BeavertonCERTRadio.org

Listen to past Beaverton CERT Net sessions.

• May 14, 2012 - General Discussion (14 min 11 sec, 3.2 Mb)
• May 7, 2012 - General Discussion (8 min 28 sec, 1.9 Mb)
• April 30, 2012 - General Discussion (17 min 24 sec, 4.0 Mb)
• April 23, 2012 - CC&R Discussion (16 min 32 sec, 3.8 Mb)

Beginning in April, the Beaverton CERT Radio Team will be having regular monthly meetings.  We'll meet the last Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm at the Beaverton EOC (aka Community Center) at the corner of 5th and Hall (across from the library).  Hope to see you there!

My initial goal was to build an antenna that could be used for APRS tracking while hiking and cross country skiing. This would be for use in the 2-meter band. It needed to be more efficient than a rubber duck type HT antenna. Safety was essential (nothing too large) and robust enough to survive in rough conditions. It would mount to a day pack and connect to a HT by coax. This same design can be used to extend the range of a HT for CERT.

I tried several ideas from a twin lead J-Pole inside a CPVC tube to an end fed half wave. Below is my current design. It uses a ¼ wave vertical whip made from piano wire (hobby store item) and a heavy copper braid for the counterpoise element. The whip mounts to a block of aluminum that is mounted to a piece of high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. My first try used a plywood support because that was easy for testing. The plywood was replaced with a piece of thin HDPE that was heat bent to make a support bracket.

In testing the first prototype I discovered I could adjust the resonant frequency by folding back the copper braid to shorten it. Much easier than cutting the piano wire. Since my HT also has the 70 CM band I tried using the dual band whip from a mobile mag mount antenna. Very poor VSWR measurements on the 70 CM band told me that was not going to work. I then scaled the antenna design to the 70 CM band. That did work.

Below is the accumulated count of check-ins to the Beaverton CERT Net by callsign since our inception on February 19, 2009. Thanks everyone for participating! Call signs in yellow are new in that quarter.

I ordered my Wouxun KG-UV2D dual band HT on March 22, 2011 and received it about three weeks later. The model I wanted (420-520 MHz) was on backorder at the time and it took a few weeks to get the new stock. My Kenwood TH-G71A had been acting up for the past few years and my search for a replacement found these new Chinese manufactured HTs. QST published a lab test and review article in November 2010 on page 52. The Hillsboro Library has the publication. I wanted a radio that could be used backpacking, cycling, skiing, and my daily walks.

There are many dealers selling these radios including HRO. You will find several different models that appear to have nearly identical specifications. The HRO model has a slightly different case but appears to be the same radio. Some firmware changes have been made since the QST review. The firmware is in a non-reprogrammable memory chip and cannot be updated (from Ed at wouxun.us -my supplier). EBay lists many suppliers in Hong Kong and there are several in the USA. The HK suppliers often bundle the programming cable and other accessories with the radio. Several months after getting the radio I ordered some accessories from radiogearpro.com in HK. I had a good experience with both suppliers.

I was interested in this radio because it has the potential of serving as a transceiver for ski patrol as well as a HAM radio. I bought one at HRO for 119.99, plus $16.99 for a programming cable (which does not come in the box), and $16.99 for a hand speaker/mike.

I've had a 2.1 KW rated solar panel output for the past year in SW Beaverton.  It is south facing at 32 degrees of elevation.  The total power generated over the last year is 2151 KWH.

-Terry K7TO

[Ed. note: Per the U.S. Energy Information Administration site, the typical U.S. home consumes about 10,900 KWH annually.]

For the Sept. 26 Beaverton CERT net we did a signal report exercise on 147.480 simplex in which each station attempted to contact every other station in order to exchange signal reports. I haven't operated on HF, but I've read that the traditional RST system has been undermined by operators who always give a "5-9" report no matter what, I suppose because that level of granularity gives too many choices. For our exercise we reported on signal strength (Loud, Good, or Weak) and readability (Clear, Readable, or Unreadable). I found this system to be easy and intuitive and I have no reason to think that any of the reports were inaccurate.

Out of 10 stations that checked into the net on the repeater, two failed to respond to the roll call on simplex. Another two stations were at the same location, so we counted that as one station. Therefore with seven stations participating that meant 21 possible station-to-station connections, of which 13 were successful.