Baltimore Amateur Radio Club

We meet monthly by Zoom at 7:00 pm. on the first Wednesday of the month. Click for meeting information. Look too for postings our our once-a-month Saturday events. Club membership is not required for attendance.

A free, weekly, live, Amateur Radio Extra Class Licensing course on Zoom will begin on Thursday, January 16, 2025, and will run through Thursday, March 27.  There will be 11 sessions.  The three-hour sessions will start at 6:30 PM Eastern Time.  Sessions will be recorded.  Those attending should hold (or be studying for) the General Class Amateur Radio License.  These are the classes that we have been holding for years sponsored by the National Electronics Museum.  Please publicize this with anyone that you think would be interested.  Those wishing to sign up should email roland.anders@comcast.net. Rol Anders, K3RA

Visit our Facebook page for most up-to-date club news moderated by our Club Ambassador Ed KC3YFZ.

Marine Corp Marathon October 27th. seeks volunteers.

The Rich History of Ham Radio Culture. Good reading! Thanks to Russ N3YI.

Mike Ketzis K2TPKZ operating Maritime Mobile on his cruise to Bermuda

Valued BARC member Mike Ketzis K2TPZ had the opportunity, unusual to most of us, to operate Maritime Mobile (K2TPZ/MM) on his recent cruise from Baltimore to Bermuda. An Elecraft KX2 radio with AX1 whip antenna at QRP 5 watts of power on CW (Morse Code) netted him a number of contacts on the way. Here you see him on his sixth deck balcony. On shore in beautiful Bermuda, Mike operated as K2TPZ/VP9. He split his time making contacts to the U.S.A., Bermuda, & Europe, with vacation time with his family. Far from Mike’s first cruise including amateur radio!

Back home in Baltimore, Mike is an avid CW operator, particularly enjoying QRP (low power). Retired as a U.S. Army major in Armor and Public Affairs, he spoke of operating from most every residence in his military career. Typical Army officer housing is not particularly ham operation-friendly. Lots of creativity in small wire antennas and whip antennas like the Ham Stick enabled him to maintain his CW proficiency and make international contacts. Mike is frequently the first face seen at our annual Father’s Day Hamfest when he works the main gate, starting in before dawn. Glad to have a military veteran still comfortable with getting up at such unreasonable early hours. Thank you Mike for your support to our club!

We are pleased to announce adoption of HamClubOnline for our club administrative activities. This innovative web-based software from K6VEC Amateur Radio Group Inc., provides most all functions necessary to relieve club officers of various tasks, enabling them to get back to the fun stuff of ham radio like operating and tinkering! Security authorizations enable layered access to various data objects. The mobile-aware GUI (graphical user interface) is even effective on smart phones.

Members gain greatly too. Features include detailed roster information (updated by the individual members), information sharing by a group roster, skills matrix, an on-line membership application, on-line dues payment support (coming to our implementation), elections support, and more. Monthly meeting minutes (restored to full proceedings) have been moved from the BARC web page to this facility.

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Our wide-area 2-meter FM repeater W3FT is the meeting place for the weekly CATS ATV Net, each Wednesday evening at 9:00 pm. and frequently at other hours for informal contacts. Amateur Television (ATV) began in use by radio amateurs even before actual network television broadcasts. While much of ATV is NTSC analog video signals with FM audio sub-carriers, digital television is taking over. In the United States, both the ATSC and European-based DVB-T formats are in use by hams. ATSC is handy since that is the current US digital standard while the DVB-T format captures weaker signals and is less impacted by interference caused by structures.

ATV activity is essentially ham-to-ham communications with the benefit of video. That old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” remains true. Typical viewed signals include still pictures, motion video, and video clips. Some ATV repeaters carry NASA television feeds such as space launches. Analog signals are rated by the P-scale where P0 is the weakest , showing just sync bars and P5 represents a perfectly clear picture. Digital signals are either there are they aren’t; can’t be simpler than that. As seen with home television, ATV has benefited greatly from digital formats. Further, area tests have shown increased range using digital ATV over analog ATV.

All are welcome to check into (or just listen) the weekly CATS nets with voice on 146.67-. Video capability is not required. Of course, ATV activity is not on all the time, just like 2-meter activity. If one lives in the general Towson area, a cable-ready analog television set tuned to cable channel 57, but with an external antenna used in place, can receive the CATS Towson ATV repeater directly. In addition, the British Amateur Television Club website features streaming of various world-wide Amateur Television repeaters. CATS is streamed at https://batc.org.uk/live/w3bab?forcehtml5=true . CATS https://www.qsl.net/w3bab/index.html

Neil W3ZQI