At the last meeting VP Mike Marganski, KE8HBK brought a beautiful old broadcast/ shortwave receiver that he received from a fellow worker. At this time not much is known about the model name and maker. One thing we can see is that the radio is a TRF style.

The three gang variable capacitor is typical of tuned radio frequency receivers, the predecessor of the superhetrodyne. Can you help with identification? As you can see, just examining the chassis was a fun experience for everyone.

This all inspires me to share a vintage amateur radio photo book at the next meeting.

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Sharing knowledge is one of the greatest pleasures in this hobby. Our annual Homebrew Show and Tell meeting in October featured many neat projects, like high amperage rechargeable battery system built by Chuck Mehozonek, K8CVM. What beautiful work, Chuck.

Here Mike checks out one of Chucks smaller batteries.

Then, Rich Nagel, W8KU shared his home made balun. Again, beautiful work. You can’t buy’em like that.

And did I tell you about my latest iambic CW paddle? Nothing like Show and tell.

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Lot’s of important matters to discuss at the November 18th meeting. See you there.

Hal Rogers, K8CMD President

The 62nd Annual Jamboree On The Air will be held on the weekend of Oct 18-20th. Jamboree-on-the-Air, or JOTA, is the largest Scouting event in the world. It is held annually the third full weekend in October. JOTA uses amateur radio to link Scouts and hams around the world, around the nation, and in your own community. This jamboree requires no travel, other than to a nearby amateur radio operator’s ham shack. Many times you can find the hams will come to you by setting up a station at your Scout camporee, at the park down the block, or perhaps at a ham shack already set up at your council’s camp.

To find registered JOTA stations in your area visit https://k2bsa.net/registered-jamboree-on-the-air-stations. If you or your local club is planning a JOTA operation you can register it at https://k2bsa.net/jota-station-registration.   

For additional information on planning your JOTA operations visit:

• JOTA- www.scouting.org/jota
• JOTA- www.arrl.org/jamboree-on-the-air-jota
• JOTA- www.jotajoti.info
• JOTA- https://k2bsa.net/jota
• JOTA suggested frequencies 
• JOTA sample questions

For additional information on Scouting and Amateur Radio visit:

• Scouting & Amateur Radio- Ideas & Resources- tiny.cc/ar-scout 
• Radio Merit Badge
• Girls Scouts Radio Patch 
• Troop Program Feature: Radio

—
Anthony Luscre
K8ZTOhio Section Section Youth Coordinator & Education OutreachARRL – The National Association For Amateur Radio™ 
k8zt@arrl.net (best for Amateur Radio)

The Web Resource Hoarder- www.ZTLearn.com
K8ZT Radio Website- www.k8zt.com
Amateur Radio Resources for Students/Youth – www.k8zt.com/hry

Homebrew Show and Tell is coming!

I can honestly say that Homebrew Show and Tell is my favorite meeting of the year at the PRC. This is the evening many of us look forward to because it’s all about learning old and new technologies. How does it work. Simple. If you have a new toy or tech interest that interests you, bring it and share it with the group. It doesn’t have to be a homebrewed project. It doesn’t have to old or new. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a physical thing. We’re good with concepts. If it’s somewhat technical, we’re interested. See you Monday October 7th.

PRC is looking for a new web platform

At our previous meeting it was announced that the cost of using this web platform is becoming prohibitive for our group. Our pages are published using WordPress and various free plug-ins. We’re hosted by GoDaddy, who also secures for us the parmaradioclub domain name.

Because of the advertising we often hear promoting “free web sites” many people assume that web services are free or inexpensive. While there are some inexpensive web platforms, it is a business and free pages come with trade offs like banner advertising, very structured layouts limited publishing tools.

So this is a call to our members to inform us of web services you’re aware of that you think we should look at. Just write parmaradioclub@gmail.com. Thanks for your help.

Looking back at the Cleveland Hamfest

If you had the opportunity to attend the Cleveland Hamfest we’d be interested in your experience. Personally, I was tied down to a vendor booth. While I enjoyed the day, working a booth restricts your view of an event. So come and tell me what I missed.

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Hal Rogers K8CMD, President

We hope you had a good Labor Day. Here we are in the middle of September and still dealing with heat and heavy rain. It’s really been a strange year weather-wise (and in many other ways).

At our September 16th meeting we’ll take care of business and then have short session on a topic that is always interesting– hamfests. With the Cleveland hamfest approaching on Sunday September 22nd, let’s have a free-flowing discussion about how you “do hamfests.” Do you approach it with plan? A list of things you’re looking for or certain people you want to catch up with? Forums you want to sit in on?

Your comments and experience can be very helpful to new hams or those who haven’t figured out how to get the most from a hamfest.

