John Glenn: “From our founding days, Americans have been motivated by curiosity about the new and the unknown. That curiosity…coupled with an education system that let all our citizens benefit and contribute, were the twin engines of progress.” Photograph of our +Fragile Oasistaken by +NASA astronaut John Glenn February 20, 1962, as he piloted the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first manned orbital mission of the United States.
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 2nd 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.
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.
Work continues on finalizing travel plans to North Dakota.
Club members will gather in Fargo on Thursday, July 14. Setup will begin on Friday morning and if necessary, finish up on Saturday morning. Check back here for any further updates.
Work has begun on the QSL card for the expedition, but won’t be finalized until after the contest is over. It looks very good. It is being printed by KB3IFH. Randy has printed several different cards for the club. Club member AA4YL, also used Randy for her personal cards. Great service and excellent quality.
HODARS members will be presenting a forum of the expedition at the 2011 Huntsville, AL hamfest. Drop by if you can.
Making final plans and lists for the RTTY Expedition to North Dakota for the NAQP. We will do our best to make some contacts outside the contest hours, including RTTY and SSB. We are setting up on Friday, so look for us on the bands then.
We will be operating during the practice session Friday evening. We will work as many stations as possible.
Our host, Gene, W0ZOK was on the cover of the February 2005 issue of CQ magazine.
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.
