SARS Meeting

The next meeting of the SARS will be February 21st at 7:00 PM

Location:  Napa Valley Memorial Park, Highway 221 just south of Kennedy Park

On the Program:

Mike Martindale on High Definition AM broadcast radio.

 

Jan. 2012 Minutes by KO6FR

 

Meeting called to order and introductions asked for by David AE6W.

Rich KO6FR gave Treasury report.

Ron W6BIS talked about meeting with County. They will be having Cert training.

Don AC6LE said not much from VIP too many people have retired.

David talked about having a copy of your license with you, when mobile or portable.  {Mike M related a recent experience with an FCC inspector asking to see his license because of the amateur gear in his truck.} ed.

Fred KE6FVX had free stuff for anyone who wanted it. (grid maps, call area maps, Icom catalogs etc.)

Ron W6BIS talked about new tones for some repeaters, new one going up at Angwin. More to come later.  (see below)

John N6XN had his new K3 radio to show everyone. He talked about what it could do, the  roofing filters,  send CW and receive it in other modes. People were three deep around the radio, to ask him questions.

We had VE testing one person passed his Tech, one missed the General and another came with nothing and left with General.

Meeting adjourned.

73

Rich

A little more detail on the change of PL on the W6CO repeaters:  There are two types of PL in use.  The one that many radios refer to as “repeater tone” allow you to access the repeater.  If you do not transmit the correct PL along with your audio, the repeater will ignore you.  Currently, if you want to access the VHF repeater on Mount Veeder, you transit 91.5 Hz.  If you wish to access the VHF repeater on Mount St Helena, you use 151.4 Hz..  None of that will be changing.  What will change is something the radio manuals often call CTCSS or Tone Squelch (TSQL for short).  What this does is allow you to leave your radio on without listening to signals from repeaters outside the area.  An example is the Mount Vaca repeater on 147.195.  That repeater is so close geographically as well as in frequency, that if you do not use TSQL, when listening to 147.180 you will usually hear it’s signal, but distorted because it is off frequency.  By setting your TSQL CTCSS to 91.5, you will hear only Mount Veeder and not Mount St Helena nor Mount Vaca.  What’s that?  You don’t bother with any of that stuff?  This article is not for you.  But if you do use TSQL, then that is what is going to change.  Shortly, all the W6CO transmitters will be sending out 151.4.  The only thing that will be different once that happens is you will hear any signal coming from Mount Veeder,  Mount St Helena, or the Angwin Airport.  You will still need your appropriate repeater tones selected to access any of those 3 sites.  Ron has found that if you are using Icom type software to program your radios you probably can’t set different tones for transmit or receive.  If you run into this problem, simply open your manual and set the tones from the front panel of the radio.