[CTSARA] VHF On-Air Practice for Newly Licensed Hams

[Jon Perelstein]

The Norwalk club is going to run some on-air VHF practice for recent
graduates of our tech class, and we would like to invite other newly
licensed hams in the area to participate.

This will take place in two stages

*1.  Test your radio*
On Weds Dec 27 at 7:30pm and again on Weds Jan 3, get on your local
repeater (see below) and try to make contact with us via the repeater.  If
you don't have an external antenna on your house, try doing it from outside
your house.  Before Wednesday, you can also just try hitting your local
repeater. Example: “WB2JVB listening on Norwalk 475”.  If someone answers,
don’t be afraid to have a chat. Just tell them you are new, and they will
help you along.  On the Wednesdays, Jon or I will call for “checkins” on
the Stamford, Norwalk and Fairfield repeaters, so just listen to the one
that is closest to you.

*2.  Training*
On Sat Jan 6 or Sat Jan 13, come by the Norwalk Comm Center (100 Fairfield
Ave right off the I-95 northbound exit 14 off-ramp in Norwalk) and we'll be
available to talk with you about what kind of antennas you might be able to
put on your house or car to make your radio more effective.  We'll have
examples of various ways of mounting antennas, information about popular
base station VHF/UHF vertical antennas for FM operations, and information
about popular mobile antennas for cars.  We'll also have information (and
some examples) of various base/mobile radios that you might want to think
about buying to add to your range and convenience.

*Local Repeaters*

1.  The Norwalk 2 meter repeater is 146.475 (+1 MHz offset, PL 100, W1NLK).

2.  The Stamford 2 meter repeater is 146.655 (-600 KHz offset , PL 100 or
114.8, W1EE).
3.  The Fairfield 2 meter repeater is 146.625 MHz (-600 KHz offset, PL 100,
WB2CQO).

If you have a Baofeng or some of the other Chinese radios, we'll have the
software and cable to program it for you if you want.  We can also help you
with programming other kinds of radios (especially if you have the
programming cable for the radio).

73
Paul (WB2JVB) and Jon (AI1V)