Fort Wayne Radio Club

To satisfy the growing popularity of the Ham Radio hobby, the Northeastern Indiana Amateur Radio Club will sponsor free classes leading to the exam for an FCC Technician Class license.

There will be eight two-hour training sessions on Monday evenings beginning March 9 in preparation for the FCC license exam to be held on Monday, April 13.

The classes will be held at the DeKalb County Annex Building, 200 East Tenth Street in Auburn. To obtain complete information and the schedule, contact Dave Southern by e-mail at kc9yy@yahoo.com with “License” in the subject line or by phone at 260-925-1673. Advance reservations are requested to be sure of adequate materials.

Amateur radio licensees are entitled to transmit on a wide range of frequencies and may use numerous modes of transmission including AM and FM voice, TV and Radio Teletype. Hams also enjoy using a variety of digital modes and can enjoy satellite communications including conversations with astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

The Ham radio hobby is growing worldwide. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 700,000 licensed amateurs. A proliferation of modestly priced radio equipment and the elimination of the requirement to learn Morse Code is credited with much of the resurgence of interest.

The class series will conclude with administration of the FCC exam on Monday, April 13 at 6 p.m.

Please join us this Sunday, March 1st, for the first club Fox Hunt to run under new rules adopted at last Friday’s special Fox Hunt meeting. We will meet at the Parking lot for Carrington Field on Coliseum Blvd, just south of the old K-Mart store. This is very close to the geographical center of Allen County. This hunt will be on the 146.430 FM simplex frequency, with 146.76 as the intercom.

Since there is a possibility of heavy snow on Sunday, we will meet at 10:00 am on the 146.91 repeater and Echolink node on Sunday morning, to decide to go ahead with the hunt or postpone.

Look for the new rules in the March Allen County Ham News or on our website. Also look for information about new “Novice” fox hunts to be held on the Saturdays following club meetings. These will be geared for those who want to learn the ropes and get involved in Fox Hunting.

We’ll look for you all this Sunday!!

Have you paid your 2015 dues yet? March 1, we will only send e-mail bulletins to paid 2015 and beyond paid members. Please fill out the membership application in the back of the Allen County Ham News, or the application on our website and send to the Fort Wayne Radio Club PO Box, 15127, Fort Wayne, 46885-5127.

Remember that there will not be a usual club meeting this month, as we are encouraging all members interested in public service to attend the National Weather Service spotter training on Feb 17. Read more about the SKYWARN training here and please register in advance if you plan to attend.

At 7 p.m. Feb. 20, we will have a special meeting at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church 4700 Vance Avenue, Fort Wayne, to determine the future of the fox hunt program with FWRC. If you are an active hunter, or would like to be, or have suggestions for making fox hunting more fun, please plan to attend.

Just to make it official:  the antenna for the FWRC 146.94 repeater has been relocated to a slightly lower position in its home at Parkview Hospital’s Randallia campus.  Due to the renovation of the Hospital, the antenna tower on top of the main core of the complex was considered too ugly, and the administration wants it to be removed. This meant that any antennas mounted on the tower structure had to be removed. Our 94 antenna was actually the second highest on the tower.

The antenna for the 94 is now on the edge of the main core’s roof, at about 120 feet above the ground. While up on the roof last week helping with the take down, it was clear from our view that we have a nice unobstructed view in all directions, so we believe that the range of the repeater will see little degradation.  I simple test the other night with a mobile headed to Kendallville showed that coverage to the north was not seriously degraded. The tower itself is still up there, but will be dismantled shortly.  (the original plan was to use a Helicopter to take down the tower. This was judged to be unacceptably risky, so it was decided to disassemble the tower in place)

This work was very difficult. We were asked by the tower crew that stripped the tower of its antennas to help out and identify our assets and get the repeater back on the air. We spent almost 8 hours on the roof in the cold and the rain, and were pretty exhausted when it was all done. When finished, we had the repeater operation restored, frequency was tweaked to about 10 Hz of nominal, and the output tone was changed to the co-ordinated tone of 97.4 Hz (no input tone required).

I want to thank the following people for their work on this project:

• WD9AVW, John Morton
• KA3OPA, Paul Prestia
• N3QKX, Bruce Dennis
• W9SAN, Steve Nardin
• Dave Duprey

Dave Duprey is my cousin from Waterbury, Connecticut, who was visiting with his wife for Christmas. I told him we might put him to work if he came, and we sure did!!

For our efforts, the club received a bunch of tower hardware, 3 standoffs for tower mounting of antennas, a bunch of heliax, and two VHF repeaters (GE), and assorted other bits and pieces.

Again, thank you to the folks that did this work. It was a fantastic effort, but the 94 is still on the air and working as good as always.