hank you for visiting the Sangamon Valley Radio Club! We are an organization of both licensed amateur radio operators and non-licensed individuals, based in Central Illinois, who are dedicated to preserving the spirit of this great hobby we call Ham Radio. We accomplish this through community service, technological proficiency, social activities and fun! If you are interested in amateur radio communications, if you are already a licensed amateur and want to meet other amateurs in the area or if you just like to have fun, the SVRC is the place for you! Please come join us at our next club meeting. Guests are always welcome. We also have an email list server hosted by Yahoo Groups. If you don’t already receive email announcements then you can sign up below to be added to the list. The SVRC is an ARRL affiliated club and maintains a working relationship with the Illinois Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross.
News – - this site has a summary of upcoming, ongoing and past dx operations ranging from the huge expeditions to casual vacation operations and links to more detailed websites of expeditions and operations:
“The Rules of the Antenna Game,” Ted Hart, W5QJR (1984)
This site promotes a book that contains a lot of very useful antenna guidance geared toward construction of very DX-effective antennas at very reasonable cost. There are a lot of expensive gimmicks in the antenna market that will not enhance your signal quality at the other end over some simple wire antennas. While the book isn’t free, the amount of money it will save you if you are thinking that the latest whiz-bang gimmick from the XYZ antenna company for $300 will give you a better signal far exceeds the cost:
Pileup behavior: these YouTube videos of screen shots of a software defined radio bandscope show the DX transmit frequency and the pileup running up the band, one of good pileup management,
Online VOACAP – this is the online program calling for you to input your location, transmitter power, type and height of antenna, mode and band, showing where you are likely to be heard under current propagation conditions:
Maps and Beam headings (from your QTH, and from the DX end QTH – very useful to see whether you are off the side of the DX beam when he is working EU, AS, etc.):
Reverse Beacon Network – See who is calling CQ, frequency, code speed, and signal strength; see your code speed and signal strength at the monitoring stations when you call CQ:
DX Central – at this site you can set up a list of what DX you need, and receive email notices when it is spotted on the DX Cluster system, get spotting info courtesy of Kelly N0VD:
We will be having an optional gift exchange with a $25 limit. If you choose to participate we draw numbers for who gets to choose 1st. 2nd…..and the present can be stolen 3 times, we also have the rule that you can only steal 3 presents from the same person. It is always a lot of fun!
We have a party room and I have given the restaurant a preliminary count of 30 with a possibility of more coming to the party.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Claudia, N9HHE
SVRC had class a Technician License Class that recently ended. Several participants in the class tested at the December 2011 test session. They all passed.
Here is the photo of the Tech class members who passed their test last Saturday. Don, W9EBK had a hard time getting all of their names straight in this class and he is pretty sure he has all of them correct.
Front row L-R: Shirley, Miriam, Keith, and Al
Back row L-R: Ron, Bill, He didn't take the class-a friend of one of the classmates possibly Chuck or Steve, Daniel, and Drew
The following information may be useful if you have a D-STAR capable radio and wish to access the new W9DUA D-STAR repeater.
The repeater transmits (and you listen) on 443.78125 MHz.
The transmit offset is +5.0 MHz.
Call sign programming information…
Note the “*” in the examples below indicate you should type a blank space, not the asterisk character. If you do not have the ‘B’ or ‘G’ in the eighth position of the field it will not work.
The exact methods for programming this information into your radio vary from model to model.
“MY CALL” should be set your FCC assigned call sign
“YOUR CALL” should be set to “CQCQCQ”
“RPT1″ should be set to “W9DUA**B”
“RPT2″ should be set to “W9DUA**G”
What does all of this do?
The “CQCQCQ” tells the system you want to communicate with anyone listening not just a specific station.
The “W9DUA B” tells the repeater you want to use Port B, which is the UHF repeater module. Some D-STAR repeaters have VHF, UHF, and 1.2 GHz ports.
The “W9DUA G” tells the repeater you want to also use the gateway to the rest of the D-STAR system. This allows DV-Dongle users to hear your transmissions as well as other users around the world who may be linked to our repeater.
The W9DUA D-Star Gateway Server is now functioning. The repeater itself is not at the hospital yet but we are ready for people to register for using the system if you are planning to buy a radio or get a DV-Dongle.
Before you try and do the self registration I highly recommend that you use the tutorial written by Robin AA4RC. It will save you some confusion.
The SVRC qualified for one of the D-STAR Repeaters from Icom. If you missed out on the details they were something along the lines of If you buy the repeater & have X number of registered users on the gateway with in a given time frame, we will rebate the cost of the repeater.
The Repeater is currently at the N9UWI secret bunker for assembly & initial configuration. We are also awaiting final approval on frequency coordination. The final operation location of this repeater will be St. Johns hospital.
More news to follow as progress is made.
If you are curious how to program your D-STAR capable radio Tim, N9PUZ offered the following experience.
The information needed to program your radio for the Sangamon Valley Radio Club’s UHF D-Star Repeater is shown below. These settings have been used successfully with my Icom IC-80AD D-Star hand held radio.
From the wonderful planner of After Christmas Parties, Claudia, N9HHE:
Here is the info for the webpage, baby!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
SVRC After Christmas Christmas Party
The Lighthouse Family Restaurant
3751 South Sixth Street
Springfield, IL
(Across from Wal-Mart in the Travelodge)
Socializing starts at 6 p.m.
Dinner 6:30 p.m.
Order off the menu, the restaurant has soups, salads, beef, pork, chicken, seafood, and sandwiches. All of the desserts are homemade and delicious!
Note: The restaurant is not allowed to serve liquor, if you want an alcoholic drink you must drink it in the bar at the hotel.
Optional gift exchange, $20 limit. With the usual mayhem & mirth of being able to steal a present someone has already opened sending them back to the table for a different gift!
The results of the 2010 IL QSO Party have been published. The SVRC continues to move up in the club ranks. This year the SVRC (listed as SVARC) placed 6th out of 18 clubs with 9 logs and 97,548 points. As usual 74,000 of those points are thanks to John, WA9AQN with the balance made up by 8 other ops. John’s score put him in 6th place overall among Illinois Fixed stations. Bob, NA9GW and I (W9EBK) were 39th and 54th respectively. In a very close race, nearer the bottom of the list Claudia, N9HHE (85th place, 289 points) outscored Roger, K9LJB (86th place 286 points) and Tim, N9PUZ (87th place 255 points). I also want to thank Ron, N9HPA, Jack, N9UFO and Leonard, N9XHU for submitting their logs. Hopefully 2011 will bring out even more operators for this fun event.
Please feel free to join the SVRC at Riverton Middle School for Field Day. We should be on sight Saturday June 26 about 9:00am to start hanging antennas and setting up transceiver sights. See the Map Below! Come by to see what is going on and get some operating time in!