Thanks to the support, participation, and energy of our members, we:
Maintained our 70 cm repeater (444.475 MHz) and performed work on our 6 meter (53.43 MHz) repeater.
Held weekly nets and office hours, which you can find on our calendar.
Met monthly to stay connected, share ideas, and keep the club active in all that we do.
Held licensing classes in April and October to help a total of18 Bainbridge Islanders get their amateur radio license. If you’re one of the new hams, Welcome to amateur radio! We’re happy to have you here.
Provided support for Cascade Bicycle Club’s “Chilly Hilly – Special Summer Edition” in August. Keep an eye out for forthcoming email regarding volunteer opportunities for Chilly Hilly 2022. Chilly Hilly 2022 will be Sunday, February 27th.
Activated a club station for ARRL Field Day in June at the Battle Point Astronomical Association observatory in Battle Point Park.
Helped BEARS, BI Flotilla, and BIPD conduct an exercise in October, where flotilla vessels were used to ferry volunteers from Suquamish and Brownsville to Bainbridge Island, simulating emergency transportation without the use of the Agate Pass bridge or the Seattle ferry.
We’re looking forward to another great year with you. Plans for 2022 include helping set up a community HF station at the Battle Point Astronomical Association observatory, teaching a General licensing class in the spring, and assisting with Cascadia Rising in June.
Thank you, all of our club members, for making this a memorable year, and thank you for your generosity with your time and your resources. We appreciate all that you do. If you are reading this and are not already a club member, please consider becoming a club member! We’d love to have you aboard.
The Bainbridge Island Amateur Radio Club will be participating in the ARRL Field Day event on June 26th from 11:00 to 20:00 at the BPAA Observatory in Battle Point Park. We will be setting up two transmitters and possibly a GOTA station (see below).
Field Day
Field Day is a contest run by the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), the national association for Amateur Radio. While the competitive objective is “To contact as many stations as possible on the 160, 80, 40, 20,15 and 10 Meter HF bands, as well as all bands 50 MHz and above, and to learn to operate in abnormal situations in less than optimal conditions,” our club objective is to further advance our amateur radio knowledge and skills while having as much fun as we can. If we score a lot of points, great! If we learn a lot while not scoring points, even better.
The BPAA Observatory
The Battle Point Astronomical Association (BPAA) has kindly offered to host the event at their Observatory located in Battle Point Park on Bainbridge Island. To access the observatory, you must enter at the park’s western gate (map). From there, look for the building with a big dome on it across from the baseball fields. There is also a map with directions on the BPAA Page.
GOTA Station
GOTA stands for “Get On The Air.” A GOTA Station is a separate radio transmitter at a Field Day. As stated in the Field Day rules, “The GOTA station may be operated by any person licensed since the previous year’s Field Day, regardless of license class. It may also be operated by a generally inactive licensee. Non-licensed persons may participate under the direct supervision of an appropriate control operator.”
So, in order to have a GOTA station, we need help from hams that have a license less than a year old, hams that are not active on HF, or people who are not licensed and would like to try ham radio. If that’s you, please join us.
The 6m repeater pair has been brought back to life. It needs some levels adjustments, but is operational. We hope to have those adjustments made at the end of this week. If you carry on cross-band conversations, make sure you leave room to breathe so the 6m repeater doesn’t drop out – I noticed that happened a couple times on a net this evening.
Give it a whirl and try it out. The 6m repeater is cross-band linked to the 70cm repeater, so you can test with a 70cm monitor if you don’t have someone on the other end.
If you use Google Calendar and want to add the club events to your view, you can easily add the club calendar to the collection of calendars that you have in your Google account. All you have to do in your browser (while logged into your Google account) is to navigate to the club calendar and push the “+GoogleCalendar” button at the bottom of the calendar. The picture below has an arrow pointing to the button, in the event that you can’t find it.
The story starts on Field Day, two years ago, the last Field Day that was held on the Island.
We set up at Strawberry Hill Park. That’s in a semi-rural location, and I had gone on “DXpeditions” there to successfully escape the high levels of RF noise at my Winslow home QTH a number of times before, and had mentioned this to others when the Club was floating ideas for a Field Day location.
Imagine our surprise and disappointment when the noise floor turned out to be S-7 or worse on all bands. Despite that handicap, we did still operate there; doubtless we missed many dozens of stations calling W7NPC just because we couldn’t hear them.
After Field Day passed, I thought about the noise issue multiple times, but they were just fleeting thoughts. I never did any followup investigating as to what the culprit might be.
Then one day I was out riding my bike for exercise, as I try to do several times per week. Just south of the intersection of Fletcher Bay Road and High School Road, I thought I heard a faint noise coming from a power pole. I stopped. It wasn’t my imagination: I did hear a faint noise. It sounded like something arcing.
