N.H. ARES SET – N.H. ARES will be holding an SET this Saturday. More info on their website, and Robin N1VVV is setting up links to the information on VTARES website. Fred WA1LIE is asking that VT ARES members join in, at some level. Fred will provide more information, soon.
ANTENNA PARTY – Josette KB1EPT needs help raising a pole for her “Windom”. At our CVARC meeting we had planned a 10:00 a.m. start at my QTH (Waterbury Center) to offer ideas how to improve the support of the bare wire ends. The last few feet of both ends are on branches. Then, those who do show up will go downtown Waterbury to raise Jo’s antenna. The 10:00 start will be delayed until about 1:00 p.m. as to not interfere with those joining in the ARES SET.
SHAREFEST - 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. in Windsor, VT at “Wincycle”. Contact brad.thompson@valley.net for details and/or go to www.wincycle.org for directions. Bring your treasured, but un-needed components, circuit boards, etc., and find more treasures you can not live without!
AND… The 14th is, of course, the start of the “High Holy Days” in the Green Mountains as the start of “Rifle Season” for Vermonters, and all those who are Vermonters at heart, wishing to fill the freezers with venison.
Tom KB1NGQ (theprez@w1bd.org)
CVARC’s QFQ Report for November, 2009, is ready for your perusal. Download a copy from our QFQ Reports page.
From the October 2009 ARRL “ARES Newsletter”:
Vermont ARES Supports JDRF Bike Tour
On August 29, ARES members of the Central Vermont Amateur Radio Club, Inc (CVARC) provided health and welfare communications for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Bike Tour. The tour covered one hundred miles over difficult terrain on a cold rainy day. It was hard on the riders and VHF communications were difficult. Many of the riders either have diabetes, or have family members that suffer from it. However, the majority of the riders persevered, riding the entire 100 miles. The youngest operator (16) Chris Craig, K1MHZ, ran a professional net as alternate NCS.
The route took riders up the Rt. 100 valley from Killington to Waitsfield, and back, with the event organizers trying to use their ten Motorola Satellite phones (SAT’s), local ambulance service radio systems, and cell phones of every variety and provider available. None were of any use for the majority of the route! The only consistently reliable communications for the entire route was provided by Amateur Radio. There was not one quarter mile that the Medical Supervisor was not able to communicate with the various rest stops and overall tour supervisor.
Over $1.3 M was raised by the tour for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (over $4,000 each participant, on average), the most raised for any of their numerous events throughout the country. There were no serious medical incidents. All of the most necessary information for the event was passed via Amateur Radio. Many thanks to all who helped make communications for the event a success. — Tom Long, KB1NGQ, Waterbury Center, Vermont
CVARC’s QFQ Report for October, 2009 has “hit the stands!” Download a copy for yourself from our QFQ Reports page.
Tim Stetson’s presentation will be at “The Steak House”, not the Central VT/NH American Red Cross Facility. AFTER the presentation we will tour the Berlin ARC facility.
Our monthly meeting for October will convene early at the usual venue (the Steak House on the Barre-Montpelier road), so that we can visit the Central Vermont/N.H. Valley chapter of the American Red Cross in Berlin for a presentation by Tim Stetson, director of education and training.
- Dinner at the Steak House at 5:15 p.m.
- Meeting at the Steak House at 5:45 p.m.
- Program at the American Red Cross facility in Berlin at 6:30 p.m.
American Red Cross
Hugh Weedon Building
52 Pike Drive
Berlin, Vt.
The Williamstown repeater was repaired some time ago, though coverage is not quite as
wide as in the past. CVARC’s repeater committee has been asked to issue recommendations to the membership.
There are problems with the W1BD repeater (146.625) on Mt. Pleasant, Williamstown, VT.
This morning, at Allen Wilde N1IOE’s request, Tom Girardi WA1YNU hiked up to the site alone. Tom found a bad connector and repaired it. Apparently, there is still a problem. The Repeater Committee is aware and will get to it “when they can.” This may require time and sophisticated analysis equipment todiagnose and repair. In the mean time, we may well need to live without the repeater.
All please remember that the repeater is a helpful resource, NOT a “given.” All of those who volunteer their time, effort, gas, and equipment to keep
the repeater up, do so at their own time and expense.
The new, revised, Summer, 2009, issue of QFQ has been posted (on our QFQ Report page, as usual). Included are two photographs of the Waterbury CROP Walk (p. 8), a short article about a CVARC member helping a motorcyclist in distress (p. 8), a small date correction (p. 8 — what is it about page eight, anyway?), a reference to our posting the technical manual for the “rocket launcher” (p. 6), and more information about the antenna party of June 20th (p. 5).
All omissions were entirely the fault of yours truly, the “vacationing” editor of QFQ Report, who apologizes for the wasted bandwidth.
The special Summer triple-issue of QFQ Report has been finished, and is ready to be downloaded and perused at your leisure. As always, you can find it on our QFQ Report page.
Note that the file size is larger than usual, due to photos from Field Day, an antenna party, and Greenland (yes, Greenland) — as well as the fact that it’s a triple (three-month) issue. The “high-resolution” version has better-quality photos than the “low-resolution” version, but is considerably larger. Other than photo quality, the two versions are identical.
