An old SBARC member from years ago, Bill Lake, WB6JRI, just became a Silent Key.
This from Jiri Polivka who gave us an inspiring talk on the science of Radio Telescopes at our January club meeting.
Dear Dave (K6VML):
With a great sorrow I have just learned that our dear colleague and friend at Spacek Labs, Mr.Bill Lake, has passed away this morning.
Please inform the SBARC that his key will remain silent since today. Before my talk in January, several SBARC members knew him. At this moment I do not remember his W6 call but they know.
Best regards,
Jiri Polivka
____________________________________________________________
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Just a reminder that I'll be having a garage sale tomorrow (Saturday) rain or
shine from 8:00Am to noonish. The types of stuff will be similar to what we have
at the SBARC Bazaar.
I put up a listing of *some* of the stuff on Craigslist at:
https://accounts.craigslist.org/post/shwpst?pii=1004817703&db=lv
Thanks!
Marvin, KE6HTS
Hey guys & gals,
I received this DTV antenna question from a friend who's having problems
with her setup.
My only thinking is that the amplifier has raised the "noise floor" all
around, and now that's she's higher, she's more directional.
I'm recommending removing the amplifier.
What do you think ?
73's,
Neil / KE6DCJ
==================
I am having a problem with my antenna and TV setups here.
As mentioned before, I have been running off an antenna hanging inside the
garage just over the roof of the Mercedes.
I live not quite in a direct line between Chicago and Milwaukee.
Heading of 172 degrees and 57 miles to Chicago, and 358 degrees and
about 30 miles to Milwaukee. The antenna was pointing (roughly) at
Chicago, I got most of the Chicago stations very well, most of the
time. (CBS is always bad). And most of the time, I also got Milwaukee
just fine. Once in a while, with bad weather, one city's stations or
the other would not come in as well. But some of these are duplicate's
(like 2 ABC stations etc.), so on the whole it worked well.
Well about a month ago, I decided to "improve the situation". I moved
the antenna up to the roof, so it has an increased height of about 20 or
more. I also installed a rotator and an amplifier. The cable run is no
longer, but because of the amplifier, there are two more carefully
checked connections. I wanted to do this before the permanent winter
accumulation of snow had deposited itself on the roof. It is now snowed
over.
Now when I point the antenna at Chicago, I get the Chicago stations very
well, even better than before. BUT, I cannot receive the Milwaukee
stations at all. And the same for the other directions. Point it at
Milwaukee, cannot see the Chicago stations. So you ask, what's the problem?
In order to watch ANY station on either of the TVs, you have to do a
channel scan. You CANNOT add a station that is not found by the TV in
its automatic scan. You can subtract a channel, but not add one. You
cannot even punch the the numbers (like 04.1) for a channel that was not
found and loaded into the menu by the automatic scan.
SO, if I point the antenna at Chicago and do the scan, I can only watch
those stations until I rotate the antenna and rerun the automatic scan
(a process that can take 10-15 minutes) if I want to watch a Milwaukee
station. And the stations are not all duplicates, and I really want the
ability to receive both.
It is so frustrating !!!!
And I don't get why the "bi-directional" reception has degraded so much,
when the individual channels (in the specific direction) seem to have
improved ???
I know that there are many experts on everything on this list .........
any ideas.
Hey guys, I received this from a friend who's having problems with her digital TV setup.
My only thinking is that the amplifier has raised the "noise floor" all around, and now that's she's higher, she's more directional.
I'm recommending removing the amplifier.
What do you think ?
73's,
Neil / KE6DCJ
==================
I am having a problem with my antenna and TV setups here.
As mentioned before, I have been running off an antenna hanging inside the
garage just over the roof of the Mercedes.
I live not quite in a direct line between Chicago and Milwaukee.
Heading of 172 degrees and 57 miles to Chicago, and 358 degrees and
about 30 miles to Milwaukee. The antenna was pointing (roughly) at
Chicago, I got most of the Chicago stations very well, most of the
time. (CBS is always bad). And most of the time, I also got Milwaukee
just fine. Once in a while, with bad weather, one city's stations or
the other would not come in as well. But some of these are duplicate's
(like 2 ABC stations etc.), so on the whole it worked well.
Well about a month ago, I decided to "improve the situation". I moved
the antenna up to the roof, so it has an increased height of about 20 or
more. I also installed a rotator and an amplifier. The cable run is no
longer, but because of the amplifier, there are two more carefully
checked connections. I wanted to do this before the permanent winter
accumulation of snow had deposited itself on the roof. It is now snowed
over.
Now when I point the antenna at Chicago, I get the Chicago stations very
well, even better than before. BUT, I cannot receive the Milwaukee
stations at all. And the same for the other directions. Point it at
Milwaukee, cannot see the Chicago stations. So you ask, what's the problem?
