The RF Communications course continues...

 

 

~

Canadian Amateur Radio Hall of Fame Presentation

At the Surrey Amateur Radio Communications March general meeting, Hitoshi Takahashi VE7LET, the Radio Amateurs of Canada Director for BC & Yukon, presented John Schouten VE7TI with a plaque commemorating his appointment to the Canadian Amateur Radio Hall of Fame for 2024.

John Schouten [left] and Hitoshi Takahashi [right]

[left to right] Hiroshi Takahashi, John Schouten
and retiring RAC BC-Yukon Director Keith Witney

Radio Amateurs of Canada recognizes deserving Amateurs by appointments to the Canadian Amateur Radio Hall of Fame. The Constitution for the Hall specifies that the appointment as Member of the Hall is made for “outstanding achievement and excellence of the highest degree, for serious and sustained service to Amateur Radio in Canada, or to Amateur Radio at large”. The Trustees of the Hall have interpreted the Constitution to mean that the person has performed significant service over many years to enhance the well-being of Amateur Radio. Radio Amateurs of Canada and the Board of Trustees of CARHOF sincerely congratulates John Schouten VE7TI, on his appointment to the Hall of Fame.

A detailed account of his achievements will be presented in an upcoming edition of The Canadian Amateur magazine.

For more information on the Canadian Amateur Radio Hall of Fame please visit: https://wp.rac.ca/carhof/

Frank Davis, VO1HP
Chair, Board of Trustees
Canadian Amateur Radio Hall of Fame

~

 

 

The Communicator March - April 2025

Lots happening...

You will find some great articles in this issue, along with our regular columnists.

Now read in over 165 countries, this issue brings you 115+ pages of Amateur Radio content from the Southwest corner of Canada and around the globe. With less fluff and ads than other Amateur Radio publications, you will find Amateur Radio related articles, projects, profiles, news, tips and how-to's for all levels of the hobby.

Download the January - February Communicator in 
LARGE or SMALL format, or read it on-line like a magazine

Previous Communicator issues:

Search for past Communicator issues

We are working on providing you with a comprehensive searchable index,
but in the meantime a searchable topic index is HERE.  

As always, thank you to our contributors, and your feedback is always welcome. 

The deadline for the next edition is April 15th.

If you have news or events from your club or photos, stories, projects or other items of interest from BC or elsewhere, please contact us at communicator@ve7sar.net

73,

John VE7TI
'The Communicator' Editor

The Table of Contents for the March - April 2025 Communicator issue:

• The Rest of the Story - Alfred Lewis Vail 4
• Bob King G3ASE: World War II RSS Monitor 8
• World Amateur Radio Day 10
• News You Can’t Lose - BandOpticon 12
• Page13—News You Can Lose 13
• Radio Ramblings: Passive Radar Update, BladeRF SDR, $5 Yagi 14
• The Wobbulator 25
• Rubber Coating Removal 28
• Dealing With Leaking Dry Cells 29
• An affordable and easy PCB vise solution for electronics hobbyists 30
• The ‘7300’ User Group - The spectrum scope and waterfall 31
• Remote control and operation 34
• Do you own an Alinco DR/135/235/435T or TYT9000? 37
• The Background Noise on the HF Amateur Bands 38
• BCQP 2025 — Initial Thoughts 44
• From the ATV Journal - An Impressive, Low Cost LNA 46
• Pi Pico Makes SSTV Reception a Snap 49
• ISED Releases New Canadian Basic Amateur Radio Question Bank 50
• Forget the Coax, Use Cat 6 52
• Ohm’s Law: Look what you can do with it 53
• Stranded: An Unlikely Friendship 55
• A satellite primer 58
• A DMR Primer 59
• Those Darn Wall-Wart Power Supplies! 60
• Operation Manna @ 80: Honouring the legacy through amateur radio 63
• Ham Radio Gizmos Platform  Launches Documentary Series 66
• Ham Radio Outside the Box: An Off-Center Fed Sleeve Dipole 67
• Are You a Rag Chewer or a “59 73” Operator? 70
• 2 Meters: Another Slacker DXpedition 71
• KB6NU: How do we encourage more experimentation in amateur radio? 74
• What CAD software do you use? 75
• SARC on 24 GHz! 76
• The Solar Max: Is a second peak coming? 77
• Foundations of Amateur Radio 78
• No-ham Recipes: Toad-in-the-hole 81
• Back to Basics: Understanding Ohm's Law 82
• Profiles of SARC members 88
• Index of Past Profiles of SARC members 90
• Winter Field Day 95
• A Review of Distracted Driving Regulations in BC 109
• QRT: The Crucial Role of Amateur Radio 110

