Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, January 8, in Meeting Room 3 at the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross, 2731 N. First Street at Plumeria Drive (southwest corner) in San Jose.  Social time begins around 6:45pm, with the meeting commencing at 7pm.  If you haven’t been to the Red Cross in a while, “talk-in” is usually available on the Association’s repeaters. Best choice would be 2m/220.  

This month’s presenter will be Jim DeLoach, WU0I.   Jim is an AMSAT Ambassador and is enthusiastic about amateur satellite communications.  This presentation will be based on his excellent PACIFICON presentation (“How to Build a Satellite ‘Roving’ Station for Your Next Road Trip or POTA Activation”).  Be sure to check out his new Amateur Radio Satellite Resources webpage.

Jim is a Silicon Valley wireless and location technology systems engineer specializing in data analytics, field testing, product definition, and tools development.  Jim and XYL Maggie (KK6DZS) are WVARA members, live in Sunnyvale, and love to travel.   

BTW, several of us meet nearby for dinner prior to the meeting at 5:30pm at Disn-N-Dash (2551 N. 1st St. San Jose):  https://dishdash.com. Feel free to join us.

Three things to remember:
• Since the west side entrance to the Red Cross Building is always locked, we recommend entering the Red Cross Building through the main entrance situated on the north side of the building.
• The Red Cross locks the main entrance at 7pm sharp, so please come early in order to get access to the building.  
• Since Meeting Room 3 is about 100 feet from any entrance, any late comers who knock on an outside door won’t be heard from our meeting room.  So please try to arrive early!  

Jim, K6EI
WVARA Vice President

On December 8th, WVARA members gathered at the San Jose Red Cross to meet and celebrate the holiday season.

We had a successful turnout and everyone had a great time!

Here are a few pictures of the event:

 WVARA Holiday BBQ: 

When: Noon to 3pm, Sunday Dec 8

Where: Silicon Valley Red Cross Building Patio on the east-facing side of the facility. We can shift indoors to Room 3 if it rains. The Red Cross building is at 2731 N. First Street at Plumeria Drive (southwest corner) in San Jose.

There won’t be an evening WVARA meeting in December. Instead, we are having a Holiday BBQ. We’ll have hot charcoal and condiments — please bring your own meat to grill, and maybe a desert or side dish to share.

And of course, the WVARA tradition of drawings for Holiday Door Prizes is good to go. Every attending member in good standing gets one ticket for the door prizes drawing ( you must be present to win ). 

If your WVARA membership has lapsed, there’s no better time than the present to renew. You can do this on-line at: [https://wvara.org/wordpress/membership/]

Many thanks to Bert Henderson, W6MSD, for Wednesday’s excellent presentation on DIY off-center and end-fed wire antennas.

Here is a link to his excellent presentation in pdf format. *** Updated on 12/4/2024 with Bert’s latest slide deck

…Are available on our Photos Page

Field Day: what an event it was! This year we operated QRP in the 12A Battery category from Mora Hill in Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve, overlooking the Silicon Valley from an elevation of 500 feet. We had a Get-On-The-Air (GOTA) station, three HF CW stations, three HF SSB stations, three HF digital stations, and five VHF/UHF stations including one with satellite link capabilities.

Our Field Day score in 2022 and 2023 had placed us at #2 out of roughly 4,000 entries nationwide — second only to W3AO on the East Coast. This year, we were in a good position to beat our previous QSO totals. But NOAA observed a M9-class solar flare (peaking at 1301z Sunday morning) which triggered a R2-moderate radio black-out. The sudden drop-off in signals caused some of our site’s operators to wonder if their rigs/antennas were still working properly. Needless to say, we came in a bit below last year’s QSO totals, but still with impressive results: 2,426 contacts and a preliminary total score of 23,690

Antennas on Mora Hill this year included a 4-band (10/15/20/40) yagi, a 2-element wire yagi on 40, and 2-element quads on 10, 15 and 20. In order to minimize interference between the CW and digital stations, Bobby located the digital tent’s triband yagi and dipoles about 200 feet from the rest of the site. The digital team was able to avoid long runs of coax by installing the digital RF hardware for both of their stations in the van and then running 200 feet of Cat5 Ethernet cable to the main site where the digital tent and terminals were located.