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FARS Meeting Programs - 2017 [2016] [2017] [2018]Friday January 20, 2017 - FARS Winter BanquetVK0EK - Heard Island 2016: DXing, exploring, and communicating in the extremes. Bob Schmieder,
KK6EK During March/April, 2016, a team of 14 men sailed from Cape Town, South Africa, to Heard Island, in the middle of the Indian Ocean and nearly to Antarctica. It was the first scientific expedition in more than 15 years, and the first activation for amateur radio in 19 years.
Robert Schmieder, KK6EK, has been organizing and leading scientific expeditions for 35 years.
He is the founder of the nonprofit oceanic research organization Cordell Expeditions,
which has to its credit more than 1000 discoveries, including new species, range and depth extensions, and first observations.
https://vk0ek.org/
Among his notable DXpeditions are 3Y0PI, XR0X/Y, VK0IR, XR0Z, K7C, TX5K, and VK0EK. He is the author of seven expedition books, is honored by four names species, and is listed in the CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame. Friday February 24, 2017 - Membership Meeting[W6DLF] [W6VYC] ![]()
Raffle (L-R): National Parks on the Air — Death Valley QRPexpedition Dave Flack, W6DLF and Dave Crocker, W6VYC For 2016 National Parks on the Air, FARS's dynamic duo of Dave and Dave activated the nonexistent ghost town of Furnace near Dante's View in the Greenwater Valley of Death Valley National Park. Exploiting an extremely low noise floor, they achieved an extremely high number of QRP contacts in stark and magnificent desert solitude.
Dave Flack became a silent key on May 8, 2017.
- Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() DBJ-2 Roll-up Dual Band J-Pole Antenna by Edison Fong, WB6IQN Friday March 24, 2017 - Membership Meeting[AA6PZ] ![]()
Raffle (L-R):
Not Present: Principles of Directional Antennas Paul Zander, AA6PZ. Radio Amateurs know that the antenna is the most important part of a station. Directionality is an important attribute of an antenna. Antenna directionality or directivity can be used to give gain in a desired direction while reducing the strength of an interfering signal in a different direction. In other situations, an omnidirectional antenna pattern is desired, as for example when operating on a net with stations in different places. This presentation explains some common and simple directional antennas and arrays used for HF, VHF, and UHF. Their radiation patterns is explained in terms of simple principles of physics and geometry. Paul's presentation is available online.
Paul Zander, AA6PZ, was first licensed as WA8JCM in 1963, when he was too young to get a driver’s license.
He quickly discovered that antennas had a unique advantage for home brewing: unlike receivers and transmitters, one didn’t need a well-stocked junque box to make antennas.
All that was needed was wire and insulators.
Over the years, he has designed and built a number of antennas including a full-sized, four-element, 40-meter beam for Field Day whose design was refined and scaled down to a 2-meter version that appeared in Ham Radio magazine (May 1983). Paul is currently involved in making a 24-GHz antenna range. He has an MSEE from Purdue University and over 25 years at Hewlett Packard, designing microwave test equipment. Paul consults on scientific and medical devices and is Chairman of IEEE’s Silicon Valley chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() TBJ-1 PVC Tri-Band Antenna - 146MHz/220MHz/440MHz J-Pole Antenna by Edison Fong, WB6IQN Friday April 28, 2017 - Membership MeetingQuartzfest 2017 plus videos of past FARS Field Days Peter Griffith, WA6VAQ, and Jim Koski, KT6W QuartzFest is an annual ARRL specialty convention held in Quartzsite, Arizona. Peter, WA6VAQ, and Jim, K6TW, attended QuartzFest during the week of January 22-28, 2017. More than 750 hams attended. Peter and Jim presents a slide show and talk about the event. As a double feature, Peter and Jim also show pictures and videos of past EMARC/FARS Field Days.
Peter Griffith, WA6VAQ, got his license in 1974
after attending a class put on by EMARC.
He later became treasurer and was president of EMARC
for eight years.
