We have two noteworthly meetings this month, both of which it will be worth the effort to attend!
The first is the ACARTS meeting on Tuesday, March 18th (tomorrow) at 7:00 pm at the Salvation Army. The presentation will be on MDSR, which stands for Modulation Demodulation Software Receiver. The MDSR is a way to add a SDR or Software Defined Receiver functions to an existing older receiver! In essence, you use an SDR at the IF or Intermediate Frequency of an existing radio. Pretty cool stuff?
The second is the FWRC meeting on Friday, March 21st (this coming Friday) at 7:00 pm at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church. Our presentation this time will be by Jack Shutt, W9GT, on Vintage Radio. Join us to remember Radio’s past roots, when the real radios glowed in the dark and kept the shack warm through the winter!
Directions and maps to both meeting places can be found in the Allen County Ham News for March, which is a free download at WWW.ACARTS.COM or WWW.FWRC.INFO
The March foxhunt kicked-off from the Ft. Wayne Safety Academy parking lot at 13:30 hours on the 9th of the March. This was the first instance of starting hunts from locations other than the Off-Track-Betting Parlor. The weather was cold but clear, and substantially better than the weather the week prior, the originally scheduled date for the March hunt.
Eleven hunters showed up at the Safety Academy site consisting of the team of Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA & KA9YYI along with Carole & Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE, the team of Steve & Linda Nardin, W9’s SAN & LAN plus their grandson Alex, the team of Kim & Jim Machamer, KB9’s DOT & DOS, and the team of Charles Ward, KC9MUT, Fred Gengnagel, KC9EZP and new foxhunter Jeff Brady, KC9ZGN.
Dave Spence, K9NDU and Bob Dean, KC9UHU provided the role of the fox for this hunt, and they were ensconced out in the Herman Hammer Wald Nature Preserve, part of the ACRES system of preserves, close to the intersection of Rupert and Hurshtown Roads northeast of Harlan. Dave & Bob utilized a cubical-quad for the high power fox, and microcontroller controlled 30 milliwatt emitter for the hidden (micro) fox. The micro-fox was hidden in tree branches at about six feet off the ground, and both it and the high power fox emitted on 146.430 MHz.
Please be advised that the boards of both ACARTS and FWRC will have a joint meeting this Tuesday night at 7:00 pm at the Salvation Army (location of ACARTS meetings).
73, Steve, W9SAN
PS: March Fox Hunt this Sunday at 1:30 pm starting at the Public Safety Academy on the south side of Fort Wayne. Fox is on 146.430 FM Simplex, intercom on 146.76 repeater.
Sunday, February 9 marked the date of the first foxhunt of the 2014 season. And this foxhunt was delayed a week from the original start date of the 2nd because of the on-going inclement weather that Ft. Wayne has been experiencing this winter. Wind, cold, snow, more snow, enough already!!
With an additional three inches of overnight snow on the ground, seven intrepid hunters made their way over to the Off-track Betting Parlor parking lot. The seven consisted of the team of Carole and Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE, the team of Linda and Steve Nardin, W9’s LAN & SAN plus their grandson Alex, and the team of Dave Spence, K9NDU and Bob Dean, KC9UHU. Missing from the ranks were regular foxhunters Jim & Kim Machamer, KB9’s DOS & DOT whose vehicle was inundated in a snow bank and was thus out of action, and Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA & WB9YYI who were in fact luxuriating on deck chairs on a Cruise ship in the Caribbean. (It being Annie’s birthday, Jim gave her the choice of slogging thru the snow on a foxhunt, or a cruise. So guess what she chose…..go figure).
Charles Ward, KC9MUT and Fred Gengnagel, KC9EZP served the role of the fox. They were located at a city park in Grabill. (Did you know that Grabill has two parks?). The high power fox consisted of a mobile rig pumping about 130 watts into a yagi aimed at a water tower to kinda confuse the signal direction of arrival when close-in to the fox location. The fox itself was a micro-fox running about 100 miliwatts of microprocessor derived CW. It was buried beneath the snow in a valley formed between two huge piles of snow which required help from Sherpas to climb. I mean, those snow hummocks were huge.
Now you may ask, “Well, didn’t Charles and Fred’s footprints in the snow lead one directly to the microfox?”……and the answer is…. No, evil Charles included a leaf blower in his bag of fox-hiding tools and used it to obliterate footprints leading to and around the fox hid location. Remarkably devious wouldn’t you say?
Anyway, the fox starting transmitting on the input to the 146.76 repeater promptly at 13:30 and was heard by everyone (except Carole and Al….we didn’t have a DF antenna mounted on our vehicle…we tagged along behind Linda and Steve). The first bearings were to the east, and a shudder ran through everyone….”Oh no, not New Haven”. But then it became apparent that the fox was well north of New Haven based upon a bearing Jim & Kim Machamer took from their home QTH antenna in Blackhawk.
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| 204 people attended SKYWARN spotter training at Columbia City High School Feb. 18. (NWS photo) |
The northern Indiana office of the National Weather Service (NWS) will supplement live spotter training sessions with online “chats” via Facebook and Twitter, following the schedule below. NWS is accepting questions in advance via a form on its website. It will also accept questions posted on its Facebook page and sent via Twitter. Tweeted questions should include “@NWSIWX” in the tweet.
Although NWS will post answers during the times specified below, you can read the answers by visiting the office’s Facebook and/or Twitter pages at your convenience. You don’t need a Facebook account or a Twitter account to read the answers, because both the Facebook page and Twitter page are viewable by the public. You do need a Facebook, account, however, if you wish to post questions via Facebook and you need a Twitter account if you wish to post questions via Twitter.
Here’s the schedule (all times are ET):
| Date | Time | Type |
| Feb. 19 | 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. | Facebook discussion |
| Feb. 26 | 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. | Twitter discussion (Tweet up) |
| March 4 | 4 p.m. – 6 p.m. | Facebook discussion |
| March 11 | 4 p.m. – 6 pm. | Twitter discussion (Tweet up) |
| March 18 | 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. | Facebook discussion |
| March 25 | 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. | Twitter discussion (Tweet up) |
The March 2014 Issue of the Allen County HamNews newsletter is now available for download using the link below. This and previous issues are also available for download by clicking the “Files” link in the main menu and then clicking “Newsletters.”