Special Event Station PA80OV

Radio Club Limburg

 

announces

Special Event Station

PA80OV

Next week, members of Radio Club Limburg (https://rclb.nl) in the North Limburg region of  The Netherlands, will activate:

 

PA80OV is a special event station to commemorate Operation Veritable, celebrating 80 years of freedom.  Operation Veritable, namesake of the station, and the successor of Operation Market Garden, was the northern part of an Allied pincer movement in the Second World War.

We are back in 2025 for the third consecutive time with this special event station; having added another 5 years to our callsign.

Members of Radio Club Limburg will activate the callsign PA80OV from February 13 to 28, 2025, to work as many amateur radio operators across the world as possible. If you're in the area,  you can visit our station in the old town hall in the city of Gennep, The Netherlands between February14 and 16.

Whether you are an amateur radio operator, hoping to contact a new country, a new callsign, or you're a casual visitor, you're welcome to our website:

 https://rclb.nl/pa80ov

We hope to hear and work you.

On behalf of the PA80OV team. 

Jan, PA2P
https://rclb.nl/pa80ov

 

Operation Manna 80

A very special, special event station

SARC has been asked to participate in a large-scale special event late in April commemorating the relief efforts of the winter of 1944-45 to drop tons of food to the starving population of NW Holland. It is well described at: Operation Manna @ 80 and in the video https://youtu.be/0PwhYFdzY_Q. 

Amateur stations from the drop zones in Holland, air force bases in Britain, plus the Allied forces that provided aircraft and pilots, including the UK, Canada, The US, Poland and Australia will be represented by special event stations in those countries.

Three UK Teams, one at the International Bomber Command Centre, another at former RAF Binbrook (an Operation Manna Airfield in the UK) and another at the 100th Bomb Group Museum at Thorpe Abbots representing the US operation Chowhound from a former Chowhound airfield.

The national Radio Scouting team (Plusscouts PA3EFR/J) will be operating from an Operation Manna drop zone near The Hague, The Netherlands. Read on for further details on this team and their radio station location at  The Team in the Netherlands – Operation Manna @ 80

The stations will be active April 25-27 (Friday through Sunday) using variations of the xx80MAN callsign. Here at SARC, we will be using VB7MAN (because of Canadian location designations we are required to have a '7' in our callsign). Visit VB7MAN - Callsign Lookup by QRZ Ham Radio

Children and youth activities will also be included and there will be activity on HF, DMR and VHF

https://manna80.radio/w p-content/uploads/2024/12/Award_new.jpg 

When we activate, you can find out if we're on the air
from our HamAlert spots:

Our Grid.Radio Location

There will be a full article in the next Communicator (March 2^st)

Our email address is VB7MAN@gmail.com and our activation calendar is here.

~ John VE7TI

SARC-SEPAR Winter Field Day

Winter FD was pretty good! 

Five of us set up in three sites at Derby reach including Paul VE7VP and 3 newer hams (Carl, Barbara, and Elaine from the last class).  John VE7TI and Summer School graduate Grace VA7LZT came out and Grace was able to work 20m for a while which was great.  We only made around 60 or 70 contacts, but we were operating more casually.  We had a fair number of visitors, both Ham and non-Ham.

A full report will follow in the next Communicator.

~ Andrew VE7LGN

 

 

SARC on 24 GHz!

Believed the first in BC

On Jan 22, 2025 at 14:30 pm local time, two members of the Surrey Amateur Radio Communications Society completed what is believed to be the first 24 GHz terrestrial contact in BC.   

Scott VA7SC was in grid CN89nb at Crescent Beach and Dino VE7NX was in CN89ic at Boundary Bay, approximately 10 km distant. Scott was transmitting just 1 mW using a mixer and local oscillator into a 24" dish with shepherd's crook. Dino was using a Wavelab module delivering 80 mW output with controller and 12" dish.   SSB signals were loud and clear. Antenna orientation was critical, and with a few degrees off-target the signal was gone.

We fully acknowledge and thank Hugh VA3TO and Peter VA3ELE for their assistance in making this a reality.   

There's a video at https://youtube.com/shorts/PzVmCyqCIJY

~ John Brodie VA7XB