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ARLB023 Northern Florida ARES Requests Clear Frequencies for HF Nets

SB QST @ ARL $ARLB023
ARLB023 Northern Florida ARES Requests Clear Frequencies for HF Nets

ZCZC AG23
QST de W1AW
ARRL Bulletin 23 ARLB023
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT September 16, 2020
To all radio amateurs

SB QST ARL ARLB023
ARLB023 Northern Florida ARES Requests Clear Frequencies for HF Nets

Northern Florida Section Emergency Coordinator Karl Martin, K4HBN,
is requesting that stations not directly involved in the Amateur
Radio Emergency Service (ARES) response to Hurricane Sally please
avoid 3.950 MHz (primary) and 7.242 MHz (backup).

ARES has activated in four Northern Florida counties. Shelters are
open, and power and telecommunications outages are widespread,
Martin reports.
NNNN
/EX

Featured

September meeting and new location.

The next Palatka Amateur Radio Club meeting may be held on October 20, 2020. We are being hosted by Hillcrest Baptist, 2009 President St. in Palatka. The more familiar cross street is Moseley. See y’all at 19:00.

Upcoming Club Meetings

Month (possible!) Topic
October 20 Officer Nomination
November 17 Annual Meeting/Elections
December 15 (tentative) Dinner
January 19
February 16
March 16
April 20
May 18
June 15 Field Day
July 20
August 17
September 21
October 19 Officer Nomination

Repeater updates

146.060+ 123.0
443.900+ 94.8

Vince, N6OA, is generously providing WIRES-X support for the 70-cm machine. WIRES-X access is digital-only. The repeater will still pass analog traffic, so those of you with analog rigs, please check the S-meter before transmitting. Also, because the duty-cycle has become rather high, the output power of the 70-cm machine as been reduced to 25W. This will allow a 100% duty-cycle without power drops.

On the 2-meter side, the new amp is in place. A bit about the new amp is in order.

It is fairly common knowledge that YSF repeaters are unable to maintain 100% duty cycle at full power. They start out at 50 watts, but as they heat up, the power is reduced to 25W. We see this when folks from St. Augustine, for instance, join our net, check in, but as the net goes on they stop hearing us.

We now have a Henry Radio C130AB10R amplifier doing the heavy lifting. Our DR-1X now puts out 5 watts, well within it’s capability. The amplifier is a 10dB system which, while capable of 100W, is only asked to provide 50. The hope, is that through not running anything full-on, we can extend the life of the entire system and have a more consistent operating experience.

U.S.N.G Links

Here are the links from the U.S.N.G. presentation from the April 18th meeting. Each will open up in a new window.

[NB] Google changed the terms of their Map API so that it started costing folks a lot more to use it. As a result GMap4 site which we had previously pointed to shut down for free use. KF4SYZ graciously located another site that provides similar information and I have replaced the link below.

Once you are on the Mission Manager site, there will be a ‘Coords:’ dropdown where you should select ‘USNG’. At the top, make sure the ‘Grid’ checkbox is selected. From that point, you can zoom in up to a 100m grid. The pointer can provide 1m coordinates.

USNG Homepage
Convert Lat/Lon to USNG
Mission Manager mapping site.
General Information
Florida Incident Mapper