Boy oh boy February has been busy. The first round of exams have started and a few class projects are starting to pick up. With all that my free time to play on the radio has substantially decreased.
I've had to put aside a few of my projects as my main PC's motherboard decided to fail. I've had plans to build a new more powerful, more capable PC for a while, I just didn't expect to start on it this soon. I'm going to be slowly buying the parts I need. I'll hopefully finish the build around March.
On the radio side of things my setup is a bit different. I'm using my Icom IC-7300 with an LDG AT-200ProII auto tuner. I'm also not using my Buddistick vertical any more, I've switched over to a hamstick dipole setup for 40m and 20m. It seems to work ok, but with all the interference around the apartment complex it still isn't going to work as well as I would like.
WVUARC is still going. We had our first meeting of the semester on January 30th. Attendance was pretty low, but it seems like other clubs on campus have been having that issue as well. We had a great presentation by ARRL WV Section Manager Dan Ringer, K8WV. He even donated a bunch of books to the new W8CUL Reference Library!
W8CUL was supposed to operate in the ARRL School Club Roundup, but of course something had to break. The fuse in our rotor controller blew, and it just had to be one that we didn't have a spare for. So, we only made two contacts. We'll eventually operate in a contest and do well!
Teaching @ WVUARC Tech In A Day (N8MDC Photo)
On February 15th WVUARC hosted our first Tech In A Day class. We had 19 people attend the full class. Of the 19, 11 passed their tech test. Overall we had 24 people take tests, of those 12 passed tech and one person upgraded to Extra! We ended up administering 49 tests. I actually had to close registration for the event, that's never happened before! I ended up running out of tech tests, thanks to a couple no shows I had just enough for the people who were there! We're already working on planning for the second one on April 18th.
In other news I got approved for three awards from the FT8 Digital mode club. I qualified for the
Worked Grid Award-100 for making contacts in 100 different grid squares. The next award was the
Worked Region 2 Award-Bronze for making contacts with 10 hams in region 2. The last award is the Worked Prefix Award for making contacts with 100 hams all of whom have different callsign prefixes.
I also got an award from QRZ.com. I got their Grid Squared Award for having confirmed contacts in 100 different grid squares. It goes nicely with the World Radio Friendship Awards (20m Mixed/20m Digital) I already had. I need to order my certificates.
I've decided to organize my QSL cards into a binder with photo pages of sorts. I also want to put all of myΒ awards in there, at least until I have a permanent shack and can hang them on the wall.
On the Website I've updated the equipment lists and added an awards section to the logbook page. I might redo a little bit of the formatting. I think I still need to scan at least one QSL card and add it to the album on the site.
It's been a month since my last post and quite a lot has gone on since then.
W8CUL participated in the ARRL School Club roundup in October. We didn't have as good of showing as I hoped for, but with only two people operating we still did pretty decent with about 3 hours of operating time and 50ish QSOs we did better than 11 during the spring SCR!
WVUARC also hosted our second Tech-In-A-Day class of the semester. We had about 8 people take the course. Of those 8 we had 6 successfully pass the Technician test. Two members of the club also upgraded from General to Extra!
I completed some ARES training this weekend as well. I took my final exam for the ARRL's ECC-001 Intro to Emergency Communication course. This course was the only thing I needed to finish all of the requirements for ARES Level 2!
ECC-001 Certificate
I made the drive up to Washington, PA on Sunday for the WACOM hamfest. Overall it was a decent hamfest, though attendance seemed lower and prices seemed higher compared to last year. I ended up grabbing a pair of QuickStick hamsticks from Quicksilver Radio. I grabbed one for 20m and one for 40m. I also bought a 5in magnet mount for the hamsticks (to use while stationary). Unfortunately there is a short in the power cord for my IC-706 so I did't get to try out my antennas yet.
I also found a Heil HTH-K headset for my HT. My last purchase was a pair of old boxes that were used for TV and radio repair. I thought they were a pretty cool find!
I received my digital interface from XGGComms. I was able to get it connected to the IC-706 and it seems to be functioning. I've tried making a few FT8 contacts with it but I haven't been successful. I was able to see my transmissions on a few PSKReporter stations so I'm sure it's working but one of the downsides of using the buddistick in my current setting is I don't get out very well. I can hear quite a few stations but they can't hear me.
Marathon station with MPD.
This past Sunday I worked with W8MWA and W8CUL to provide communications for the Morgantown Marathon. I was posted with a newer ham at a busy intersection where all 3 races cross a road. Overall it seemed like everything worked well, but there's always room to improve! We also had issues with one of the dreaded Baofeng sirens (some of you will know what I'm talking about) blaring over the W8CUL repeater.
Unfortunately due to commitments for a class on Saturday and the Marathon on Sunday W8CUL didn't participate in the Collegiate QSO Party. Maybe next year. However, we will be in the ARRL School Club Roundup (hopefully) next month!
This Saturday is WVUARC's first Tech-In-a-Day session of the semester. I'll be there all day teaching a few sections, VEing, and watching managing testing as the VE Team Lead. Hopefully, all goes well! We already have about 10 people registered!
Another officer in WVUARC and I had a meeting with one of the safety coordinators from the university to begin planning antenna repairs and maintenance on the roof of the Engineering Sciences Building. We'll be repairing our 10/15/20m Yagi, our VHF/UHF Satellite antennas, rehanging our G5RV, and adding antennas for our UHF repeater and our APRS Digipeater.
We also had another general club meeting. We changed the format a little for this one with a presentation before the meeting. I gave a short hands on presentation covering how to operate a Baofeng UV5R, the most popular radio in our club. Following our meeting the weekly W8CUL 2m net went well with 13 check ins, counting me as NCS. We are hoping to break 20 this semester!
I'm still working on the W8CUL digipeater. Hopefully it will be finished soon. The W8CUL DMR repeater is still not online. We are waiting for our duplexer to arrive from Bridgecom Systems. It should be on air soon!
HF wise I haven't been operating from my apartment much. I have spent some time operating from
W8CUL K3s with my ACLog.
the W8CUL Shack though. I was able to work part of Canada, Italy, Malta, France and an SES from Austria on 20m FT8 this week! I was also able to grab Slavko in Slovenia, a station in Italy and a station in St Pierre & Miquelon on 20m SSB. 20m was really hot the past few days!
Well I think I've rambled on enough till next time!
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In other news I got approved for three awards from the FT8 Digital mode club. I qualified for the
I also got an award from QRZ.com. I got their Grid Squared Award for having confirmed contacts in 100 different grid squares. It goes nicely with the World Radio Friendship Awards (20m Mixed/20m Digital) I already had. I need to order my certificates.
