Tanner Jones

W5RRR makeover (in progress!)

July 1, 2018February 4, 2018 by Tanner Jones

Here’s the first glimpse of our newly tiled flooring.

Many thanks to Jerry, N5FWB, who managed to get us this nice upgrade from our ratty carpet.

So, much of the equipment has been moved to a temporary holding room for now. The tiled floor is now complete, and we’ve decided to paint the walls while the opportunity exists. Standby for an all hands on deck for painters this week. This shack refurbishment includes installing 2 donated operations desks from the MCC (thanks AB5SS). One of the new benches will replace our old Satellite console and the other will be set up as an Emergency Operations Center station, against the wall where the IC-781 current sits. The remaining 3 wooden benches will be placed side-to-side on the primary wall, while we also shrink and update the patch panel into a smaller footprint that can sit ontop of a bench top.>

W5RRR Mail Call

May 29, 2018February 4, 2018 by Tanner Jones

Thanks to KG5HOK the shack now has a real mailbox! With the clubs new found activity online, we’re getting tons of mail asking for QSLs. We now have our separate mail tray at the Gilruth and it’s regularly filling up. So our new shack mailbox will be a nice touch to place incoming QSLs and … Read more…

AB5SS is a World Class VHF/UHF Rover Contester.

July 4, 2018February 4, 2018 by Tanner Jones

John, AB5SS, is a World Class VHF/UHF Rover Contester.
2000 – 1st place in the US and Canada (AB5SS+W5DF)
2002 – 4th place in the US and Canada (AB5SS+W5DF)

“From 1998-2002, we ran a serious competitive rover station and had many top 10 rover scores for the US & Canada.”
—John Maca, AB5SS

On his truck, John had radios covering 6m through 3cm (that’s all 10 bands – 50/144/222/432/902/1296/2304/3456/5760/10368 MHz).

Winter Field Day (WFD) 2018 @ W5RRR

July 1, 2018February 4, 2018 by Tanner Jones

WINTER FIELD DAY 2018!

On a cold, rainy weekend of the January 27th, members of the JSCARC successfully marked W5RRR’s presence in our first ever 2018 Winter Field Day event. KB5PGY, W9TWJ, and W5OC setup portable operations from the outdoor picnic tables adjacent to the W5RRR shack. The intrepid trio strung up a variety of temporary antennas which included two long wire antennas (Zepp, End-Fed) strung from the trees and two exotic portable vertical antennas: 1) The Next Generation Antenna (N6BT) V-8 and 2) the Transworld TW-2010/4040, both ground mounted. The V-8 antenna required a bit of ingenuity to mount but W9TWJ ended up hammering down 2 leftover fence posts from last year’s summer FD, which worked great as a self supporting ground stake.

KG5NQP, 2M Net Control 1st Timer

July 1, 2018February 4, 2018 by Tanner Jones

Special shout out to Christi, KG5NQP. Christi is a new ham and graciously accepted a quick turnaround need to serve as Net Control for the JSCARC weekly 2m FM Tuesday net. With no experience, nor practice, she bravely accepted the challenge. With a standard script in-hand, she did an awesome job from the W5RRR VHF station.

2/8 Monthly Meeting Information

June 4, 2018January 30, 2018 by Tanner Jones

Brown Bag Lunch Meeting: 12:00pm–1:00pm CT in Building 30, Room 3090.

Evening Meeting: 6:30pm–8:30pm CT at the Gilruth Center Inspiration Room.

Observations from a 1st time VHF contester

May 29, 2018January 22, 2018 by Tanner Jones

What I learned for my 1st exposure to the VHF weekend contest.

VHF/UHF/Microwavers are serious hams.

– They communicate and take these operations very seriously

– They operate strange expensive radios and antennas from their cars

– They pre-arrange operating times and coordinate with others

– They operate big signals and hunt out the little guys

The W5RRR satellite antennas are not fun equipment for this type of contest

Winter Field Day

May 29, 2018January 22, 2018 by Tanner Jones

This weekend from Saturday at 1pm to Sunday at 1pm will be Winter Field Day at the W5RRR shack.

Brrr…Winter Field Day @ W5RRR Jan 27/28 anyone?

July 4, 2018January 19, 2018 by Tanner Jones

Yep, this is last minute, but one of our NOTA sister stations announced their intent to participate in this less popular operating event. So in the interests of partnership, competition, NOTA presence, and plain good ol’ fun, a modest setup will be made in support of this event. We’re not going for any big scores nor 24 hour ops, but just to kick the tires and make a few QSOs. Note: we will NOT operate using any W5RRR shack equipment and we’ll be operating outside of the shack.

John’s CW Decoder Kit – Taking Orders Soon!

July 3, 2018January 19, 2018 by Tanner Jones

As reported in recent 2m Tuesday net traffic, John AB5SS is nearly complete with a nano arduino based CW Decoder project board kit. Many thanks to John for his countless hours in development along with assistance from Stu W4STU, and Mike, N8MTV. John brought the finished kit and demonstrated it at the last club meeting. This is an excellent project for hams who are just learning how to send and copy morse code, or for those who hate CW but want to decode the messages thru this device. Standby for how the club prefers to handle order requests.