All posts by Sameer Bibikar

Cricket 40 buildathon

News
Last week at the meeting we discussed kit ideas, and decided the Cricket 40 would be a fun project for a buildathon. The kit is a working crystal-controlled CW transceiver for the 40m band with a direct-conversion receiver and about 700 mW output. It has about 40 components and can be assembled in an evening. Each participant gets one to take home! The club will pay for the kits for club members, though we will also accept an optional donation if you would like to help offset the cost of buying your kit (don’t worry about this if it’s a problem).
The current plan for the date/time is 6:15 PM on Thursday, November 4 (during the UTARC meeting). We will first meet at 6PM in ETC 2.132 for our usual meeting stuff, and then move to the soldering lab E1 at Texas Inventionworks at 6:15PM for the actual buildathon. Huge thanks to Roger and the other folks at TIW again for allowing us to use this excellent resource at UT! If this is your first time soldering or putting together a kit, that’s OK and part of the goal! I’ll provide some explanation on how to solder the kit together at the beginning and will try to help everyone at the buildathon.
If this time does not work for you, or you just want the kit so you can build it yourself, there’s an option for that in the form. We could schedule another time if enough people want to build kits together.
If you want to take part in the buildathon or want a kit, please sign up here before 11:59pm central time on Monday, October 18: https://forms.gle/cM3tcoFRPaGkQBT67
(open to UT students, faculty, staff only)
This is so we can order enough kits for the group on time.
We would also like to thank an anonymous donor who contributed some funds to the club during 40 for Forty. Thank you for making this event possible!

Fall 2021 Technician License Class

News

The Technician license class this semester has been going very well so far. We have gone through the material for Chapters 2, 3, and most of chapter 4 corresponding to the ARRL Technician license manual. If you are interested in joining us, the rest of the classes will be in the IDEA lab in TIW (EER 1.632). Big thanks to Roger of Texas Inventionworks for making this possible!

DATE TIME LOCATION PLANNED TOPICS
Thursday, October 14 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EER 1.632 Antennas and radio operation
Monday, October 18 5:15 pm – 7:00 pm EER 1.632 Radio operation (part 2)
Monday, October 25 5:15 pm – 7:00 pm EER 1.632 Communicating on the air
Monday, November 1 5:15 pm – 7:00 pm EER 1.632 FCC regulations and safety

In each class, we go through the material and answer and discuss FCC exam questions.
If you would like to have a copy of the notes we have gone through so far, please email me. My email is posted here.

At the end of the class, I recommend taking a few practice tests at HamStudy and making sure you are consistently scoring more than 90%. Then you can sign up for an online Tech class exam with GLAARG or take another exam of your choice. Note that GLAARG is strict about what stuff you can have around you, like multiple monitors, so make sure you prepare your workspace following their guidelines before going to the exam.

More resources

Here are some resources I have shared via email, but might be useful.

  • Regarding propagation, there’s all sorts of “space weather” and “solar weather” data and predictions which are useful to predict the success of various modes of propagation. One website providing this data is the NOAA.
  • Earlier, I mentioned the “ham bands have boundaries” – these boundaries are documented informally in this chart. It’s useful to have a copy near you when on the air. We have two nice laminated ones at N5XU. We will talk about this in more detail in the regulatory part of the class.
  • W2AEW’s video on reflections on transmission lines.
  • Mr Carlson’s Lab’s video on reflections on transmission lines.
  • APRS spots at aprs.fi
  • WSPR spots at WSPRnet

Fall 2021 Meeting Schedule

Meetings

Here is the UTARC/N5XU general meeting schedule for the Fall 2021 semester. As usual, these meetings are open to all UT affiliated (students, faculty, staff, etc.). Each meeting starts with a discussion on ham radio topics and then we move up to the N5XU radio shack to make some contacts or otherwise have fun with the radios. The official meeting time is from 6pm to 7pm, but some of us stay longer in the shack at times.

Please note that our meetings are currently scheduled to be in person in the fall, biweekly on Thursdays at 6pm, in ETC 2.132 unless otherwise indicated. The university has announced that classes will still be in person, but if that changes or we are required to move club activities online, we may have to change this schedule. Be sure to stay tuned via our mailing lists.

Date Time Location
Thursday, September 9 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132
Thursday, September 23 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132
Thursday, October 7 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132
Thursday, October 21 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132
Thursday, November 4 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132
Thursday, November 18 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132
Thursday, December 2 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm ETC 2.132

We continue to also have our weekly net every Wednesday at 8 PM central time on the KA5D system, 441.325 MHz (PL 97.4). For more information and other connection options (including EchoLink), please visit the nets page.

Field Day 2021 Results

News

Field Day 2021 at Mt. Bonnell was a blast! We had 6 people join us, and made 8 contacts on 20 meters before we had to clean up and leave. Two people made their first PSK31 contacts. The setup was as follows:

  • Yaesu FT-450D, up to 50 W out
  • OCF dipole around 6 feet up on the summit of Mt. Bonnell (Covert Park, EM10ch)
  • Solar and battery power
  • PSK31 via fldigi on a laptop

We also set up a second station with an end-fed wire and the club’s FT-847, but did not end up using that one. It was also a whole lot of fun to meet club members in person after more than a year of online meetings!

Field Day Operations 2021

A quick (unofficial) tabulation of points follows.

382 points from 8 digital QSOs and some bonus points

We’d also like to thank Stefano N5STT for letting us use his transceiver, tuner, and antenna, and Glen WB4KTF for the complete solar system, and many other hams around Austin for their valuable advice.

Field Day 2021 and Summer Chats

Meetings, News
I hope everyone’s summer is going well so far! N5XU club activities continue through the summer.
1. Summer chats. In addition to the weekly net, the club will have monthly Zoom meetings in the summer so all club members can keep in touch and plan activities. In particular, field day is coming up, so we can talk about that next week! These meetings will be on the following dates:
DATE TIME
Tuesday, June 15 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Tuesday, July 13 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Tuesday, August 10 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Feel free to drop in and chat with us! We will provide a Zoom meeting link in our mailing list close to the time of each meeting. Be sure to join the mailing list if you would like to join us for these meetings.
2. Field day. A long standing tradition in ham radio is Field Day, in which stations endeavor to make contacts in more “ad-hoc” environments in the field – for example, on battery or solar power. This year, Field Day is on the weekend of June 26. Tentatively, we are planning to set up a battery-powered station on Mt. Bonnell. Depending on how many people plan to join us, we may set up multiple transceivers. We will discuss more plans at the weekly nets and the Zoom chat next Tuesday.
If you would like to join us for field day, please send us an email or a message in Slack, so we can get an approximate head count for the event.
We will also follow university recommendations regarding COVID-19 precautionary measures, because this is an in-person event.
3. Weekly net. We had a great turnout for the first edition of the UTARC net last week. Thanks to everyone involved! The net takes place Wednesdays 8pm on the 441.325 repeater (PL 97.4) and linked systems. All licensed radio amateurs are welcome to join!