[NLRS] SBMS meeting report

[Bill Davis via NLRS]

GM Gang
   Five NLRS members "attended" the SBMS meeting last night, perhaps more registered as guests instead of by call. VE4MA, N0UK, W0UC, one other, SORRY and myself. It looked like roughly 20 people or so were watching via the web. Including Tony WA8RJF too.  

   The meeting have been transmitted via ATV for MANY years via the W6ATN repeater and streamed for an some time now. Barry and I have attended in person several time and I would guess others from our group. It is always fun to remind them of microwave activity in the midwest. They think we still have TROPO!! Remember that? After the business meeting they always go around the table and everyone reports upon their microwave activities in the last month. I always find these very interesting, always some "show and tell". Always a crap shoot, you never know what you might hear about. With all the cutting edge technology centered in SCal and the some members being directly involved, some pretty cool things pop up. 

  One thing last night was a comment of a JPL "radar" based device that is being used in Nepal looking for survivors of the earthquakes. It was reported have several people have been located via the device. I remember reading about its development some time back. 
  An interesting 2.4Ghz "signal source" available on ebay for $7 --- A video transmitter who's video input can be grounded and provides a ~ 10khz wide signal (xtal controlled). 
  One member reported how he scored 3,100pts in 5 min in the Microwave activity last weekend. Ouch!
  The main "speaker" was Brian AF6NA. It was billed as an offset fed dish "primer" but was pretty much all inclusive covering how to get on 10GHz portable. Brian did a nice job. LOTS of contributions with others chiming in. Looks like "everyone" out there are freq locked and many using rubidium standards. Brian commented that he had a FE-5680A that he picked up on ebay for less than $100 ... I find none listed at the moment near that "cheap". He reported that he does NOT use it due to a noisy 10Mhz sig. It was mentioned that a 10Mhz transformer on the output cleans it up "just fine". 
  Meeting adjourned at 9:16pm PDT, so it got late here.  I really enjoyed the evening and sure beat the heck out of the Wild hockey game :-( 

  I'll try to remember a "heads up" next month. Never know what you might learn / hear that would trigger a good project.
73  Bill  K0AWU