Museum Field Day - SEKARC and CCHM

The SEKARC held it's September meeting in the field on the grounds of the Crawford County Historical Museum. It was a great success! There were many places to setup our gear and the host was very interested and helpful! Thanks again to the Museum for welcoming us and from the great day we had there, no doubt that we will be back again!

Jack WDØCFH made a contact on QRP CW. Conditions on the bands were not too great and there was an RTTY contest going on that covered up most of the popular low power digital frequencies. You would think they would stay away from known operating mode frequencies. But it was still fun, Jeff KAØEGE was running WSPR and is logged as hearing several stations from all over the United States, Canada, Germany and England and his transmission was even heard by a station in Iceland.

New Activity for Amateur Radio - WSPR

The Weak Signal Propagation Reporter Network is a group of amateur radio operators using K1JT's MEPT_JT digital mode to probe radio frequency propagation conditions using very low power (QRP/QRPp) transmissions. The software is open source, and the data collected are available to the public through this site.

This looks like a fun new activity for hams. Even non licensed folks can listen? You will need a radio and USB type of soundcard like the Signalink USB. I set mine up with the FT-857 and with this software it has CAT ablility so it's pretty much hands free and let it run! The first day was a Satirday afternoon and I had good results. Several DX stations heard me and I heard them! I attached below a screenshot from day 1. After this screen grab I also reached 2 in Italy.

Meeting - Lincoln Park - May 30th

The May SEKARC meeting will be held in Lincoln Park shelter one. This shelter seats 25 - 30 and is located near the bocce pits in the southwest corner of the park. We have the shelter reserved from 9am until 5pm so it should be a fun radio day.

We will have some campstove coffee, breakfast casserole, donuts and around noon time we will cook some hot dogs on the charcoal and have a picnic lunch. Bring your gear and setup or just come on down for a friendly visit. Our hope is to get some bugs worked out before field day and just to get outdoors in the fresh air!