Solar Eclipse QSO Party

by

Information from Jayant, KG5LJZ.

Upcoming solar eclipse is coming soon August 21 and hams will be conducting testing during this event. The objective of the Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP) is to flood the airwaves with contacts, all measured by the automated receiver networks of the Reverse Beacon Network, PSKReporter, and WSPRNet. When those observations are combined with the logs from individual stations, the result will be one of the largest ionospheric experiments ever performed. Here’s how  hams can have a starring role…

Read more…

Texas City Tidelands Hamfest 2017

by

 

Hamfest pro and salesman par excellence, Ken Goodwin, K5RG,  and our fearless JSCARC president,Keith Grimm, KG5HOK,  led the effort to support the JSCARC at the July 8th Tidelands Hamfest held at the Doyle Convention Center, in Texas City.  With 2 tables for the club and a 3rd table that K5RG funded, lots of donated equipment (thank you Renee Lance) was swapped for cash and helped bolster the JSCARC treasury.

Read more…

2nd Hello from Paige

by

Remember Paige who made her first GOTA contact with W5RRR during Field Day ?  (https://www.w5rrr.org/2017/07/03/wx4bk-welcome-to-ham-radio/)

Tanner Jones, W9TWJ, was generous enough to take the time to send her a W5RRR QSL card and some NASA mementos.  Here’s a photo of a beaming Paige with her NASA JSC outreach items from Tanner.  Influencing young persons is a real joy of this hobby.  Superb job, Tanner!

Read more…

Field Day 2017

by

The JSCARC and CLARC joined talents, skill, and sweat equity, to once again continue the annual tradition of holding Field Day at the Gilruth.  There were so many special activities that happened, and without any problems nor issue.   A terrific time and an awesome event for the radio community.

Highlights included:

2017 FD huge success for both JSCARC and CLARC team

Read more…

Field Day – ongoing

by

A wonderful crowd today.  All W5RRR stations were full up.  We mostly had more operators than available stations (5), so next year we’ll likely increase our ops plan. A large turnout of boy scouts and girl scouts were expertly coordinated by Beth Scully with terrific support from Mike McCann.  The kids were super interested and … Read more…

Mr. Murphy arrives early

by

It’s not even field day, but Murphy’s Law has arrived.

Suspect Beta feed match on 20m yagi
  • The W5RRR shack back doorlatch is broken. Completely kaput.
  • The 20m Yagi has degraded to the point there is no discernable resonance and the defective feed connection is causing splatter during transmit.
  • The 15m Yagi has now gotten worse. Resonance has shifted to 21.7MHz.
  • The IC-781 is broken again. Intermittent TX and RX. Perhaps lose internal connector.
  • On the antenna patch panel, the SO-239 threads assigned to the 15m antenna have worn down. All PL-259 push-on connector shells make unacceptable contact. Not a big deal but needs attention.

Read more…