FWRC summer banquet/picnic at Historic Fort Wayne Field Day weekend

Grillmaster Charles Ward, KC9MUT will prepare meet for an FWRC banquet/picnic June 26.

Have you been moldering in your shack ever since the Coronavirus came upon us some eighteen or so months ago? Well, it’s time to get out and shake the dust off your booty and your microphone. Plan to get down to the Old Fort on Saturday, June 26th, (mark it on your calendar) to attend the FWRC Summer Banquet. It starts at 5:30 pm on the Old Fort grounds, inside the walls of the fort.

The FWRC will provide hamburgers, cheeseburgers and hot dogs prepared by our internationally recognized hamburger Chef Charles Ward, KC9MUT. He has a brand new super-duper grill/smoker purchased just for this event.

Carole Burke, WB9RUS is planning to cook up a batch of her famous Sauer-Kraut which has always been a favorite at club banquets, (even though it stinks up the Burke QTH, much to the chagrin of OM Al, WB9SSE).

The club will also provide plates, napkins and table-ware plus salt, pepper and condiments to compliment the hot dogs and hamburgers, and there will also be punch or lemonade, and coffee provided.

Attendees are requested to show up with a dish or dessert to share, the same as we do at all of our banquets. Please note that we will probably not have ac power for slow-cookers or crock pots available. (Special arrangements will be made, however, should meat balls show up).

Deviled eggs work well too.

You should bring a chair (and a table if you want), and bring something to drink (non-alcoholic) if you’re not into coffee or lemonade.

So come on down to the Old Fort on Saturday, June 26th and check out Field Day, or better yet participate in it with a little operator-contesting. And then join us for a nice summer meal.

Al Burke, WB9SSE
Secretary, FWRC (and meat-ball coinsure)

On-air Field Day planning meeting June 22

A scene from Field Day 2019

To better prepare for the upcoming Field Day (FD) operation this coming weekend (June 26 and 27) and to discuss possible QRP night operation on Friday, there will be an on-the-air meeting Tuesday, June 22, at 7 pm on the 146.76 MHz repeater in Fort Wayne. All are invited to attend and help us iron out the details for the Field Day operation. We would appreciate your attendance if you plan on coming to Field Day at Historic Fort Wayne.

If you cannot attend but still want to participate in FD, please contact any FWRC board of directors member with your particulars.

Two-Meter Classic Sprint – June Results

The Two-Meter Classic Sprint was kicked off this year (2021) on June 5, 2021. The sprint lasted for 30 minutes, from 1300z to 1330z. After the sprint, nine stations submitted their score summaries. Participants came from the states of Illinois, Maryland, Indiana, and Kentucky. Entries included stations in the base category (high power and low power), and the rover category (low power), with one SWL participant.

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Skywarn net to QSY

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Important notice! The Allen County, Indiana ham radio Skywarn net will operate today, June 18, 2021, on the 146.94 MHz W9TE FM repeater in Fort Wayne, not the usual 146.88 MHz repeater, which is currently inoperative.

The 146.94 MHz repeater requires users to transmit a 141.3 Hz CTCSS tone. No tone is required to monitor, but tone decoding is recommended, because the repeater also transmits digital signals.

Severe weather is possible in Allen County today, with the greatest risk in approximately the southern 3/4 of the county (shaded red on the map below), where there is a 30% probability of damaging, straight-line winds of 58 mph or greater within 25 miles of any point, according to a 9 a.m. ET outlook from the NOAA NWS Storm Prediction Center. That’s approximately 10 times the normal probability of 3% for this time of year, based on climatology records.

VHF SSB/CW 2 Sprint Classic: The dust has settled!

Saturday, April 24 was a blustery, rainy day. But no amount of wet weather could dampen the intentions of many regional VHF enthusiasts, as they geared up for the first annual VHF SSB/CW 2M Sprint Classic contest.

The Sprint Classic is a contest that encourages VHF weak signal operations, using the traditional modes of SSB and CW. Stations were awarded points based upon the number of contacts made and the total number of grid squares worked (each grid square was a unique multiplier).

The action started at 1300Z (9 a.m. Eastern time) with the contest ending nine hours later at 2300Z. Band conditions were not favorable, due to a lack of wide-spread tropo. openings. However, band conditions aside, contest entrants reported working stations as far as Hamilton, Indiana; Lemont, Illinois; Cecil, Ohio, and all the way to Rudolph, Wisconsin! (Maybe Santa’s sleigh brought some good propagation to Wisconsin?)

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May meeting date correction

The Fort Wayne Radio Club May meeting will be next Wednesday, May the 19th. We had mistakenly listed the meeting as May 12 in the editorial of this month’s Hamsplatter. The correct date was listed further down in the newsletter, so there was obvious confusion there!

We apologize to anyone that made the trip downtown to find an empty meeting! We will do our best to make sure these kinds of errors do not happen in the future!

Please join us on Wednesday, May 19th, for our club meeting at 6:00pm and our speaker from the Fort Wayne Police Department. Stay tuned for more club activity including Field Day at the Fort and the Tail Gate Hamfest in August.