For information about the Cleveland Hamfest, click www.hac.org

Then I’d like to share some fascinating facts about an amazing radio connectivity technology that is far from new but very new to me – Bluetooth. Where did it come from? How does it compare to wi-fi? Is it better or not even close? And where did that odd name come from? Can anyone explain that intriguing logo? Those answers and much more Monday, September 16th.

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Looking ahead to September… we will not be meeting on Labor Day, the 2nd. Our only meeting in September will be September 16th.

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This has been an unusual summer for my family and me. Without going into too much detail in this space, let me just say that that I’m happy to say that things are looking up. With all the activity I’ve had little time for radio, or the PRC for that matter.

As we learned at the previous meeting, several members have tales of woe in the aftermath of the July 5th flooding storm that left my basement quite soaked. Fortunately we didn’t suffer any major losses. We’re now dried out thanks to the fine work of the Service Master team. After their work I back -filled three tons of top soil against the foundation to make up for long settled soil. Then I discovered a backed up gutter downspout, and opened a neighbor’s leaf-blocked back yard storm drain that was allowing her water to flow onto our back yard. While I still get an uneasy feeling when I notice dark clouds gathering, I’m comfortable that ever bit of my recent efforts will pay off. For now our basement is DRY. It has occurred to me that perhaps my calling should have been as a civil engineer. I certainly can see the benefit of such work.

Hamfests

I haven’t been able to enjoy any hamfests this summer and I understand the DX Engineering ‘fest was a very successful event. With that in mind, we’ll have some personal reports about the activity at our next meeting on August 19th.

The “right way” to do Hamfests

Have you ever attended a hamfest and then spent several hours afterward only to realize that you returned without the “goodies” you needed? How did that happen? We all know there are a lot of distractions at hamfests that make it easy for us to get side tracked. I’ve become convinced that hamfesting successfully, whether as a shopper or as a vendor requires skill! At Monday’s meeting I’d like to hear your suggestions for successfully doing a hamfest, as a shopper or as a vendor. As a bonus, I’m certain that those skills are transferable to other similar situations.

Those strange tones

While enjoying the recent coverage of the anniversary of the moon landing and listening to the thrilling two way conversations between the astronauts and Houston Control I asked myself for the first time, “What are those strange tones we hear during the transmissions?” My research led me to an interesting finding. The tones are called Quindar Tones and they served a major communication function.

With a spinning earth it would have been impossible to maintain constant radio communication with the astronauts from a single fixed location in Houston, Texas. The solution was to have a network of receiving stations and transmitters around the globe. Each station had phone line connection to Houston Control. At any given time one of those sites would have a direct signal to the astronauts. Now here is where the Quindar tones come in. When the astronauts pressed their PTT (push to talk) the Quindar tone from the space craft was picked up by a receiving station and their audio was fed, by phone line, to Houston! Houston’s response went back to space by first traveling back to the receiving station on the same phone line!

For more specifics, I suggest you go to www.wikipedia.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quindar_tones

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Hal Rogers, K8CMD PRC President

Field Day a Perfect Success

In many respects, this year’s Field Day was a perfect success. We had some challenges with the G5RV antenna mast up but thanks to member experience the crew was able to overcome the issues. Soon, we were on our way to filling out our coverage map… and, most importantly, having fun. We were all surprised at how crowded the bands were and that propagation was quite good.

We enjoyed visits from a number of visitors who were all pleased to “get the tour” of our station. Many thanks to Mike Pardue, N8WHB and family who provided a fabulous dinner tent and a tasty grilled burger meal. Mike Marganski, KE8HBK surprised us with delicious Polish sausage. Then this writer treated all to an energizing Sunday pancake and maple syrup breakfast, and left over Polish sausage. No one goes hungry at our Field Days!

If you took photos from the event, please forward them to us so we can share them.

Join us at our July 1st meeting We’ll have a complete report on the results of the event and critique our efforts, asking “what worked, what didn’t and hearing members suggestions about what we could do to make next year’s event better. In addition we’ll discuss some upcoming events that you might want to participate in.

Alternative energy demonstration

Recently I was introduced to an engine design that I had never heard of. This fascinating invention has absolutely no fuel requirement, yet it’s been used to power autos, boats, and other vehicles. In fact, it’s not an internal combustion engine. At the July 1st meeting we’ll have a short program from Bill Nye “The Science Guy” on the topic, then an actual machine will be demonstrated.

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Hal Rogers, K8CMD Communications Director, President

CW is 175 years old and going strong

I’ve never regretted that when I was introduced to amateur radio in 1961, Morse Code was a requirement. I never questioned it. As a kid I thought Morse Code was the language of fighter pilots, soldiers, and hams everywhere! CW quickly became my go to mode, especially when the bands are noisy or “just not working.”

