[AReU] AREU Meeting Next Tuesday

[Tony Stone]

Just for your general information 6 meters was open for a time 
this afternoon. I heard several stations in the "1" call area and 
they were very loud. I didn't participate in the DX however. 
I heard several "4" calls uttered by the boys up north so some 
one here in the Southeast was "getting on with it". 

The schedule of events for the AREU meeting is rather slim 
right now. I have a converter, wall wart and bias tee for Mike 
(W4UOO) and , if I don't see him sometime tomorrow, I will 
have a solid fiberglass rod for Mike (KB4JHU) at the meeting 
Tuesday night. 

If anyone has any "fodder" to bring to the meeting, please 
make mention of it so that others that might have similar 
interests can come on down and participate. 

I have an idea for a simple 2304 MHz narrow band system 
that could be constructed with a minimum of parts and cash 
outlay. I will draw up a few sketches between now and the 
meeting for you folks to look at. It consists of a 2 meter or 
10 meter IF rig. It would be a low power unit of about 
100 mw output and a relatively insensitive receiver (4 db 
noise figure) A Primestar dish would be good for an antenna 
or even one of the smaller 18 inch dishes would work well. 
I have a couple of LPDA arrays that would work for short 
ranges without a dish. I am betting on using interdigital filters 
or other types of filters to rid the output of the "image" 
frequency and local oscillator "bleed through". These filters 
would be relatively easy to build or I am looking at converting 
some filters that Tom (K4PQD) had for the 1.9 GHz band to 
the 2.3 GHz ham band. It doesn't look to be very hard but you 
never know what you are going to run into at these frequencies. 
Some of the equipment that I obtained at Dayton was directed 
at this project also. 

I have the SSB adapter, noise blanker and 160 meter conversion 
kits in for the Elecraft K2 transceiver. With any luck I will have 
these units installed and working by the July AREU meeting. 

Doesn't that seem strange? The July AREU meeting? 

That's right: when we meet in July, Field Day 2003 will be a 
thing of the past. Remember back in January when I sent you 
folks an E-Mail that mentioned that it was never too early to 
start thinking about Field Day. You don't have long now and 
I'm sure that plenty will be said about Field Day at this AREU 
meeting. We can never prepare too much and we can still 
use some more volunteer help to schedule operators and 
set up the stations. 

Looking forward to seeing a good group at the AREU meeting. 

73

Tony