Okay, we didn't really have an advanced topics meeting this week.  Instead, several of us got together at the repeater site and helped clean up the area.  This mainly involved removing trash and getting rid of weeds and other overgrowth.  Pictures of the event have been added to the Club Repeaters page.

We had a different kind of meeting today.  In lieu of training, we discussed several things that will be affecting the club moving forward.

For starters, we used the new Murray repeater located at the Murray Animal Shelter for our check-in net this evening.  The repeater sounded great and nearly all checkins were totally clean and full quieting.  Please take a look at our Club Repeaters page for more information about the new repeater.  While this repeater has a power output of only 40W, it has an effective radiated power of around 300W due to the gain antenna and the antenna's placement at the 180 foot level of the tower that was on this site.  This repeater provides an excellent resource for 1.25m communications across the entire Salt Lake valley.

To show our thanks for Murray City for sponsoring this repeater, Dan (N7XDL) proposed that we take our next scheduled club meeting next week, 13 May 2021, starting at 6:30 PM and meet at the repeater site to clean up the area.  Please bring weed whackers, rakes, work gloves, saws, and whatever else you think you might need to help out.  Dan will be sending out an announcement via e-mail to the club membership regarding this scheduling change.  I will be deferring my discussion of the legal ramifications of our favorite Chinese radios until the following week's general club meeting.

Dan was also talking with Joey (KI7BQM), who is the Murray City emergency manager and our fire department representative.  Joey informs us that Murray City will be adding some amateur radio equipment to the city owned communications truck, including a dual band antenna mounted on the extendable mast.  We will do a little presentation on that vehicle at a later date.

Murray City has also started their CERT training again, and will be putting on a special class for MARC members.  There will be no charge for this training, which will consist of five sessions, typically about two hours each.  Personal equipment for CERT response will also be available for purchase, but is not required.  Additional information about this series of classes will be made available when it gets a little closer.

On to a more personal note, Dan, our fearless leader and the founder and president of MARC has been selected to be the new Salt Lake County ARES Emergency Coordinator.  Dan expects this to take quite a bit of his time and is concerned about impacts it may have on the operation of MARC.  He will be sending out several surveys over the next couple of weeks to get feedback from the club membership about how this should be handled, including things such as a change in the board of MARC and who and how the monthly training sessions will be handled going forward.

Please watch for these surveys and respond in a timely fashion.

Thanks to everyone who participated in tonight's meeting.  We had sixteen people in attendance, which, while not a new record, is still a good turnout.  We would love to see some of the less active members start attending these Zoom sessions until such time as we are able to meet in person again.

Dan (N7XDL) briefs us on various modulation modes, with a quick look at bands and the physics of radio waves, to boot.

Here's the presentation:  AMATEUR RADIO MODES

Slides:  IRLP_and_EchoLink
Link to the IT Crowd episode referenced in the presentation:   https://youtu.be/iDbyYGrswtg

Links from the presentation:

• http://www.irlp.net/ - main IRLP page
• http://status.irlp.net/index.php?PSTART=7 - IRLP search page
• http://status.irlp.net/index.php?PSTART=2 - IRLP reflectors
• http://www.utaharc.org/rptr/irlp_info.html - Lake Mtn. IRLP node (UARC)
• http://utahvhfs.org/rptr.html - Utah VHF Society repeater list (search for I and E nodes)
• http://utahvhfs.org/cgi-bin/rptdtl.cgi?Nr=117 - Marty's Butterfield Peak IRLP node
• https://secure.echolink.org/ - main EchoLink page
• https://secure.echolink.org/validation/ - help with EchoLink validation
• https://secure.echolink.org/validation/uls/ - downloading your official license copy from the FCC (Universal Licensing System - ULS)
• https://secure.echolink.org/logins.jsp - active EchoLink systems
• https://secure.echolink.org/firewall_solutions.htm - help with firewall issues
• http://www.pa7lim.nl/peanut/ - Peanut system mentioned in chat by Chris (W7CHP)

Dan (N7XDL) briefs us on the Parks On The Air system.  POTA is a contest and logging exercise where people either travel to and operate from national, state, and regional parks or try to contact those who have done so.  Dan walks us through the POTA web site, how to register, and how to see what parks are out there.  The system keeps track of contacts made to and from parks (and the elusive "park to park" contact) and facilitates operators making these types of contacts.

While primarily taking place on the HF bands, there is some VHF/UHF POTA operations that Technician class licensees can enjoy, as well as 10m.  Ragnar (N7LCR) talked a bit about 10m radios and using them to break into HF operating for Technicians and those who have never experimented with it.

