[K3PZN-List] De-Lurk

Thu Mar 18 09:27:08 EDT 2010

Hi Emily,

Good to hear from you again.  Looks like it 
is really gonna happen, eh?  I hope and trust 
you will enjoy the very laid back Carroll 
County, as I have since late 2001.  Welcome!  

There are a lot of little projects within 
this club that you will enjoy sampling.  I am 
biased, of course, and have been playing with 
microcontrollers (the PICAXE series and now 
the Arduino 2009 scene) with a bunch of the 
guys.  And, as Curt WB8YYY mentioned, a few 
of us are planning a tiny balloon launch at 
the biggest hamfest in the Mid-Atlantic area 
later this month, the ARRL Maryland State 
Convention / Greater Baltimore Hamboree & 
Computerfest at the Maryland State Fairgrounds 
just east of us in Timonium, Maryland over 
Saturday and Sunday, March 27 & 28, 2010.  
See http://gbhc.org/ for details, at least 
FYI, since it sounds like this happens just 
before you arrive.  

As an aside, I will be hosting the AMSAT booth 
in Exhibition Hall there, near the ARRL booth, 
with friends from upstate NY and from NJ, and 
along with the local bunch.  Satellite contact 
demos will be going all day on Saturday and on 
Sunday morning we have two one-hour forums 
starting at 9:00 AM, culminating with a micro-
controller driven simulated satellite balloon 
launch for beginners at 11:00 AM with Rich, 
Steve, Dave, Pete and others.  

Am starting to plan a local AMSAT-DC Workshop, 
to be held on a Saturday in late April or early 
May in Greenbelt, Md.  We expect to build a 
"PICetSat II" flight module (from a kit, some-
what similar to last year) and, perhaps, if I 
can find the additional technical support, a 
separate track to build a 70cm yagi antenna.  

And, yes, the K3PZN Field Day 2010 promises to 
be a lot of fun too.  I'm looking forward to 
it.  

Oops, sorry.  I'm rambling.  

Take care for now, and good luck on the 
BIG BIG move.  

Cheers,

Pat
N8PK

Mr. Patrick L. Kilroy
Integration & Test Manager
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Building 5, Mail Code 568
Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
Phone: +1-301-286-1984
E-mail: Patrick.L.Kilroy at nasa.gov
Web: http://simsat.net/ (outreach)

-----Original Message-----
From: Emileigh Starbrook [mailto:estarbrook at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 12:37 PM
To: k3pzn-list at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [K3PZN-List] De-Lurk

Greetings Everyone,

I am going to be moving from California to Westminster sometime during
late April/early May and thought I would subscribe to the list to get
a feeling for the activities in the club.  I plan on joining the club
at either the May or June meeting.

We will be living on the southwest side of Westminster in an area
known as Sharon's Ridge.  It looked like a good location for a ham
since it has some elevation and the property size is quite good. It
has some very nice tall trees, and most likely I will put up an 80M
inverted L or dipole depending on the slope.

It will be a big change for me (currently living in a condo.) I'm used
to having to go to a park with a giant deep cycle battery and throw
big sinkers up into trees to raise a 20M dipole.  Not that this has
been bad - it is always great to get on the air and regularly work
across the pacific into JA, VK and ZL , into eastern Europe  and down
into South America and the Carribean. The dipole tunes really well on
17/15/12 and 10.

I would very much like to participate in Field Day with CCARC and can
bring equipment with me.  I have an Icom 746 Pro and an Icom 910
(sorry, no 1.2G module though).  I also have portable satellite
equiment for VHF/UHF and S-Band, though I will have to dust them off
having not used them for about 3 years.

In the past with the San Mateo Radio Club (W6UQ) where I worked sat,
6M/2M, and 70cm SSB.  I was also part of the Iron Man crew that did
the overnight operation on 20/40/80/160 meters. We used 80m V-Beams
pointing east.  In addition I have done PSK/RTTY/SSTV and Hellscriber.

Cheers,

Emily N1DID