Meeting Minutes: 04/11/2025

Attendees:

• Ed
• Diego
• $$$ (New attendee identifier: Previous Treasurer Carlos)
• Carlos
• Kyle
• Anica
• Isaac
• Alex
• Jacob
• Robert
• Edward
• Jil
• Brock

Location

• BE308

Summary

• No confirmed HAM exam date; possible dates will be schedule on discord in the future
• Some workshop ideas (Brock’s LNA; Peterson antenna modeling workshop)
• Some peterson lessons

Notes

• HAM Exam
  • What to do to prepare for the HAM exam?
    • Held first exam this year on the first floor of the science building
    • You need a FRN number.
      • Go to the FCC site (direct link will be posted to the discord)
      • Apply for the FRN number 
      • Use that number to take the test on test day
        • You can take multiple tests on the same test day (you first to need to pass previous exam levels for the higher levels)
        • Technician -> General -> Amateur Extra
  • Farhad has put down a request to hold another HAM session.
  • April 19 most likely will be the test day
    • VE group has be brought together so day is not confirmed
    • There is no confirmed day
• Explaining the existence of the repeater with the transceiver for new club members
  • “Kinda like public group chats”
  • Can be used to get signals to go further
• Explaining the existence of the nets for new club members
• Are people using HamStudy.com for preparing for the exam —> yes
• You can get a cheap radio (perfectly fine if it does UHF and VHF)
  • The Baofeng is roughly $30 (normally bought online; search on discord)
  • There is a HAM swap meet (May 3rd: De la Diego Park)
    • Announcement will be posted in the Discord
    • Informed by the UCSC radio club
  • Parks on the air (first weekend of the month)
    • Radios will be setup in a park and try to contact as many people as possible
    • You need an HF license (General license) to operate solo
    • You can operate under somebody else’s license
    • You can communicate all over the world
• Quentions
  • None
• Announcements will be made on discord regarding exam dates
• Some HamStudy review:
  • Band guidelines
    • There exists a band chart
    • EGT (Amateur Extra Bands)
    • GT (General Bands)
      • Recommend to pursue for your first exam
    • T (Technician Bands)
      • Can’t do as much with technician license
    • The most popular bands is (2m: Very High Frequency (VHF))
      • (High Frequency (HF))
      • (Ultra High Frequency (UHF))
    • 20m is common (HF)
    • 70cm is also common (UHF)
  • Questions about the chart:
• Alex (Vice President) has a Quangsheng UV Faung A
  • Farhad (President) is the one to ask about getting first radio
• Certain number of people have a license (in-person question survey)
• Yagi-Uda (Stealth Antenna)
  • Peterson: Invented by two Japanese Physicists
  • Explanation of how Yagi antennas work by Alex (Vice President)
  • Peterson: Modeling Antennas in a software workshop? (yes)
    • As well as other types of antennas
    • During a club meeting
  • Peterson: not very directional, you use it as a Foxhunt tool assuming the sources are spaced out wards
    • You search from the null
    • Peterson: Fornet 2: available open-source antennas modeling software
• Principle VE players can’t be here
  • Need experienced VE members for grading and in-take function
  • Only one is available on the 19th of April
  • Other people are available on May 3rd and not the 19th
  • Exam has to pushed out
  • Will be not schedule on sunday due to some conflicts with VE group
  • Push exam date to vote on discord once we have more information on feasible days
• We got a QSL card
• “HAM radio makes the world very small.”
• Peterson: Possibly give a talk on contesting?
• Contesting: Possible club meeting on contesting?
• Who is interested in contesting:
  • A certain number of people
• Questions:
  • Open to somebody trying to make a low-noise amplifier for a radio?
    • Need the two antennas
    • All the software is ready to go
    • Someone designed an L&N for the antenna
    • Only trouble is coordinate the workflow -> Brock taking the lead the project
    • Work on the project in the lab
• Peterson: we would like to get the HF station on the Air
  • Strong mismatch
  • VNA is attached to feed from 1.8MHz to 8MHz
  • There is no antenna
• Peterson: someone can sweep the antenna\
  • Load the antenna on 80, 40, 20, 10m
  • 18MHz and 20MHz if the viswar is not broken
• Meetings will be 1:00pm-2:00pm on Fridays
• Peterson info:
  • QRT: stop transmitting
  • QSY: change frequency
  • Q-codes were created during the morse code
  • Codes are used on CW a lot (14050, FLDigi has CW decoder)
  • xPSK32: on the general
  • FT8: on the general
    • Invented for weak signals
    • Invented to bounce signals off the moon
• Meeting Adjournment