[SMCARA] Club Station Status

[Daniel Metcalf]

Last weekend a bunch of us got together at the museum and configured the
club station to do digital modes. There were a couple of things that
came out of this process. 

1st: The antennas and coax for our station need to be looked at
inspected and analyzed. We were on 20m which is one of the main bands
for our beam and it didn't matter if we were in the data or voice
portion of the band we could not get a satisfactory tune to complete.

2nd: The dipole was better but not by much.

3rd: The VHF / UHF Antenna on the roof needs to be looked at. We were
getting into the repeater but barely. Audio reports mentioned that we
were transmitting a bunch of noise. We were readable but barely.

4th: The IC-746 will need to be pulled out and looked at sometime in the
future. Due to an initial mis-wire of the Signalink USB the 13.8V line
in the Accessory plug where we are connected was shorted to ground and
there was a little smoke and a cooked electronics smell that was emitted
from the back of the radio. We tested the radio on voice and data and it
all seems to work but I fear if we ever needed that power line out of
that port it is not going to work.

I would like to do a clean up of the station to make it easier to
operate there. Anything that I remove will be placed with the rest of
the club materials I have in my possession and the inventory of what I
have will be updated. I will be doing this cleanup and activating the
station starting around 10am Saturday when the museum opens. If anyone
would like to join in feel free to do so.

Because these next items can be accomplished without any cost to the
club, We are going to create an eQsl account and a LOTW account for
K3NHK and we will configure the laptop at the station to be able upload
the logs to these sites. We may need a volunteer to manage the QSLs.

Lastly the club license at the club station is expired by about a year.
We need to get an updated copy posted soon.

Thanks and Have Fun!
Dan Metcalf
c. 301 769 1111