May Coffee Meeting

We had a short notice meeting last Saturday at Hardee's here in Pittsburg and had a great turnout. A couple made it across the new lakes formed here in SEK and SWMO from all of the rain we had. Good to see we had a couple of projects and show and tell items from Joe WØMQY and Bill WBØLXZ. (see pictures below of the Hilltopper set up and the 1940's model Milliamp Meter). Great to see everyone and we all had a great time. Good breakfast, good coffee and GREAT club members!!

Dayton Hamvention 2019

Here is a look at Dayton Hamvention from a favorite YouTuber Ham Radio Concepts !! Enjoy !!

Great Nets This Week !!!

We had 2 great nets this week... the FM net on Wed at 8pm had I think 15 stations checking in. It was nice to hear from Joe WØMQY as we have not heard him for a while on the FM net. Glad he is feeling better also!

The Four States Fusion net was great fun. We had 10 stations gathered up. We had Frontenac, Carl Junction, Pittsburg, Riverton and Joplin represented locally and distant check ins were from Manhattan KS. Also getting in late were Bartlesville OK and how about this..... AUSTRALIA !! VK4MSS Mal checked in and wow was he entertaining. The accent was great and we was funny too. Something about being up to his britches in alligators? He said we was going to try and be a regular so stay tuned and stop by for a Fusion DX chat!

From FT8 to FT4

New mode from the FT8 folks!! Here is a presentation from the developer Dr. Taylor. He begins with some info on FT8 and then moves to the new FT4 mode.

I believe there were some changes made right after this FT4 presentation. The version of FT4 that will be coming out on Monday is synchronous, on a 6-second cycle, and requires a more accurate clock than FT8.  One thing that you can do now, before the program release on Monday, is to make sure that your computer clock is as accurate as possible.  The Meinberg NTP program is recommended by K1JT for keeping your clock accurate https://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/sw/ntp.htm

You can check the accuracy of your computer clock by going to www.time.is

ARRL The Doctor Is In Podcast

This might be interesting to many of you.. ARRL Podcast called "Listening Outside the Ham Bands". Anyone can listen anywhere, and you never know what you might find!

First Look at the Yaesu FTdx101D

Well it's finally landing...... here is a short overview of the brand new Yaesu SDR Transceiver the brand new FTdx101D. Check this beauty out and yes if you want to buy me one... I WILL accept delivery !!

New SEKARC/ARES Repeater

Great news from the SEKARC !!

KØSEK has a new repeater on the air in Crawford County! With the help from some donated equipment from Crawford County and hard work from Bill, Tyler and Matt we have a new all FM repeater on the air. It is located at the county tower, Southwest of Girard and is up about 300 feet. The frequency is 147.24 with a PL Tone of 91.5. No need for tone squelch on this one! If your radio has a NARROW FM setting you might set it up that way since the repeater can only be set to narrow mode but either way it should not be an issue.

We have received test reports from Galena, Parsons, Carl Junction and coverage is very good. It can be reached in Pittsburg on an HT but is scratchy as expected but still able to copy. This repeater will be the primary ARES repeater but we would love to have it used freely. The connection with the new ARES group has helped us in obtaining the donated equipment from the county which was in the 150 mhz range. We needed a higher VHF frequency for gear that was pretty much ready to get on the air! We had to do some duplexer tuning but in short order we had it ready.

We have a lot of options going forward for area repeaters so stay tuned and get involved as we grow and change. Here is a link to the clubs local repeater listing and map image of the location...

SEKARC Area Repeater Listing CLICK HERE !!