A few days later, I returned to that spot after dark with some binoculars to confirm my suspicion. Sure enough, a faint bluish spark was visible coming from one of the high-voltage wires leading to the pole pig transformer.
I jotted down the details of the pole (the numbers on it, plus its relation to the nearest interesction) and reported it to Puget Sound Energy. And, until recently, forgot about the incident.
Prompted by a fellow club member, I decided to write down my experiences, and that meant also researching what came of my report. Well, there’s no more arcing happening at that power pole, so apparently the issue has been corrected.
That’s not a surprise. First, it was an FCC regulations violation. Second, arcing equipment is equipment ready to fail, and any competently-run utility would rather replace failing equipment before it fails, during regular working hours, than have to dispatch an emergency repair crew being paid overtime wages after it fails. Third, equipment failures in the electric grid sometimes start wilfdfires and/or kill people, and the utilities would rather that (and the associated lawsuits and reputation damage) not happen.
I have since visited Strawberry Hill park and can verify that the noise floor there is now much lower. The moral of the story is that it doesn’t always take fancy equipment, or even any equipment, to find the source of HF interference. Sometimes the only thing it takes is your own eyes and ears.
My old car was a mobile shack, having an HF radio mounted in it. It was great. I could stop anywhere and work HF stations all over the world. While I was driving, I could listen to my local repeaters on the VHF or UHF bands that were built into the radio. Now that I had a new car without a radio, I began to miss having the VHF and UHF bands while I drive.
In my garage, I have a collection of antenna parts. In my shack, I have a collection of radios. Surely, I could come up with an installation that would at least give me local repeaters with minimal effort.
You may not have a collection of parts laying around. At the end of this article is a list of the parts that I used and a list of parts that cost less than what I used.
Step 1: Antenna
The magnetic-mount base and triband antenna.I always start by thinking about the antenna, mainly because getting the antenna outside of the metal shell of the car greatly increases the effectiveness of your install when compared to having a handheld radio inside the car.
In my case, I had a magnetic-mount NMO antenna base laying around the garage. This type of mount is a magnetic disk with an NMO connector on the top and a coaxial cable running out of the side of the base to a PL-259 connector. The magnet holds the antenna on the roof or trunk of the car (because the car is metal). These are great because you can replace the antenna without having to dispose of the magnetic base if the antenna becomes damaged. You can also upgrade your antenna for less cost if you decide to add bands with a different radio later.
I also had some dual-band antennas (antennas tuned for 144 and 440 MHz) that connect to an NMO mount sitting in the garage. These were perfect for this install because I was only concerned with these two bands.
I screwed the antenna onto the base and place the magnet on the trunk of the car. Then, I run the cable into the trunk, under the back seat and between the seats to the area where I want the radio installed.
The antenna is installed.
Step 2: The Radio
There are many radios from which to choose. Amongst them are several low-cost radios.
I use the door above the radio as a mic compartment. This keeps me from sitting on the mic and accidentally transmitting.
I had a Baofeng 25×4 laying around that I had not yet installed. The cool thing about this radio is that it isn’t much bigger than the microphone. For newer cars, where dash space is consumed by screens and other controls, a smaller radio will fit into spaces where a larger radio would not. If you’re going with a bigger radio, like the Yaesu FT857D, the faceplate comes off so that you can mount the radio in the trunk and remotely mount the face-plate on the car’s dashboard.
On the back of most radios, there is a SO-239 socket. Even though they don’t have the same number, the PL-259 plugs into the SO-239. Once I’ve screwed the connector onto the radio, the radio and antenna are now installed.
Step 3: Power
To power the radio, I did the simplest solution available. I took the cigarette-lighter adaptor and plugged it into the DC socket in the car. The radio is rated for 20A maximum current, so be sure that your socket can handle that current (by checking the car owner’s manual).
Refinement
This solution will get you on the air. There are improvements that could be made to make the installation more permanent and more reliable.
A better power solution would be to wire directly to the car’s battery. This solution requires more effort to do in a way that keeps from letting water in. I’ll do another post on this when I do this step on my car. I’ll post pictures and include the steps that keep the power clean and the rainwater out of your car.
If you want your antenna to be more permanent, there are NMO mounts that you can place right in the metal of your car’s roof or trunk lid. This requires skill with a drill and can destroy your roof or trunk lid if you don’t do it right. If I get to this point with my car, I’ll post it, along with pictures.
I have a cheaper radio in my shack that acts as a base station. A dual band antenna is also cheaper than the tri-bander above. So, if you’re looking to spend less and still have a workable solution, this parts list might do for you.
