Central Alberta Amateur Radio Club
General News
VE6XY silent key
Sep 19th
A funeral service for VE6XY Rod Lins President of CAARC was held on Friday the 27th of Sept. 2019 at Wilson’s Funeral Home Lacombe, AB.
CAARC Field Day 2019 has Come and Gone
Sep 12th
By John VA6SJA CAARC Field Day Chairman 2019
We had a field day! It happened because of the participation of interested people. Good job everyone! There are many stories, and I don’t have space to tell them all and there are some that I probably don’t know. Feel free to post your story.
CAARC had sponsored a Class 1F Field Day held at the Red Deer County Emergency Communications Centre in June of 2018.
BOB VE6BLD advocated for a fun Field Day with generators at the October 2018 CAARC general meeting. I had hoped there could be a repeat of last year’s County Class F Field Day as well as to hold this Class A Field Day. But this first independent CAARC Class 3A Field Day took a lot of organizing, and Ryan VA6DSJ, who could allow us access to the County’s Emergency Communications Centre was on emergency assignment dealing with an Alberta wildfire. So, this year’s Class F Field Day was cancelled and this Class 3A Field Day had to do for this year.
I had made a participant and visitor log book allowing for 35 entries and there weren’t enough lines! Hams and former hams came from as far away as Canmore and Edmonton. More hams and family members came for the roast pork supper. At least one couple came because they saw the Field Day signs on the road,
And we got photos that help tell our story! View them on this site.
All the participants worked together to make this event happen. A good example is the set up and troubleshooting needed to get everything working, including improvising on the spot. For one instance, on Friday afternoon Bob VE6BLD and Darcy VE6DDD looked around to find a way to replace the missing centre insulator for the driven element on the Mosley TA-33 Jr. beam that Garry VE6CIA had lent us. They found a discarded snow shovel with a fiberglass handle. Darcy spliced it into place with the help of cable ties and electrical tape and the crew put it in place on top of one of Bob’s masts that could be assembled from the bottom.
Field Day 2019– 99 pictures.
Jun 28th
I finally found a new Gallery widget to add multiple pictures at a time!! Check out the field day pictures by clicking the Field Day 2019 TAB right of the Swap and Shop. Thanks to Bob VE6BLD, John VA6SJA and Ray VA6RSO for the pictures.
Click any picture or click View Slideshow below the pictures.
Bob VE6BLD
HAM RADIO 2019 in Friedrichshafen Reports 14,300 Attended from 50 Countries
Jun 28th
06/27/2019
While thousands were enjoying ARRL Field Day over the June 21 – 23 weekend, some 14,300 visitors from more than 50 countries arrived on the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen, Germany, for HAM RADIO 2019. Show officials said this 44th event attracted about 400 more visitors this year. The previously reported 2018 attendance of 15,460 included radio amateurs, invited Scouts, and attendees at the concurrent and co-located Maker Faire, which did not take place at this year’s show. This year’s show boasted 184 exhibitors and associations from 32 countries.
ARRL fielded a contingent of representatives to HAM RADIO 2019, headed by President Rick Roderick, K5UR.
“The ARRL booth was busy,” reported ARRL Product Development Manager Bob Inderbitzen, NQ1R. “Many international attendees joined ARRL or renewed their memberships. It was nice to meet so many radio amateurs from around the globe.”
Inderbitzen said a substantial line formed on Friday and Saturday morning as applicants for DXCC and other popular ARRL Award programs queued up to have their QSL cards verified by volunteer ARRL Card Checkers. Some 40 candidates sat for their US license examinations on Saturday, organized by ARRL Volunteer Examiner team leader Manfred Lauterborn, DK2PZ/K2PZ.
Inderbitzen added that many international attendees joined ARRL or renewed their memberships. “QST is enjoyed the world over,” he said. ARRL has nearly 9,000 international members.
Inderbitzen also said he was struck by the large number of younger attendees. “Many of these young radio amateurs and prospective hams attended Ham Camp,” Inderbitzen said. “A large contingent representing Youngsters on the Air (YOTA), an initiative of IARU Region 1, helped promote the 2019 YOTA summer camp, August 11 – 17 in Bulgaria. During HAM RADIO, young hams carried the YOTA flag to each of the stands organized by International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) member-societies, gathering crowds to cheer on the young hams.”
ARRL representatives attending the convention in Germany also included International Affairs Vice President Jay Bellows, K0QB; CEO Howard Michel, WB2ITX, and Regulatory Information Manager Dan Henderson, N1ND.
HAM RADIO 2020 will take place June 26 – 28.
Astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, SK
Apr 16th
Amateur Radio in Space Pioneer Astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, SK
04/15/2019
The US astronaut who pioneered the use of Amateur Radio to make contacts from space — Owen K. Garriott, W5LFL — died April 15 at his home in Huntsville, Alabama. He was 88. Garriott’s ham radio activity ushered in the formal establishment of Amateur Radio in space, first as SAREX — the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, and later as ARISS — Amateur Radio on the International Space Station.
“Owen Garriott was a good friend and an incredible astronaut,” fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin tweeted. “I have a great sadness as I learn of his passing today. Godspeed Owen.”
An Oklahoma native, Garriott — an electrical engineer — spent 2 months aboard the Skylab space station in 1973 and 10 days aboard Spacelab-1 during a 1983 Space Shuttle Columbia mission. It was during the latter mission that Garriott thrilled radio amateurs around the world by making the first contacts from space. Thousands of hams listened on 2-meter FM, hoping to hear him or to make a contact. Garriott ended up working stations around the globe, among them such notables as the late King Hussein, JY1, of Jordan, and the late US Senator Barry Goldwater, K7UGA. He also made the first CW contact from space. Garriott called hamming from space “a pleasant pastime.”
“I managed to do it in my off-duty hours, and it was a pleasure to get involved in it and to talk with people who are as interested in space as the 100,000 hams on the ground seemed to be,” he said in an interview published in the February 1984 edition of QST. “So, it was just a pleasant experience, the hamming in particular, all the way around.”
Although Garriott had planned to operate on ham radio during his 10 days in space, no special provisions were made on board the spacecraft in terms of equipment — unlike the situation today on the International Space Station. Garriott simply used a hand-held transceiver with its antenna in the window of Spacelab-1. His first pass was down the US West Coast.
“[A]s I approached the US, I began to hear stations that were trying to reach me,” he told QST. “On my very first CQ, there were plenty of stations responding.” His first contact was with Lance Collister, WA1JXN, in Montana.
ARISS ARRL Representative Rosalie White, K1STO, met Garriott when he attended Hamvention, “both times, sitting next to him at Hamvention dinner banquets,” she recounted. “Once when he was a Special Achievement Award winner, and once with him and [his son] Richard when Richard won the 2009 Special Achievement Award. Owen was unassuming, very smart, kind, and up to date on the latest technology.” Garriott shared a Hamvention Special Achievement Award in 2002 with fellow Amateur Radio astronaut Tony England, W0ORE.
Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, was a private space traveler to the ISS, flown there by the Russian Federal Space Agency, and he also carried ham radio into space.
2019 Fathers Day Picnic raffle tickets
Dec 12th
The 2019 Fathers Day Picnic raffle tickets will be available at the January general meeting. I am making sure to have proper front covers this time.
VE6xy
President CAARC
New Amateur Radio Packet Gear Awaits Unpacking, Installation on Space Station
Dec 10th
New Amateur Radio Packet Gear Awaits Unpacking, Installation on Space Station
12/18/2018New Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) packet equipment awaits unpacking and installation on board the station after arriving in November as part of the cargo transported via a Russian 71P Progress resupply vehicle. The new packet module for NA1SS will replace the current packet gear, which has been intermittent over the past year.
“With the arrival of Progress complete, the crew has to find free time unpack Progress, uninstall the intermittent module, and then set up and test the replacement packet module,” explained Dan Barstow, KA1ARD, senior education manager of the ISS National Laboratory (CASIS), an ARISS sponsor.
The ISS packet system was reported to have gone down in July 2017, although it unexpectedly came back to life the following summer. At the time of the failure, NASA ISS Ham Radio Project Engineer Kenneth Ransom, N5VHO, said the revived system would fill the gap until the replacement packet module was launched and installed. The packet system operates on 145.825 MHz. ARISS hardware team members on the ground were able to locate a functional duplicate of the ISS packet module that has been in use on the ISS for 17 years. ARISS said the subsequent installation will depend on the crew’s busy schedule.
In an email to ARISS and other groups CASIS supports, Barstow pointed out that ARISS is an official back-up system for astronauts to talk with Mission Control in the unlikely failure of the station’s primary communication systems.
Bartow said that in 2017, hams relayed nearly 89,000 packet messages via the ISS — an average of 243 every day. The statistic so intrigued and amazed Barstow that he decided to get his Amateur Radio license and gear to join in the activity.
Satellite stalwart and ARISS supporter Patrick Stoddard, WD9EWK, won the December 2018 QST Cover Plaque Award for his article, “Making Digital Contacts through the ISS.”
Current International Space Station (ISS) crew members Serena Auñón-Chancellor, KG5TMT, Alexander Gerst, KF5ONO, and cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev are scheduled to return to Earth on December 20 on a Soyuz vehicle.
