The Christmas Party for 2019 was a big success. Lots of food, and because of the environment, ample opportunity to chat during the meal. A large part of the credit has to go to David Z, as well as the many others who brought side dishes and desserts.

Two awards were presented during the evening. The club showed its appreciation to Patrick for his four years of service as club Treasurer. Over the years, Patrick has served as every officer the club has, including President. The second award went to our outgoing president, Matthew, who led the club to record high membership over the last two years. His laid back leadership style, and ability to encourage volunteerism was a winning combination.

At the same time we acknowledge club officers past, we recognize the new club officers who now take charge: Mike Shreve, our new club President, John Stanford, our new VP, Todd Rush, our new Treasurer, and Bill Johnson, or new old Secretary. It is up to our officers, board members, and every member in the club to move the Lakeland Amateur Radio Club ever closer to achieving its three objectives: Comradery, Education, and Service.

Click her for pictures taken at the dinner.

Some interesting stats on our Christmas Dinner Meeting
   Expected to attend 69.
   Actual attendees 57.
   Number who paid but did not attend for one reason or another 5.
   This would have brought our attendance to 62, and within 5 of the expected   number.

Last year only call signs were recorded. The count was 32. This year, the number of call signs recorded was 38, or six more than last year.

Attendance at the December Meeting

 
Attendance Summary 
The following is a summary of the attendance by member prior to the December meeting, and taking into account that we missed a meeting due to a hurricane warning. Data for nine of those months are recorded below. Data is ranked by number of meetings attended.

 Sometimes things don’t work out the way you would have liked.

It saddens me to report that a problem with our adaptation of the Allstar System was just discovered. Our team is working to resolve it. Until it is resolved, I am asking everyone to hold off using Allstar. You will be notified as soon as the problem is fixed.

Four members of the Florida Polytechnic University graduates received or upgraded their Amateur Radio Licenses. Good luck with your careers in electronics. I can’t think of a better hobby for future EEs.

Kudos to Vlad KX4TH for motivating his classmates to get into ham radio.  

Left to right Vlad KX4TH Extra, Moshe KN4YUG Tech, Jayla KN4YUH Tech, Peter  KN4YUE General, and Rich N4ESS.

Left to right Peter KN4YUE General, Moshe KN4YUG Tech, Yesabel KN4YUF Tech, and Bill K4JZ

Attendance 
We had 59 members and guests attend this evening.  A special thanks to Top WB6ZEQ for making sure everyone is accounted for. This may seem like a small thing, but it is the collection of small things that makes our club work. Thank you.

Suppose with one click you could connect to any one of over 400 Ham Radios around the world.

Here is the link that will get you started. https://www.sdr.hu/  

But read on before you click on it, read on.

When you click on this link you will see a list of over 400 stations that are streaming what comes into their radio onto the Internet. Reception varies around the world, so if you are interested in QSO’s in the USA, search on USA. If you are just curious, you can click on any of the stations listed and scan through frequencies in any mode from about 0 to 30 MgHz. Be sure to select the appropriate Mode. The software takes a little getting use to, but it is for the most part intuitive, and you can’t do any harm by pushing buttons. So feel free to experiment. I have tried this on my tower, my Samsung Tablet, and even my Android phone. I got it to work on each, but clicking on tiny buttons on a phone is problematic at best. Go with a laptop, tower or tablet for best results.

This is the first thing you will see when you click on the above link.

I was mainly interested in stations in the USA so I typed USA into the search bar and came up with several choices. The station in Idaho seemed popular, so I picked it. Note, you can tell the popularity of a station by checking out the votes to the right of each station.

I thought I would try the 40 meter band so I clicked around 7 MHz. This is what the screen looked like on the CW portion of the band. Those blobs to the left are dots and dashes in CW. The control console is the grey box to the lower right. It contains all the controls you need to do just about anything you would be capable of doing if you had a radio sitting in front of you. In this case I clicked on the CW button, zoomed in with the + magnifier, and nudged the frequency up and down with the smaller circled pluses and minuses. Here is what the Idaho site looked like.

Next I decided to explore the voice part of the band. First I clicked on the LSB button, and then I moved up the band where I found a voice conversation. To move up you can either click and drag the blue section to the left, or click on the grey bar at the top further up the band. You will learn other ways to accomplish the same thing as you become familiar with the software. So play. You can’t hurt anything. This is what the voice section of the band looked like.

The conversation I tuned in on was between two hams discussing loop antennas.
And, just so you know what to expect in the way of audio quality I attached a sound clip that I recorded. The discussion centered around the need for an variable tuning capacitor. The higher the transmitter power the higher the voltage. Higher voltages in turn require bigger plate spacing to prevent arcing. Along with the bigger spacing comes larger plate areas for the same capacitance. And, along with that, a higher price tag.In keeping with ham tradition, these two were lamenting the higher price tag.

Click Here to Listen to the conversation