This event is a fundraising activity for local amateur (HAM) radio groups in the South San Francisco Bay area. This month the event is hosted by the West Valley Amateur Radio Association (WVARA).
The Electronics Flea Market is located in parking lot 3 at West Valley College in Saratoga. Visit electronicsfleamarket.com for more details.
This event runs from 6:00AM until Noon
We have dozens of vendors selling mostly electronic goods, both used and new. Items frequently found include: electronics components, laptop computers, desktop computers, cellphones, chargers, cables, usb devices, radios, amateur radio gear, network devices, network cables, manuals, books, software, etc.
Coffee, water, soft drinks, and doughnuts are on available for purchase from the hosting group.
Spots for vendors are sold upon entry and start at $40/day. Buyers enter free, but must have a valid college parking permit ($3/day).
Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, April 9th, 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 is John Miller, K6MM.
Do you live in an apartment with no opportunity for a big antenna farm? Then this month’s presentation is ideal for you. John will tell us about “DXpeditions Redefined: Working the R.I.B. Remotely” and will describe his experience working from home as a remote operator for the E51D (N.Cook), VP6A (Ducie), CB0ZA (Juan Fernandez), and N5J (Jarvis Island) DXpeditions.
John was first licensed in 1958. He is on the DXCC Honor Roll with 333 confirmed, and is working on completing 160M for 9-Band DXCC. He especially enjoys participating in DXpeditions and was a operator at PJ7E (Sint Maarten), K9W (Wake Atoll), K1N (Navassa Island), K5P (Palmyra Atoll), and KH1/KH7Z (Baker Island). He was also a stateside pilot and/or webmaster for the NH8S (Swains Island), C82DX (Mozambique), FT4TA (Tromelin), 3G0ZC (Juan Fernandez), and VK0EK (Heard Island) DXpeditions.
We will also be talking about the upcoming Electronic Flea Market that WVARA will be hosting on Sunday, April 13th 2025.
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!
Upcoming Meetings and Events
Date
Speaker
Topic
April 9
John Miller, K6MM.
DXpeditions Redefined: Working the R.I.B. Remotely
Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, March 12, 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 Peterson, K6EI. Anyone who has attended PACIFICON or the Visalia DX Convention in the past decade knows that Tom Schiller, N6BT, is an amazing source of information about all things related to antennas based on his many years of antenna-related work. Jim has distilled his favorite insights from a half dozen of Tom’s recent presentations and will share his favorite nuggets from Tom’s work. These are practical datapoints related to antenna performance that directly impact anyone involved in POTA, Field Day, chasing DX, or rag chewing. He’ll also show how he built a homebrew-version of Tom’s famous Bravo HF antenna using just spare parts from his shack!
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!
Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, February 12, 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 Jeff Kabel, AA6XA. One of the reasons FT8 works so well with marginal signals is its robust forward error correction (FEC). In this presentation we will explore how and why forward error correction works, FEC block codes, and their implementation in FT8.
Jeff got his license when he was 14 and in middle school. He upgraded to Extra a few years later in high school then went off to college to become an electrical engineer. After taking a break from ham radio for a few years he got back into the hobby after moving to California. Jeff is an avid SOTA activator, and his activations can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/@hambitious. He also enjoys homebrewing, VHF+ contests, and CW contests.
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!
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!
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/]
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.
The mighty 2024 WVARA Field Day CrewGOTA StationThe CW TentTwilight on Mora HillVHF-UHF Tent and antennasDigital Station VAN, Antennas and Solar Panel Trailer CW Quad AntennasSSB Tower and 10m, 15m, 20m, 40mYagi, and 80m dipole