If you’re thinking amateur radio is just about sitting at your desk and making contacts with other hams, there’s a whole lot more to it. One of the fun things we can is as a form of “radiosport” called foxhunting. It uses radio receivers to locate a transmitter at an unknown location.
Typically, directional antennas are used to home-in on a signal, allowing you to get a bearing, move in the direction from which you think the signal is coming, then listen in and adjust your bearing until you (hopefully) arrive at the transmitter location. The first one to find the transmitter wins!
This activity can be done on foot or with the use of vehicles to allow quick movement toward the transmitter. In the case of a mobile operation, you either use RDF antennas in/on the car or pull over and stick an antenna out the window every so often.
You can build your RDF gear or buy it pre-made or in kit form. Check out this page for some resources or do a web search to learn more.
RDF is used for more than just fun. It is also used to track wildlife, locate sources of interference (1, 2), find stolen cars (LoJack), or for search and rescue. If you ever had reason to track radio frequency interference (RFI), it would sure be nice if you’d already had some experience with direction finding so the process was familiar.
Here’s a good video that shows a competition in progress and gives a good idea of how the process works. It was produced by KN4AQ, who has a series of YouTube videos under the title HamRadioNow.
Here’s a link with video of a practical use of RDF for tracking down power line noise – the noise coming from some broken piece of equipment on a power pole (like a cracked insulator causing arcing).
Are you curious what HF is all about, but don’t have your own setup at home? Want to get an idea for what it’s like to listen to?
Check out http://www.websdr.org/. You’ll see a list of stations around the world, what frequencies they are streaming, and what kind of antennas they use for each frequency range.
Pick a station, and click the blue hyperlink in the big box for that station. For example, I picked a station in Arizona, and the link in its box was http://w7rna.dyndns-remote.com:18901. That took me to the page where I can listen to any of the frequencies listed for that station at WebSDR.org. Type your first name or callsign into the text box just so others can see who is listening (can be anything if you don’t want to give your name). Then you’ll see a waterfall load. For me, it defaulted to the ~7000 MHz band (40-meter band). I saw a few amateur stations on LSB, a couple CW stations, and an AM broadcast station.
I clicked the radio button next to AM (wide) to select the AM filter and moved the yellow slider under the waterfall under the broadcast station, and all of a sudden I was listening to a Japanese broadcast station on 7275 kHz. I got bored listening to something I couldn’t understand, so I changed to LSB mode filter and went looking for an amateur conversation.
A good signal was coming in just above 7150 kHz, so I moved the yellow slider down. On the left under the waterfall, I used the +/- tune step buttons (under the frequency text box) to fine tune until the signal sounded good and I settled on 7167 kHz and heard a conversation between a US ham and 2 fellows in Australia. From the Arizona receiver location, the VK1-something station couldn’t be heard (I heard he was on 1 watt because one of the other guys in the conversation said so), but the VK2-something station was booming in and easily understood.
By the way, playing with WebSDRs is a great way to learn some of the quirks of SSB. Place the tuner near something you think might be a voice signal – pick something in the voice range of the ham band (see a band plan for where to start looking), select USB or LSB based on which frequency you are listening to, then tune toward and then away from the station in small increments using the tune step button under the frequency text box on the left side (be sure to use the smallest step size for best effect). Take several steps toward and then past the station, and you’ll hear the characteristic change in pitch as you roll into and past the station. You should notice your ear will tell you when you’ve centered on the right frequency (or when you’re sufficiently close to it) – you’ll note the station’s voice sound the most natural at some point. Try this without looking, then check how close you got. Many stations pick even numbered frequencies like 7150 kHz, 7151, 7152, etc., to make it easy for another station to tune them in well.
Lastly, I wanted to check the time, so I thought I’d tune in WWV. I typed in 5000 into the text box and hit Enter (5000 kHz=5 MHz and it will switch automatically). Typing in the frequency puts me on exactly the frequency I want so I don’t have to worry about fine-tuning (as long as the receiver is calibrated properly!). All of a sudden, I heard the ticker, then the time called out each minute.
Depending on your station setup, you may be required to perform an exposure evaluation per FCC Part 97 Rules. For example, you’re required to perform an evaluation if PEP power delivered into your antenna is over 50W on 2, 6, or 10m, over 75W on 12m, or over 100W on 15m. Many amateur radio operators will never need to perform an evaluation, but it’s good to know when and why we might need to.
Here’s a link that provides great information and lots of links to get you caught up on what you need to know:
You’ll find a table listing power levels above which you will be required to perform an evaluation, and more information on RF safety in links from that page. Make sure you read and understand these rules before pushing the power!
Here is the parent page where I found the above link so you can review the other resources NC4FB has on his website. There are flashcards, you can download the slides, and can find other links and helpful resources.
Bainbridge Island Amateur Radio Club 