For many years Jim and Peter conducted radio classes
and were responsible for helping many new hams.
They were both members of the original SPECS board.
Peter is currently the trustee for the W6ASH repeater.
Both enjoy camping and working portable.
Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() DBJ-2 Roll-up Dual Band J-Pole Antenna by Edison Fong, WB6IQN Friday May 26, 2017 - Membership Meeting[Dr. Alex Cannara] ![]()
Raffle (L-R):
Not Present: Progress toward Clean Nuclear Power In an update to his October 2014 presentation to FARS, Dr. Alex Cannara talks about recent progress in molten-salt reactors (MSRs) which generate heat and electrical power on an industrial scale without the fuel emissions, nuclear materials, and waste we now produce, and can do it for the whole world for thousands of years, using a cheap, plentiful source. These power sources:
The technology is the Molten-Salt Reactor (MSR), and the specific variant is Liquid Fluoride-Thorium Reactor (LFTR), developed, designed and operated in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ThoriumRemix. Come and learn what might be the best kept secret for powering your emergency station while combating global warming in the not so distant future.
Alex Cannara is in his second career.
After a distinguished career in the Silicon Valley chip and software industry, he is now consultant on science policy and technical investment.
He lectures widely on energy alternatives and climate-related policies.
He has four graduate degrees from Stanford MSEE, Engineer (Plasma Physics and Systems), MS Statistics, and PhD (Mathematical Methods in Educational Research).
He is an IEEE Life Member and member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Friday June 16, 2017 - Membership MeetingEverything You Need to Know About Modern Digital Television Joel Wilhite, KD6W In the five years since Joel Wilhite, KD6W, spoke to FARS about Digital Amateur Television (DATV, Dec 2012) a lot has changed. This time Joel will talk about literally everything you ever wanted to know about modern digital television, including video standards and quality for over the air broadcasting, cable, Internet, DVD, Blu-ray, and YouTube. How are movies shot at 24 frames/sec converted to video at 30 or 60 frames/sec? How is ATSC different from NTSC? Is Europe still using PAL and SECAM or did they go digital like the U.S.? Which among over-the-air broadcasting, DirecTV, Dish, and Comcast cable, offers the best picture quality for the least money? Why did 3D fizzle after all the hype two years ago? How about display technology: what display technology is on top today, 4K UHD OLED displays? What are the differences among video cables, HDMI, RCA, coaxial, optical — and what's best? Finally, are hams experimenting with sending and receiving DTV — where and how?
Joel Wilhite, KD6W, works professionally in digital video industry.
Joel is the Broadcast Solutions Manager at Harmonic Inc., a local company that makes equipment for digital video compression and transport.
Joel has presented papers at NAB and IEEE Broadcast Technology Society. Joel is also Technical Coordinator and a director of the Palo Alto Amateur Radio Association (PAARA). Joel has been a force in getting Bay Area radio amateurs to migrate from ATV to DATV. One proud result for Bay Area hams is that Mt. Diablo (W6CX) is the first DATV station in the nation to run 3 channels (4-MHz QPSK) using an advanced state-of-the-art technique called Statistical Time-Division Multiplexing (Stat-Mux). Now that’s a mouthful! Friday July 28, 2017 - Membership Meeting[K6YP] ![]()
Raffle (L-R):
Not Shown:
Not Present: Build a 1500 Watt Solid State Amplifier, the Easy Way John Eisenberg, K6YP Why consider building a solid state amplifier? Solid state amplifiers are broadband and require no tuning. I hate the 180 second warm up time associated with “modern” ceramic tubes. The pileup can grow from 1 or 2 guys to hundreds in 3 minutes. What a great learning experience for me as I have never worked with LDMOS. Goals: 1500W power from 1.8-50 MHz, -50dBc harmonics, complete protection (temperature, VSWR, current, and overload), and easy to build.
John has been a ham since 1957.
His interests include DXing, and building equipment.
His professional background is electrical engineering.