I think you’ll enjoy this informative article by Eddie King, PhD on The Conversation and in the Washington Post.

The first message sent by Morse code’s dots and dashes across a long distance traveled from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore on Friday, May 24, 1844 – 175 years ago. It signaled the first time in human history that complex thoughts could be communicated at long distances almost instantaneously. Until then, people had to have face-to-face conversations; send coded messages through drums, smoke signals and semaphore systems; or read printed words.

Thanks to Samuel F.B. Morse, (Samuel Finley Breese Morse, ed.) communication changed rapidly, and has been changing ever faster since. He invented the electric telegraph in 1832. It took six more years for him to standardize a code for communicating over telegraph wires. In 1843, Congress gave him US$30,000 to string wires between the nation’s capital and nearby Baltimore. When the line was completed, he conducted a public demonstration of long-distance communication.

Morse wasn’t the only one working to develop a means of communicating over the telegraph, but his is the one that has survived. The wires, magnets and keys used in the initial demonstration have given way to smartphones’ on-screen keyboards, but Morse code has remained fundamentally the same, and is still – perhaps surprisingly – relevant in the 21st century. Although I have learned, and relearned, it many times as a Boy Scout, an amateur radio operator and a pilot, I continue to admire it and strive to master it.

Easy sending

Morse’s key insight in constructing the code was considering how frequently each letter is used in English. The most commonly used letters have shorter symbols: “E,” which appears most often, is signified by a single “dot.” By contrast, “Z,” the least used letter in English, was signified by the much longer and more complex “dot-dot-dot (pause) dot.”

In 1865, the International Telecommunications Union changed the codeto account for different character frequencies in other languages. There have been other tweaks since, but “E” is still “dot,” though “Z” is now “dash-dash-dot-dot.”

The reference to letter frequency makes for extremely efficient communications: Simple words with common letters can be transmitted very quickly. Longer words can still be sent, but they take more time.

Going wireless

The communications system that Morse code was designed for – analogue connections over metal wires that carried a lot of interference and needed a clear on-off type signal to be heard – has evolved significantly.

The first big change came just a few decades after Morse’s demonstration. In the late 19th century, Guglielmo Marconi invented radio-telegraph equipment, which could send Morse code over radio waves, rather than wires.

The shipping industry loved this new way to communicate with ships at sea, either from ship to ship or to shore-based stations. By 1910, U.S. law required many passenger ships in U.S. waters to carry wireless sets for sending and receiving messages.

After the Titanic sank in 1912, an international agreement required some ships to assign a person to listen for radio distress signals at all times. That same agreement designated “SOS” – “dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dot” – as the international distress signal, not as an abbreviation for anything but because it was a simple pattern that was easy to remember and transmit. The Coast Guard discontinued monitoring in 1995. The requirement that ships monitor for distress signals was removed in 1999, though the U.S. Navy still teaches at least some sailors to read, send and receive Morse code.

See Eddie King, PhD’s complete article at https://theconversation.com/simply-elegant-morse-code-marks-175-years-and-counting-117069

Field Day 2019 is coming soon

Field Day is June 22-23th this year and once again we’ll be at Top O’ the Ledges in the Hinckley Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. Set up time will be 10 am on June 23rd with operation beginning at 2 pm. At our previous meeting we made a good start at working out our plans to insure another great event. Join us on the 17th to finalize the plans.

Hal Rogers, K8CMD President, Communications Director

Field Day, June 22-23, 2019

Undoubtedly, ARRL Field Day is the most popular amateur radio event of the year. Somebody sure had a great idea years ago! Field Day offers something for everyone starting with emergency preparedness training, then setting up a power source and antennas, radio gear, camping, picnicking, an operating table, operating all kinds of gear for a variety of modes. Then there’s the social aspect providing a wonderful opportunity to get to know fellow hams and club members in a very different setting than a club meeting. Field Day truly is a fabulous part of our hobby.

Some members might not be aware that VP Mike Marganski, KE8HBK actually began work on this year’s event last year securing our FD site permit. Thanks to Mike, we’ll again be operating at Top O’ Ledges in the Hinckley Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks.

So, now it’s time for us all to begin the fun stuff of making sure all aspects of the event are covered by someone. You know, all the details that can be easily overlooked – like tools, food, water, tents, lighting, bug spray, etc., etc. So join us Monday, June 3rd and help us make this another memorable Field Day.

