Welcome Back
I hope everyone had a good summer. Welcome back to all of our Snowbird friends.
We had 2 nice meeting at Manhattan In The Desert for dinner. We averaged about 20 per get together. It’s always great to get a chance to socialize outside of the monthly meeting. The meetings usually get a little hectic.
For my summer vacation I went to beautiful down town Madras Oregon. Actually, it is a nice little town. Some long time friends and I went up there for the total eclipse of the sun. I am sure glad that we made reservations over 2 years ago, because it was a mess.
From a Ham Radio standpoint, I took a multi-band HT with me. I was hopping to monitor the 6M beacon frequencies and see if I could hear any beacons pop up. See if propagation changed during the eclipse. To be honest, the 2 1/2 minutes of totality went by so fast, I did not have time to check out propagation. Later in the trip, I did check in with several local operators in the valley using IRLP on the 445.640 machine. It’s fun and easy to do. Just go to IRLP.net and find an IRLP linked repeater near where you are. Then just type in the 4 digit code for the machine you want to talk to into your mics key pad and bingo, you’re in.
We are planning a Tech class after the first of the year. The location is still TBD, but it will be down valley. Maybe Palm Desert. Stay tuned, watch your newsletter or check the web site.
The HF bands still are in the dumps, for the most part. I could hear lots of DX but had a heck of a time working it. One morning I heard Christmas Island.. for about 2 minutes, then he was gone.
There is a new digital mode out there that is going like wildfire. It is FT8. Sounds like a Yaesu radio. It’s brought to you by the same people that bring you JT65 and JT9. If you have these, just go to the website and download the latest version. It’s kind of like JT9 or 65. It’s narrower than JT65 but operated in 15 second cycles. So if you fall asleep doing JT65 try FT8. It moves along at a pretty good clip. I’ll plan an article on it next month.
See you on the bands. 73
Glenn WB6RLC