His current interest is in high power amplifiers.
His presentation is on-line at: http://ncdxc.org/pages/presentations.html under K6YP. Information on the NCDXC Elmering project: http://ncdxc.org/pages/elmer.html Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() TBJ-1 PVC Tri-Band Antenna - 146MHz/220MHz/440MHz J-Pole Antenna by Edison Fong, WB6IQN Friday August 25, 2017 - Membership Meeting[K6OIK] ![]()
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Not Present: Reflectionless Filters for Rejecting Harmonics and Interference Steve Stearns, K6OIK Who likes SWR? Not you? Most filters are examples of reflection filters that use mismatch as their filtering principle. Steve, K6OIK, explains a different kind of filter—the reflectionless filter. Such filters have constant input impedance and unity SWR at all frequencies. Steve goes back in history to revisit early filters. We will learn about Campbell, Cauer, Foster, and Zobel. We will learn about electrical networks and reactance synthesis. Steve shows how to put the pieces together to make filters that pass and reject multiple frequencies, all while having unity input SWR. As a practical example, Steve will show how to make a harmonic-rejection filter that notches a number of harmonics equal to infinity plus one. The filter is easy to build and align, has small insertion loss, good pass bandwidth, and unity input SWR.
HF phone: Golden Bear Amateur Radio Net, 3,975 kHz LSB at 1900 Pacific time daily.
E-Mail: k6oik AT arrl.net Articles: /docs/k6oik Steve Stearns, K6OIK, started in ham radio while in high school at the height of the Heathkit era. He holds an FCC Amateur Extra and a commercial General Radio Operator license with Radar endorsement. He previously held Novice, Technician, and 1st Class Radiotelephone licenses. He studied electrical engineering at California State University Fullerton, the University of Southern California, and Stanford, specializing in electromagnetic theory, communication, engineering and signal processing. Steve worked at Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory in San Jose, California. He retired as a Northrop Grumman Technical Fellow. Steve is serving as vice-president of the Foothills Amateur Radio Society, and served previously as assistant director of ARRL Pacific Division. He has over 100 professional publications and presentations and ten patents. Steve has received numerous awards for professional and community volunteer activities. Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
Friday September 22, 2017 - Membership Meeting![]()
Home Brew (L-R): ![]()
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Not Present: FARS Annual Home Brew Contest This meeting is about you. Yes you, our members and guests. Our Annual Amateur Radio Homebrew Contest is a opportunity to show off a project that you have worked on in the past year. Each participant has a few minutes to show and explain his project to our audience and has a chance to win one of our four prizes: $40 First prize Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
Friday October 27, 2017 - Membership Meeting[N6KR] ![]()
Raffle (L-R standing):
Raffle (L-R kneeling):
Not Shown: The Elecraft KX2 — The Ultimate Portable HF Transceiver! Wayne Burdick, N6KR, Elecraft CTO and principal designer Wayne Burdick, N6KR, talks about the KX2 and antennas for portable operation. The KX2 is the reigning ultimate portable HF transceiver. It surpasses all previous claimants to this category including the venerable Mizuho MX series and Wayne's previous Wilderness Radio kits: the NorCal 40A, Sierra, and SST.
Wayne Burdick (N6KR) is a co-founder of Elecraft, and principle designer of the Elecraft K2, K1, and KX1 transceivers. He also created the Wilderness Radio kits (NorCal 40A, Sierra, and SST), refinements of his popular NorCal QRP Club designs.
Wayne and his co-founder, Eric Swartz (WA6HHQ) have both been inducted into the QRP Hall of Fame, and jointly received the ARRL's Technical Excellence Award for their transceiver designs.
Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() RG-8X 50 ohm coax w/ PL-259 connectors - 50ft Friday November 17, 2017 - Membership Meeting[AI6MS] ![]()
Raffle (L-R standing):
Raffle (L-R kneeling):
Not Shown:
Not Present: APRS Users Guide Marcel Stieber, AI6MS The Automatic Packet Reporting System or APRS is one of the most popular digital modes in amateur radio, but also one of the most confusing ones to use. Marcel Stieber, AI6MS, starts with an introduction to APRS, what it is and how it works, and then he covers some of the common use cases for the average amateur. He explains different hardware you can purchase, common configurations, what settings to use, and how to get the most out of APRS. After attending this talk, you should be able to go out and start using APRS for vehicle tracking, leaving a trail of electronic “breadcrumbs” while hiking, text messaging, sending text email, weather monitoring, and other fun applications.
Marcel Stieber, AI6MS, was licensed on Cinco de Mayo in 2008 and upgraded to Extra in the summer of 2010.
He is an ARRL Life Member and a volunteer examiner who has helped license over 673 hams since 2009.
Marcel enjoys operating portable stations, APRS, ARDF, and unusual mobile operating (jetski or bicycle)!
He was appointed to the ARRL Committee on Youth by ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN, in 2013. He served as the trustee and technical lead for the Cupertino ARES UHF repeater, W6TDM, which was rebuilt from W6KWF in 2014. He is the Technical Deployment Manager for the Cupertino ARES ARKnet Project which is building up a high-speed wireless intranet for the emergency responders in Cupertino. He operated portable as 9G5MS in Ghana, West Africa, during January-May 2013, where he worked with Medicine on the Move at Kpong Airfield and brought amateur radio to the classroom for the students at AvTech Academy in Kpong, Ghana. Marcel operated during the ARRL School Club Roundup as the first school to participate from Africa. When he’s not busy volunteering, Marcel works at Amazon Lab126 in Sunnyvale, CA. He remains active with his alma mater Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He serves on Cal Poly’s Electrical Engineering Industry Advisory Board, was president and is an Industrial Advisor to the Cal Poly Amateur Radio Club (www.W6BHZ.org). Marcel is active in community events, including providing communications for bike rides and triathlons, help at local repeater work days, assist several testing sessions each year, and a tower hand and RF technical advisor for event management companies and local repeater groups. Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() RG-8X 50 ohm coax w/ PL-259 connectors - 50ft ![]() Cordless Screw Driver - 4.8 V NiCad, LED spotlight, 4 bits, AC/DC charger ![]() Ammo Box 9″x6″x4″, olive drab plastic, can hold 68 boxes of ammo or radio gear! Friday December 15, 2017 - Membership Meeting[W5NYV] ![]()
Raffle (L-R standing):
Not Shown: 3D Printed Antennas for Amateur Radio Michelle Thompson, W5NYV 3D printed antennas are making a big impact in antenna design and test for amateur radio. A small but growing amateur community is reducing the time and effort to create and test advanced antenna designs. A set of tools and techniques exists to go from design to reality. Not all steps are easy or inexpensive, but with the rise of maker and hacker spaces that have 3D printers, the continuing drop in printer prices, and improvements in the software design tools, 3D printing antennas are rapidly becoming more accessible. We talk about 3D printing, 3D modeling, metallization techniques, and where the tricky spots are! What types of designs are best for 3D printing? When should you use traditional methods instead? Several 3D printing war stories included! Michelle's presentation is available online.
Michelle Thompson, W5NYV, enjoys thinking and doing. Not necessarily in that order!
Book learning includes BSEET, BSCET, math minor, MSEE Information Theory.
Actual doing includes engineering at Qualcomm Incorporated, engineering at Optimized Tomfoolery, Amateur Extra class license, AMSAT Phase 4 Ground lead, Organ Donor Pipe Organ lead, DEFCON, IEEE, Burning Man, and community symphony. Other: Refreshments We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:
![]() TBJ-1 PVC Tri-Band Antenna - 146MHz/220MHz/440MHz J-Pole Antenna by Edison Fong, WB6IQN ![]() RG-8X 50 ohm coax w/ PL-259 connectors - 50ft [GP-5 SSB donated by Nick, N6VOA] |