Posts from — January 2012

During their monthly meeting on Tuesday, January 10th, the Madison ARES group voted to become a new radio club and will now be known as “MARC” – the Madison Amateur Radio Club.

We congratulate the members and know that MARC will be doing great things in the future! (by the way…where’s Pat?…behind the camera?)

We’ve made another visit to the 195 repeater in Metcalf. Jumpers have been changed out, and a UPS added to help protect against incoming power surges.

The squelch was a bit loose, and has been tightened. Even with that adjustment, interference continued to be a problem, and so the X-50 vertical was put back into service. It actually mounts below the platform, which provides it some  protection from the RF that is rampant at that altitude.

We also noted that the commercial receive antenna is on the east side of the tower, which was probably causing the western coverage problems, due to the tower “shadowing” the signal.

We also agreed to return when we have more time, and have the radio stations shut down briefly to see which station is causing the interference, and then we can then filter the input more specifically against that frequency.

So, please do use it for the time being. It’s “maintaining it’s composure” right now. We do need to know how it’s reacting to various conditions.

The first ever TARC Kid’s Net was a rousing success!

Tommy, KJ4SWI, ably handled the Net Control duties and had the following check-ins:

Jackson, KJ4NFB – age 12 
Abbie, KK4DZA – age 8
Christopher, K4HIM (control op) age 10
Hope, K4HIM (control op) – age 8
Henry, KJ4VHK – age 10
Taylor, KJ4NBG (control op) – age 10
Kyle, KE4RWR (control op) – age 10
Jojo – KK4FGM (control op) – age 2½

We all congratulate Tommy on a job well done, and look forward to seeing where he and these other fine young folks will go with their new Net!