Meeting Minutes: 04/18/2025

Attendees: 

• Farhad
• Tori
• Jacob
• Issac
• Ed
• Diego
• Jacob
• AC6P
• Max
• $$$
• Will
• Anica
• Robert
• Alex
• Jill
• Brock

Location:

• BE308

Summary

• There so far two working dates for the HAM exams: May 3rd and May 24th
• Peterson wants students to be available when he brings antenna equipment, more specifics to come.
• Some information about modulation.

Notes

• April 27th marathon event: looking for HAMs to work at the event.
  • Fill out some forums on discord to join
  • There will be free lunch
• Idea for field trip: Elecraft HAM radio company in Watsonville
  • Further details will be posted in the future
• Topics request:
  • CW
  • Device Rundown (repeaters, antennas, LNA, etc…)
  • Different modulation modes
• Date of the exam (email results):
  • April 18 didn’t have enough people so if
  • Ranges of April 26th to May 24th, pick one of the Saturdays
    • Trying to align with another group
  • Saturday May 3rd, 2025 was voted by the group to hold the exam.
    • People have to show-up, can’t be confirmed until that is guaranteed
  • Saturday May 24th will also be available
    • This has to be confirmed with the grading HAMs and registered
    • This will be shared with an outside HAM group
    • Possible timing and location yet to be determined
      • Possible time 11am-3pm
• Talking about training people for emergency communications AKBJM:
  • Peterson wisdom: People’s Republic of China: very hard to get a license in China because it is hard to control what people transmit.
• Peterson tried to get his license plate transferred.
  • Original callsign was WB6FYX
  • Roberta is AK6JN and is a 2-by-2
  • Natalie: K02V
  • Sarah: NF2S
• You can get a callsign in any region in the United States, California is a 6-callsign region and Washington is in 7-callsign region
• Peterson working on the Feed Impedance of the HF antenna
  • We have to put antennas on the roof and all the other work associated with it
  • Operate the HR antenna with a phase shifter
  • Some one can keep tabs on the ISS and see when the ship is active
  • Peterson wants to tune the 2-meter antenna which means we need to tune the match-box; there is a pie-net in there.
    • ECE157 project
  • Peterson can bring the antennas on the campus and he needs students to work on the antennas before they are hoisted-up.
  • Making contacts with satellites is 
• Having Elecraft give a talk or arranging a tour of Elecraft: Peterson could arrange contact but the club would be responsible for arranging the trip down to the company. He would not be able to join
• Questions:
  • Is the software (Fornet2) antenna modeling workshop still happening?
    • Yes
  • Anyone want to learn about modulations?
    • Yes
• Conops Discussion
  • CW: does not require any licensing
    • the lower bands are reserved C1 implementations
    • 10m and above anyone can operate CW
    • nobody uses Upper Side-Band on 40m, they only use Lower Side-Band
    • Can be 5-35wpm
    • 14.0475 DE
      • W1AW CW website
      • Code practices
      • First starts at 5wpm
        • Monday to Friday
      • Second starts at 35wpm to 15wpm 
      • If you are able to copy morse code for one-minute, they send you a certificate at the specific wpm
  • AM: 
  • FM
  • DMR
  • SSB (Single-Side Band)
    • Lower Side-Band
    • Upper Side-Band
    • Double Side-Band
      • Used by the aviation industry
      • Double Side-Band Suppressed Carrier
        • Do not operate below 10m
      • Double Side-Band Full Carrier
        • Classic Compute Modulation
        • Does not require a demodulator
        • Popular on 10m
        • Hear HAMs typically on the weekend
    • Used by phones
  • Digital modes
    • (these modes require special software; FLDigi; written by HAMs for Linux then ported to Windows)
      • Have the IO
      • Decoded text
      • The Waterfall signal passband
      • The signals are very narrow and don’t require too much bandwidth
    • (this modes are a work in progress)
    • RTTY: 14095
      • Classic teletype
    • BPSK32
      • Around for many years until early 2000s when new HAMs began began writing new modes
    • Olivia Modes
      • 8×500
      • 8×250
    • PSK31
    • MSFK
    • FT8
      • (DON’T OPERATE FT8 unless you want to)
      • It is a mode that high signal to noise ratio
      • The cost is in decreasing the IF-passband
      • JT invented this mode for Earth-Moon-Earth communication
      • Requires a special modem
• There are QSL sites in addition to just normally sending a card
• Working a contest you can get QSL cards.
• We have a HP VNA but modern VNA are better and go up to higher performance
• LibreVNA is an open source project that intends to create a VNA from the ground up.
• VNA is a Vector Network Analyzer: measures the impedance of an antenna or a circuit. You can use a VNA to create a low-noise amplifier. You use a smith chart to measure reactance.
  • You need the Max-Power Transfer to get the maximum power from the circuit to the load. You measure the antenna and the circuit to get the correct impedance difference and attempt to include components to the circuit to get the impedances to match.