Category Archives: Articles

Our guest speaker for the April 11th meeting will be Dave Schmidt (AI6VX), our club’s President, who will present “Meshtastic”. What is Meshtastic? A short description from Meshtastic.org: Meshtastic® is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. This project is 100% community driven and open source! A longer description teaser from Dave AI6VX: Meshtastic is open-source software that is installed onto an inexpensive microcontroller board which, using an on-board radio module, becomes a node that can pass text messages to another node.  A direct RF path between the two nodes does not need to exist!  Intermediate nodes will relay the message, using a routing table each node builds, based on the stations it can hear. This ‘mesh’ arrangement is wholly crowd built, and does not rely on any existing communication infrastructure.  Only… Continue reading →

 Our guest speaker for the March 14th meeting was Dr. Ed Fong (WB6IQN). As many of you may know, he is the inventor of the DBJ-1 and DBJ-2 antenna that was featured in the February 2003 and March 2007 QST. His most recent antenna was the TBJ-1 – a triband base antenna that was published in March 2017 QST. His DBJ-1 is a highly effective dual band VHF/UHF base station antenna and the DBJ-2 is the portable roll-up version. The DBJ-2 won the QST Plaque of the Month Award. Both of these antennas are featured in the ARRL VHF Antenna Handbook and also in the ARRL Antenna Classic Handbook. There are over 40,000 of these antennas in use today. About half are used by hams and the other half by government and commercial agencies. Dr. Fong has extensive knowledge of RF design and teaches at UC-Santa Cruz. His students learn… Continue reading →

September 2024 President’s message Welcome to September – we’re in the last 1/3rd of the year.  Kids are back in school, which should make my commute to work easier, and soon we’ll be seeing pumpkin drinks sold everywhere.  There are only 3 more club meetings before Decemberfest and our last picnic for the year is less than 2 weeks away.  Fall equinox comes just days afterwards, and our days will be shorter than the night for 6 months.  If you’re wondering if you missed reading the August 2024 Prez Says post, you most certainly did.  Of course I helped by not writing one.  I tried no fewer than 3 times but could not muster enough energy or words to complete any of them.  Have you ever had that one project that you just can’t get around to completing?  No? Just me? I am writing this message two days after The… Continue reading →

Waiting for the Amateur Radio Proclamation to be Announced by Supervisor Kelly Long District 3 Chair of the Board of Supervisors Jeff Reinhardt AA6JR Public information Coordinator ARRL – Santa Barbara Section listens as Rob Hanson W6RH Ventura County ACS Radio Officer and Ventura County ARES District Emergency Coordinator speaks to the Board of Supervisors about the Auxiliary Communications Service and Amateur Radio Emergency Service community service. Andy Ludlum K6AGL Assistant Section Manager ARRL – Santa Barbara Section presents details of amateur radio volunteers and projects in the Ventura County community. Jeff Reinhardt AA6JR Public information Coordinator ARRL – Santa Barbara Section presented a slide show about amateur radio and its contributions to the nation as well as our local communities. This slide depicts three club’s Field Day locations and Jeff invited all attendees to come out and see for themselves how emergency communications can be established under field conditions.