February meeting is February 21 at 7 PM at the Health Resource Center, across from East Alabama Medical Center, on Pepperell Parkway. Meeting room is the Dogwood, which is straight back when entering.

We will have a Mexican dinner in the meeting room beginning at 6 PM. As usual, price is $5.00 per person. Dinner will consist of burritos, tacos, nachos, chips, salsa, drinks, dessert, etc.

Bob, KA4PKB is presenting the program for the evening. He will be demonstrating how to build The Deluxe Tenna Dipper, a small antenna analyzer. To see the Tenna Dipper, go to this link. Most builders say it assembles in about an hour.

http://www.qrpkits.com/deluxetennadipper.html

Some eHam reviews.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/9835

If anyone would like to order a kit and build one, we could have a kit
building meeting one month. Price is $70.

The January meeting of HODARS was very interesting. Dick, K4IQJ presented a program on controlling his remote receiving antennas via the Ethernet port on his Ten Tec Omni VII.

Dick has his Omni VII and a Beverage on Ground (BOG) at the QTH  of KA4PKB east of Auburn. Dick explained the planning, photos of the layout,  and gave a demonstration of the setup.

Members present for the meeting, K4IQJ, KI4TWB, KE4KWE, KA4PKB, K4JOP, Reta, WB4LNM, KI4EEY, AA4YL, KI4KUT.

We were glad to have a visitor from the Auburn University Club; Kyle, W4GNU. Kyle is a Linux fan and his callsign fits!

Admin sends sincere apologies from for lack of current postings of late.

Due to schedule conflicts at the usual club meeting place, future meetings will most likely be held on nights other than our usual 2^nd Tuesday.

I will keep the club updated on dates, times etc.

The HODARS site has been down for a few days. I moved the hosting account to a new company,. QTH.COM is now hosting our web site.

QTH is owned by hams and the customer service is outstanding. In the beginning, I had problems with the domain transfer and Scott at QTH.COM was always there to help answer questions. Scott also helped transfer the SQL database for WordPress to the new server.

If anyone is looking for web hosting, I strongly recommend QTH.COM. They host ham clubs, individual ham sites and non ham radio sites too.

http://qth.com/

September 21, 2011

Received an email from W0ZOK, our host for the NAQP. Gene has finished installing the second tower and beam for the contest. The first contact he made was UY2UA in the Ukraine.

A photo of the new installation is shown below.

The countdown to Heart of Dixie RTTY in North Dakota has begun.

Air travel plans made, check.

Hotel rooms booked, check.

Writelog programmed on laptop and contest set up, check.

RigExpert installed on laptop and working, check.

W0ZOK has promised us a cookout while we are there. He said he likes brats and beer. Sounds fine to me. We told him to save some 60 degree days for us. We don’t want any 90 degrees. We have that here at home.

We will arrive on Thursday, July 14, set up the station on the 15th and be ready to go on Saturday in the NAQP.

One of our club members has offered his home as a Field Day site. He has plenty of land and trees for antennas. We will be operating from two travel trailers.

We are operating in 2A category. One station is full time CW. The second station is part time SSB and RTTY.

HAPPY FLAG DAY!

It was on this day in 1777 that the original 13-star version of our flag was adopted.

Long May She Wave!

http://www.dday.org/

The Alabama QSO Party is Saturday, June 4^th.The contest runs from 11 AM to 11 PM Central time. Modes are SSB and CW. The QSO Party is sponsored by the Alabama Contest Group.

W4HOD will be operating from the home of club member Darrell, K9MUG. Darrell will hold down the CW portion of the contest. Bob, KA4PKB; Cheryl, AA4YL; and Gene, KI4EEY will work SSB. We look forward to seeing other members that might be able to drop by to operate.