At the September meeting KD8LCF proposed a set of guidelines for the administration of nets on the 146.88 repeater. As the club, and the repeater trustee are responsible to the FCC for the operation of the repeater, the following guidelines for nets are proposed: If a club member wants to start a new, regularly-scheduled net,…
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Proposed Change to the Time for Start of Thursday Evening Net
At the September meeting WD8PMD proposed that we change the starting time of the Thursday net to 8:00pm local. The proposed date for this change is the first Thursday net of November, or November 4th. The motion was seconded and there was discussion. The motion was tabled for the next meeting with the intent to…
Friday Dinners with Show-and-Tell
Many members of the Cascades Amateur Radio Society meet for dinner each Friday evening at the Alpha Coney restaurant at the Jackson Crossing Mall. At these fun get-togethers, often there is show-and-tell. This last Friday (September 3, 2021) was no exception. Mike (WB8ICN) brought some home-brew circuit cards that he had recently fabricated. This was…
What is Input Impedance, Anyhow
As amateur radio operators we typically look at any input impedance specification and think 50 Ohms. But what is 50 Ohms? Buried within the whole topic of input impedance is a “characteristic impedance.” At this point we typically lose amateurs thinking we are moving into rocket science. But this stuff is really simple as you…
Special Event Station W8J at the Jackson County Fair
At the Jackson County Fair of 2021 at about 5 PM, the Cascades Amateur Radio Society had a booth and was displaying amateur excellence to the public at large. In the first photo you can see both Dave (W3IGT) and Bill (KD8AAD) in the near field actively working the special event station that the club…
How Much Do You Really Know…? (by Dale [K8TS])
How Much Do You Really Know…? By Dale Cole (K8TS) When you were in school, did you pass from grade to grade because of what information you knew, or were you booted up a level because the teacher did not want you in her class a second time? It happens, we all know that. The…
My 160m Dipole Antenna Fell Out of the Tree!
Because of poor planning on my part, the feed-point of my Buckmaster 160-meter off-center fed dipole fell from the tree yesterday to the ground. Let’s talk about what the original configuration was why it failed what I did to mitigate the circumstances and its return to operability. WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL CONFIGURATION? The photo shown…
Weekday Morning Roundtable Net Social Event 145.150 Washtenaw
On weekday mornings there is an inorganic roundtable net that meets at 8 AM on the Washtenaw 145.150 MHz repeater for a 30-minute daily kick-start. It is a fun net to which the amateur community is not only invited but warmly encouraged to attend. Because the repeater reaches not only the whole of Washtenaw County…
Transmission Line Analytics Applied to a Mag Mount Antenna
Amateur radio operators often forget that a feedline or transmission line has an effect on the vector impedance of the antenna it serves. If the antenna is resonant (50 + j0 Ohms) for the input frequency, then any length of coax is irrelevant. But if the antenna vector impedance is something else (which it ALWAYS…
Mag Mount Antenna Optimization & Feedline Analytics
The mag mount antenna may possibly be categorized as a commodity in both amateur radio and all hobbyist communications. Its installation is pretty much plug-and-chug except for a slight positioning of the transmitting element by means of a set screw. The user of the mag mount antenna typically uses an SWR meter to position the…