern computer servers need lots of clean 12V DC power that can ramp up or down in current instantly – sound familiar?

The good news about these supplies is that they can supply an incredible amount of current from an incredibly small package. The 1200 watt supplies can deliver 60 amps of clean power – that’s 30+ pounds worth of Astron supplies – from a small 2 pound module.

There’s only two problems: 1) We hams are used to having a 13.8V supply, not a 12V supply, and 2) the raw HP Server supply leaves something to be desired in packaging.

Read Full Article –>

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Upcoming Ham Radio Events

These ham radio related events are coming up soon.

ARRL Rookie Roundup – RTTY – Aug 20 (1800-2359UTC)

Rookie Roundups encourage newly-licensed operators (“Rookies”) in North America to operate on the HF bands and experience competitive Amateur Radio operating. Experienced operators (“Non-Rookies”) are strongly encouraged to participate and help new operators – either on the air or in person. The August session is focused on RTTY (Radio TeleTYpe) – if you’ve ever been interested in RTTY, this is a great opportunity.

Huntsville Hamfest – August 19-20

One of the year’s more popular. More info: https://hamfest.org/

Worldwide Digital DX Contest – Aug 26-27

FT8 / FT4 only DX contest sponsored by a collaboration between the World Wide Radio Operators Foundation (WWROF) and Slovenia Contest Club https://ww-digi.com/

Annual Route 66 Event – Sept 10-18

More coming next month on this popular event. Full Rules and Info: https://w6jbt.org

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Chawed Rag Pic of the Month

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Ham Radio Bits & Bytes

It’s all about coax this month…

Tour of ABR Industries – Custom Coax Supplier

So if you’ve been to HRO lately, you might have seen bundles of coax piled up on their floor with the signature Green Caps on the connectors. This is coax from ABR Industries, a relatively local (Houston area) supplier of quality coax for hams and commercial customers. ABR makes standard length cables available for sale from HRO, but they also offer custom cables and connectors from their website: https://abrind.com/

Here’s a quick tour of their operation with K8MRD and Shannon, the ABR president:

Finding Coax Loss Using a NanoVNA

So this subject came up the other day on the Friday Lunch Bunch zoom meeting: How to measure the loss in a length of coax using a NanoVNA. This short video explains just how to do that. You can easily find out if that random piece of coax you have laying around is any good!