Hello NLRS land

Aurora, the largest annual gathering of weak-signal VHFers in the Upper Midwest, is the annual meeting of the Northern Lights Radio Society.  The Aurora Conference was first hosted by Jon Lieberg, KØFQA (SK), in 1984.  Our 2025 conference, the 41st conference (less COVID), will be held on Saturday, June 7, 2025  9:00 am - 5:00 pm at the West Medicine Lake Community Club, 1705 Forestview Lane North, Plymouth, MN. 

The morning hours will feature an antenna range for testing your homebrew or commercial 2m and up antennas.  There will also be the usual car-trunk to car-trunk swap event and lots of socializing.  Maybe some parking lot demos too.  I plan to be showing my 6m, 2m, and 432 all-on-one 5' boom antenna for rovers/hill topping or limited space environments.  

Bruce and Janice have once again volunteer to support our Jet pizza lunch break.  Good news is that pizza prices are the same as last year.   

After lunch we will have our technical program presentations.  This year we are going to start off with the clubs business meeting and the Wesslund Award.  Following that, Lenny, K0SHF, is sharing with us his recent experiences working with RTL dongles followed by Ray, K0RAE discussing the fun he has had with the WSJT-X WSPR mode.  Rob will follow this with two different talks; one on antenna modeling with the 4NEC2 antenna modeling engine and then a short update on his continued work with optical communications.  Doug, K0DSP, will be with us from Raymond, NE, to tell us about their work at the Branch Oak Observatory (https://branchedoakobservatory.com/).  We wrap up with our ARRL MN Section Manager Bill, AE0EE, tell us about some recent fun he has had using low cost low power 915 MHz radios.  The technical program agenda is as follows:


StartPresentationPresenterLengthPad
01:00 PMNLRS Business Meeting & Wesslund Award
00:4000:05
01:45 PMTurning Almost Any Radio Into A Poor Man's Flex Radio via RTL DonglesK0SHF00:3000:05
02:20 PMFun With WSPRK0RAE00:2000:05
02:45 PMAntenna modeling with 4NEC2K0XL00:3500:05
03:25 PMUpdate on Optical CommunicationsK0XL00:1500:05
03:45 PMBranch Oak ObservatoryK0DSP00:3000:05
04:20 PM900 MHz Contesting with MeshtasticAE0EE00:2000:05
04:45 PM






Registration for the conference is now OPEN.   This is where YOU come in.   Note that the following registration steps require a printer, a pen, and an envelop with a stamp.  While the club does not have dues at this time, there is a $5 conference registration fee that is used to pay for the use of the facility we rent for this conference.  It is important that you preregister for the conference.   Here is the easy-to-follow four step plan:

Step 1:  Go to our clubs website at NLRS.CLUB, click on "Aurora Conference" on the left hand side, then click on the red **Click [here] to access the Aurora25 Registration Form.**
Step 2.  Print the form.
Step 3.  Fill out the form.  Its not hard.  PLEASE NOTE that the information we obtain is required information for our club roster and supporting our ARRL and CQ VHF contests documentation needs.  Make sure to indicate if your are participating/buying the pizza lunch.  There will be no walk-up pizza orders the day of the conference, you MUST preorder using this form.
Step 4.  Mail the form to Janice, KA9VVQ, as indicated on the back of the form.  Note that your registration and payment must be received no later than June 4th for the pizza lunch.  

If you are planning on bringing an antenna to the morning antenna range for testing please drop Donn Baker, WA2VOI/0, an email telling him what band(s) and what kind of antenna it is.  Donn can be reached at wa2voi(at)mninter.net    

In closing, if you have an interest in weak signal VHF please plan on attending Aurora!   You will leave re-energized for this exciting aspect of our great hobby!

73, Jon
W0ZQ