In order to watch ANY station on either of the TVs, you have to do a
channel scan. You CANNOT add a station that is not found by the TV in
its automatic scan. You can subtract a channel, but not add one. You
cannot even punch the the numbers (like 04.1) for a channel that was not
found and loaded into the menu by the automatic scan.
SO, if I point the antenna at Chicago and do the scan, I can only watch
those stations until I rotate the antenna and rerun the automatic scan
(a process that can take 10-15 minutes) if I want to watch a Milwaukee
station. And the stations are not all duplicates, and I really want the
ability to receive both.
It is so frustrating !!!!
And I don't get why the "bi-directional" reception has degraded so much,
when the individual channels (in the specific direction) seem to have
improved ???
I know that there are many experts on everything on this list .........
any ideas.
Hi everyone,
Continuing with the moving of "stuff", I'm having a garage sale this Saturday,
January 24th, in the front yard. There will be a lot of industrial control type
stuff, electronic parts, shrink tubing, probably non-working test equipment,
inexpensive crystal controlled HTs, and lots more. Anything that I consider to
be junk, i.e. stuff for parts, will be either gone to that electronic scrapyard
in the sky or put in a free pile that will end up at the dump. Since I have
friends that are in the same boat as I am, we might be able to match the amount
of "stuff" we try to have at the SBARC bazaar depending on how much "stuff" they
want to get rid of.
The sale starts about 8:00AM and will continue on to noon or thereabouts at my
house located at:
408 Grove Lane
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
Thanks!
Marvin, KE6HTS
Hi everyone,
I have a number of Narda Model 369BNM high power terminations (currently 8 or
so.) These are rated at 175 watts for the range of .7 to 18 GHz. The fact that
they start at .7 GHz implies they are not suitable for HF or VHF work. You can
get more information on the Narda website at:
http://www.nardamicrowave.com/east/index.php?m=Products&e=details&id=1227
A bit of Google research shows the asking price to be $175.00 - $275.00, but
these are available for $20.00 each (the person I'm selling them for wants to
see them gone.) Give me an email *soon* if you are interested as I'll be contact
some surplus dealers about these tomorrow. This $20.00 price is for SBARC
members only.
This morning, I was reading Seth Godin's Blog
(http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/love-and-annoyi.html) and his
first paragraph is absolutely great:
"The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they'll
forgive a lot. They'll talk about it. They'll promote it. They'll come back.
They'll be less price sensitive. They'll bring their friends. They'll work with
you to make it better."
This is one of the best descriptions I've ever read describing what I'd like to
see happen with our hamfest. Building our hamfest so people love the concepts
and are willing to tell their friends (and everyone they meet) about it is what
we should all be working towards. And if this concept of product love is
expanded throughout the ham community, people new to our hobby will be far more
likely to get involved.
What would make product love a part of our Hamfest for you? Please feel free to
leave your thoughts and comments on the Santa Barbara Section Hamfest forum at:
http://www.sbhamfest.com
Marvin, KE6HTS
PS - The second part of the blog post deals with making the product less
annoying to promote the product. In our case, this looks like taking giant steps
backwards!
SBARC MEETING TONIGHT!
Don't miss a fascinating presentation:
RADIO ASTRONOMY ON A SHOESTRING
The Giant Millimeter Radio Telescope - 50 meter diameter parabolic
dish operating up to 350 GHz
A talk and demonstration by Jiri Polivka and his "pocket sun"
7:30 PM Friday, Tonight, January 16
Goleta School Administration Building, 401 North Fairview
Visitors welcome – Bring a friend – Bring Several!
Michael
W7HUT
Hi everyone,
The hamfest forum is up and running at http://www.sbhamfest.org. The forum is
double opt-in, i.e., you will receive an email after registering that will allow
you to post to most of the forums. As a guest, you should be able to read
everything but the Organizers Forum (Private for the oganizers.)
Since everything is still in a state of flux, things will most likely change.
But at least we are started!
FYI, we are using phpbb for the open source forum software, the domains
sbhamfest.org and sbhamfest.com were registered with godaddy.com, and they are
being hosted at hostgater.com. The sbhamfest.org domain is still dormant until I
transfer it to hostgater and have it automatically forward to the .com site. I
registered both sites more as a hedge against someone else getting the .org
domain.
Setting up the forum was *evenutally* a piece of cake. Hostgater has something
called fantastico that took care of the software installation. Still left to do
is to make sure the site is optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
although exactly what keywords I'll be using is still up in the air right now.
Finally, I am checking out Google adwords PPC advertising to see if the ROI is
sufficient to justify running an adwords campaign.
As things evolve, the URL will open onto a conventional website with a link to
the forums from the main website. Additionally, I will probably start a blog
there where I will talk about how the hamfest is developing along with anything
else I might think is important to talk about.
Thanks!
Marvin, KE6HTS
