The Sangamon Valley Radio Club, inc

DX’ing Resources:

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:

http://dx-world.net/

Antennas

“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:

http://www.antennex.com/Sshack/rules.htm

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,

and one of poor management

Propagation conditions, predictions:

http://hamwaves.com/propagation/

http://www.spacew.com/www/realtime.php

NCDXF Beacons:

http://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/beaconprograms.html

Geoclock:

http://www.mygeoclock.com/geoclock/#W32

Online version for Grayline:

http://www.dxatlas.com/

ACE-HF propagation prediction program:

http://www.mygeoclock.com/acehf/

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:

http://www.voacap.com/prediction.html

ARRL – DXCC information

http://www.arrl.org/dxcc

CQ Worked All Zones:

http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/cq_awards/cq_waz_awards/index_cq_waz_award.html

RSGB – IOTA:

http://www.rsgbiota.org/

ARRL DX bulletin:

http://www.arrl.org/myarrl-account-management

DX Magazine and QRZ DX Newsletter:

http://www.dxpub.com/dx_mag.html

The Daily DX:

http://www.dailydx.com/

DX Cluster:

http://dxcluster.ham-radio.ch/

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.):

http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=14599

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:

http://www.reversebeacon.net

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:

http://dx-central.com/

HamSpeak – simple phrases, ham radio related phrases in other languages:

http://www.k8zt.com/racg/Radio_Amateur_%20Conversation_Guide.pdf

DX Code of Conduct – how not to act like a lid in DX’ing:

http://dx-code.org/

Callsign and QSL info:

http://www.qrz.com

http://hamcall.net/call

http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/DX_Resources/Callsigns/

DXpedition operations and calendar:

http://www.ng3k.com/Misc/adxo.html

DX Resources and links:

http://www.ccdxc.org/dx_helps.htm

Pileup tips:

http://www.g4ifb.com/html/dxing.html#PileupTips

Maps and beam headings:

http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=14599

We will be having the annual After Christmas Christmas Party on January 14, 2012 from 6 – 8 p.m.

We will be dining at La Fiesta 2830 Adlai Stevenson Dr. Springfield, Illinois 62703.

For those unfamiliar with the restaurant they have a website complete with their menu and map to the restaurant.

http://www.lafiestarestaurante.com/springfield.htm

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.

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.

Per Tim, N9PUZ:

DStarUsers.org shows the status of networked D-Star
systems. As of about 7:00am this morning W9DUA is registered on the US
Trust Server.

We will be ready for self-registration very soon.

Tim N9PUZ

From the wonderful planner of After Christmas Parties, Claudia, N9HHE:

This information just in from Don, W9EBK:

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.

Full results are available at:
http://www.w9awe.org/ILQP2010.html

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!

1014 East Lincoln Street, Riverton, IL