Go visit the Parks On The Air site, sign up for an account (it's free), and get involved!

This evening, Dan (N7XDL) gave us a great presentation on things we should consider when assembling our "bug out" or "get home" bag(s).

I will link a copy of the presentation when it becomes available.

Dave (KI7IHU) shared this Youtube playlist from Be Ready Utah with a lot of good information about preparing for a disaster, natural or otherwise.

This evening, we watched the presentation on MMANA-GAL antenna analysis software that was presented to the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) by Steve Nichols (G0KYA) on 10 October 2020 as part of the RSGB 2020 Online Convention.

The video is available here:

Here are some of the links mentioned during the presentation for easier clicking:

• MMANA-GAL software
• Quick Start Tutorial (the link in the presentation didn't work, but this is a copy of that page that was converted to PDF format)
• Easy Antenna Modelling MMANA-GAL Secrets - Zero to Hero in 30 minutes this video has been removed from Youtube because the account that owned it was terminated, I have not found an alternate source for this video.
• Other Information
• Radio Society of Great Britain Convention
• EZNEC Software
• MMANA-GAL on Linux with Wine (uses winetricks, which is also available via brew on MacOS)

On our Monthly Meeting Zoom for February, we checked out WebSDR and particularly the Utah SDR site.  You can  check out where the site is located on Google Maps.

Main Antenna at Utah SDR site. (Picture from Google Street Maps)

WebSDR is a Software Defined Radio receiver hooked up to a web server so that anyone can access it over the Internet.  We talked a little about the history of the Utah SDR site and then checked out some of the receivers on the site and tried listening in  to some transmissions on various bands.

We tuned in to the .62  repeater and experimented with making a few test transmissions to hear what the received audio sounded like.

Finally, we looked at a couple of other sites, including the one at Half Moon Bay in California and did some comparisons between received signals in  California vs. Utah.

The general consensus was that the WebSDR systems were great resources to experiment with HF listening and getting familiar with what HF sounds like, as well as to test and evaluate our own transmissions, reception, and propagation.  They can also be used as an auxiliary receiver in the shack to help us out when wanting to monitor multiple frequencies at the same time.

This evening we tuned in to the Ham Radio 2.0 presentation from the Hurst Amateur Radio Club as they started their General Class License Course.  Due to the recent FCC announcement that they will be charging $35 for all license modifications, renewals, upgrades, and vanity allocations, I am recommending that people interested in upgrading to General Class from Technician get their upgrade as soon as possible.  We have had several sessions in our club around the General Class test and license requirements.

Jason (KC5HWB) at Ham Radio 2.0 has broken the course up into nine sessions, which are available at the following playlist:

While we probably will NOT be watching additional sessions as part of our normal club meetings, I highly recommend following along with this series to prepare for taking the General Class exam.

In conjunction with following this series, remember to take advantage of https://hamstudy.org/, which is run by a local (well, semi-local, he lives in Utah County... but we won't hold that against him) ham, Richard (KD7BBC).  This amazing (and free) resource offers free practice exams and uses a learning algorithm to help you review questions you have been having trouble with.  Richard also owns and operates Signal Stuff, and produces excellent whip antennas for HTs (I have a couple of them myself).

HamStudy also has links and information for where and when to test.  There are still groups doing on-site/in person testing (including our neighbors, the Taylorsville Amateur Radio Club), even in the time of covid, and if you are nervous about that you can take advantage of options for fully remote testing (note that there are significant requirements for this, including having TWO web cams to record not only your face/head and shoulders, but also your desk area, hands, keyboard, mouse, any scratch paper you are using, etc.).

In our first Thursday Basic Topics meeting for February, we watched the Ham Radio University's presentation entitled The Art of Operating Amateur Satellites with an HT.

Here are the links that were mentioned during the presentation:

• Peter Portanova HRU2021 PDF
• Peter Portanova Getting Started 1
• Peter Portanova Full duplex radios for satellites
• Peter Portanova FM Satellites Best Practices
• Peter Portanova The AMSAT Journal September-October 2020
• KM4LGM's Dual-Band Tape Measure Yagi

Not mentioned in the presentation, but some other links that will likely be useful:

• Plans (with measurements) for Dual Band Tape Measure Yagi
• 3D Model for Handle for Tape Measure Yagi
• Arrow Antenna Dual-Band Yagi for Satellite Operation (note: this is a commercial site)