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

Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, November 13, 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 WVARA member Bert Henderson, W6MSD.   There are plenty of commercially-made HF antennas that you can buy.  But why not save some dollars and build your own?  Bert will talk about DIY wire antennas that you can make yourself with an emphasis on end-fed and off-center fed antennas.  He will present on the transformers and antennas he’s designed and made, some basics on how they work, a summary of other available info.  He will also bring some of his home-built hardware to show, as well as his nanoVNA to demonstrate a measurement or two.

Bert retired last year after a career developing microwave components and subsystems.  He’s an innovator with six patents and a leader in frequency conversion, signal generation, and control technologies.  His ham radio interests include antenna design, CW, and (of course) Field Day.

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!  If you need help getting in the door, you can call Tim’s cellphone:  408-929-9311 or mine: 408-636-6172.

Jim, K6EI
WVARA Vice President

WVARA Beach Party POTA Saturday, November 9, 2024, from 9:30 am to about 3:30 pm

Manresa Main State Beach, day use picnic area

POTA: US-3469
1445 San Andreas Rd, Watsonville 95076 (Admission fee or CA state park pass needed)

The West Valley Amateur Radio Association (WVARA) is having a Beach Party POTA. It is a chance to get outside, have fun and play radio with old and new friends. We always welcome and enjoy seeing members and non-members, meeting new hams, and showing off and explaining our hobby with interested non-hams.

If you’re recently licensed, stop by and make some new friends. Perhaps you can get a little help with a cantankerous HT, some antenna advice, or check out different gear and operating modes.

If you don’t have a license and are interested in what amateur radio is about, come by and ask questions, see some of what we do and try getting on the air.

If you are a ham and interested in POTA (Parks on the Air), but not sure about what to do or not yet registered, we can help you with that. It is easy and free!

To spice it up a little, we’re going to:
• Try getting some kind of a kite antenna up and make some contacts using it 

• Award a few prizes

We have some great prizes we’re going to award. Prizes will be awarded by random drawing.

To enter a drawing, you’ll need to check in with “Beach Party Control”, receive a ticket for the appropriate drawing, and provide enough contact information so we can get in touch with you if you win something but are not around at the drawing .

For licensed hams, we’ll have a SOTABEAMS Band Hopper II 20m-40m antenna package, a PackTenna Mini In-line RF Choke and other fun and useful items to award.

If you are not yet licensed, but are interested, we’ll have a separate drawing for a copy of Gordon West’s 

Technician FCC Amateur Radio License Preparation book (10th Edition, 2022-2026 questions).

Food: Logistics:

We provide: charcoal, grilling tools, basic condiments, bottled H2O.
You bring: whatever you want to grill/eat, perhaps a side dish, snack or desert to share.

Bring any gear you’d like to operate. We’ll be QRP, but higher power is fine if you want: bring your own power and antenna. We’ll work out interference if needed.

If you’re hiking / biking / small vehicle-ing to the site, here’s what we’ll have there that you won’t need to bring (unless you have gear you want to try — always fun!).

We’ll have QRP-sufficient 12 volt power, and power distribution strips with PowerPoles. Bring your own PowerPole-equipped power cables.

We’ll have two or three push-up fiberglass masts. If you have antennas you want to try, bring them. If they need support beyond a push-up, you’ll need to bring that too.

If you need AC power (i.e. for a PC for digital), bring it.

Day of the event we’ll monitor 146.52 (2M call) and 446.00 (440 call).

Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, October 9, 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 meeting presentation is all about reducing RF noise in your shack by WVARA member Scott Nacey, KK6IK.   Scott will describe the ongoing saga of his battle with local HF RFI in Willow Glen which severely degrades all HF operation at his home.   He will present the process from the realization that he had a severe RFI issue, through the tools he brought and built in order to identify the many sources of interference both inside and outside of his house.   Once he acquired and  built the tools, the story continues with how he approached local companies mitigate neighborhood-wide problems as well as how he engaged the ARRL RFI Team and FCC to get the company that caused the most severe RFI to respond.   

In addition to Scott’s presentation, Tim Stehle (KN6FGH / WVARA President) will lead a group discussion on plans for WVARA’s upcoming POTA / beach party event scheduled for Nov 9.

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! 

And don’t forget: PACIFICON is Oct 18-20.  https://www.pacificon.org/home   The technical forums will take a lunch break from 11:50 until 1pm on Saturday.  For those WVARA folks who are interested in getting together for lunch, let’s meet just outside the main entrance to the hotel lobby (i.e. the revolving doors) at 11:55.

Jim, K6EI
WVARA Vice President

Our next WVARA meeting will be held in-person on Wednesday, September 11, 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 meeting presentation is all about Digital Signal Processing by Jeff Kabel, AA6XA.   Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is everywhere in modern communications systems. Jeff’s presentation will give a qualitative introduction to DSP. We’ll cover basic DSP concepts and some simple examples. DSP can be very math heavy but Jeff’s presentation will not involve any difficult math. The goal is to give you a feel for how DSP works and some of the ways it is important to wireless communications.

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!  If you need help getting in the door, you can call my cellphone:  408-636-6172.

Jim, K6EI
WVARA Vice President

There won’t be an evening WVARA meeting in July or August. Instead, we are having our annual WVARA BBQ on Saturday, August 10 from 11am to 2pm. 

Our location (Owl Burrow Picnic Area, next to our traditional Pickleweed site) is inside Sunnyvale’s Baylands Park and includes multiple tables, grill, an AC outlet, and a covered awning for shade. There is an entry fee per car at Baylands Park, so you may prefer to carpool. We’ll have hot charcoal and condiments; feel free to bring some protein to grill.

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.