— Hal Rogers, K8CMD President

Hamvention 2019 Wrap Up

If you attended the 2019 Hamvention in Xenia we want to hear your report on this growing national ham event. What did you find most exciting? Most memorable? Did you attend any forums? Which forums were most helpful? Did you see any celebrities? Did you enjoy the flea market? What did you buy? What do you think will be your most memorable moments?

Laptop spacebar issue — resolved!

If you’ve been following these posts, you might recall my report of a unique problem I began to experience with my laptop, my computer of choice for writing this post. Literally, out of nowhere, my Asus laptop spacebar developed a fluky problem. It did not work! Imagine writing without a spacebar. I scoured the internet for a solution. Nothing but false leads. Finally, I discovered that the spacebar would work IF I held one of the shift keys while I clicked the spacebar. It was a step in the right direction, but still not very convenient.

I got lucky! At a recent family gathering I mentioned to Dan, my son-in-law, my Asus’ very odd spacebar issue. Dan, who is an IT professional, eats and breathes computers and is really motivated to resolve issues like this. After a thorough trouble-shooting session, Dan made a tremendously discovery and was able to correct the aggravating problem. Since this could easily happen to you on any computer, I’ll share Dan’s very helpful discovery at our next meeting.

Morse Code is alive and well

• 

At our last meeting, following a demo of my new steak knife key, we had a short CW session. It was fun. Let’s do it again.

In these days of poor HF propagation, many hams worldwide have taken to learning and practicing CW. If you’d like to pick up this wonderful skill, join us for some no stress fun. We’re only three letters in and you’ll catch up in a hurry.

Those who know me well, are aware that I can become emotionally attached to things, especially things I toiled on for a while, like the Steak Knife Key. But, in her best interest, I’m saying good bye to my little key. Earlier this year, ARRL’s QST magazine issued a call for submissions to their 2019 CW Key Competition. It was an extremely difficult decision, but I finally decided to send her to ARRL Headquarters in Hartford, CT. Of course, they promise to return the paddle after judging. But still there’s the anxiety of sending your little one off on a worldly adventure. Hopefully the trip will be safe and she will have many good stories to share about QSO’ing with numerous bright and shiny keys. And, certainly, she’ll have developed life long friends. So, I’ll give her your 73 and 88.

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Hal Rogers, K8CMD President, Communications Director

Antenna season has arrived!

Our May 6th meeting will be a good opportunity to develop your plans for a new antenna or ways to improve or fix an old one. Particularly wire antennas. They’re priced right and easy to buy or build. Numerous designs have been developed over the years. What’s the for best you? We’ll also be taking a look baluns and see how easy it is to make your own.

Solve your problems with electronics.

Finding a problem is not difficult. Finding a solution, well that’s a challenge. There are few things more enjoyable than building a circuit that solves a problem. Some years ago I discovered a tremendous resource for electronic experimenters called Electronics for You. Electronics for you is loaded with thousands of small circuits for any problem imaginable as well as circuits just for fun. Most circuits are developed by electronic engineers and all are tested by the staff of EFY. Check them out at electronicsforu.com.

Earth Day ’19: Tremendous Success

Our 7th annual Earth Day Special Event activity was a phenomenal success and I’m not exaggerating. We had more visitors, more participants, more radio contacts, and more fun than ever. Many thanks to Anita Cook and Parma Historical Society, who maintains Stearns Farm for helping us to promote this year’s activities. Thanks to the Sun Papers for their coverage, online and in print. If you missed the article, check it out at
https://www.cleveland.com/community/2019/04/parma-radio-club-tunes-into-earth-day-event-at-stearns-homestead-sun-postings.html

And, of course, a huge thanks to all our members who helped make the event happen. We’ll have photos and more in future posts. At our next meeting, we’ll critique our efforts and discuss what we did that worked and what did that didn’t.

Digital Modes: how to start

Amateur digital modes are more popular than ever. Why? Many hams feel it’s the perfect answer to enjoying their hobby during this period of decreased sun spot activity. Getting into digital modes is really quite easy and doesn’t require much more equipment than you already have. At our April 15th meeting we’ll see a short program that addresses the topic clearly and concisely. The presenter also describes the most popular new digital mode, FT8 and helps you decide if it’s right for you.

They don’t make ’em like they used to

Recently I heard a UK ham describe an early RCA receiver he enjoyed for many years but finally had to find a new home for it because could no longer move it. I just had to learn more about this tremendous piece of early technology that helped to end WWII. I learned that many were systematically destroyed when the guns of war were finally silenced.

The story behind the AR-88 and other beautiful works of radio art is a read you’ll enjoy. Check out the Radio Boulevard pages of the Western Historic Radio Museum. Enjoy: https://www.radioblvd.com/ar88.htm

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Hal Rogers, K8CMD President