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Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications

 

Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (Click this link to enter)

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The Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications is a library of materials and collections related to amateur radio and early communications. The DLARC is funded by a significant grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications, a private foundation, to create a digital library that documents, preserves, and provides open access to the history of this community.

This free resource combines archived digitized print materials, born-digital content, websites, oral histories, personal collections, and other related records and publications. The goals of the DLARC are both to document the history of amateur radio and to provide freely available educational resources for researchers, students, and the general public.

To contribute content for this project, email kay@archive.org

CAARC Christmas pot luck dinner

There was a good turn out for the Christmas dinner on Dec 4.  Everyone enjoyed the great food and visiting. Thanks to all those who organized and prepared the food. Congratulations to Tiny VE6TIP for winning the Gizmo! We look forward to see what he adds for next year! Thanks to our new President Don VA6DFR for the pictures and video. 

 

Marvin VE6CJY presenting the gizmo to Tiny VE6TIP

Field Day Pictures 2021

Thanks to everyone who submitted these pictures. Be sure to check all four pages at the bottom of the first page for all the pictures. 

These are the field day results as submitted to ARRL (Thanks VA6SGL ) Great job everyone!

Provinces and states worked.

Provinces and states worked.

VE6QE_FD_Report

 

 

VE6BLD’s first try on an Electric Unicycle! TOO MUCH FUN!

A few weeks ago I was at my son’s place in Okotoks and he helped me try his new Electric Unicycle. It was a very cold and windy day but after 3 tries I managed to go a few hundred feet! What a blast! 

Click these links for my 3 best tries…

This was the first time I tried riding Michael’s new Electric Unicycle. What a blast. It was very windy and cold. Safety first!!!

Dad’s 2nd Good Ride on Michael’s EUC  This would be easier on a flat lawn with no wind!!

Dad’s 3rd Good Ride Ya HOO

I may have to get one of these..

 

 

A short video to start your day with a good laugh!

What a great driver these Germans are!!

RAC Canada Day Contest

I just received this in my in box today!

VE6BLD RAC Canada Day Contest 2020

Earthlings and astronauts chat away, via ham radio

Earthlings and astronauts chat away, via ham radio

astronaut
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The International Space Station cost more than $100 billion. A ham radio set can be had for a few hundred bucks.

Perhaps that explains, in part, the appeal of having one of humankind’s greatest scientific inventions communicate with Earth via technology that’s more than 100 years old. But perhaps there’s a simpler explanation for why astronauts and  operators have been talking, and talking, for years.

NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock was just a few weeks into his six-month mission at the  station when feelings of isolation began to set in.

Wheelock would be separated from loved ones, save for communication via an internet phone, email or social media. At times, the stress and tension of serving as the station’s commander could be intense.

One night, as he looked out a window at the Earth below, he remembered the space station’s ham radio. He figured he’d turn it on—see if anyone was listening.

“Any station, any station, this is the International Space Station,” Wheelock said.

A flood of voices jumbled out of the airwaves.

Astronauts aboard the space station often speak to students via ham radio, which can also

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CAARC 2020 Official Field Day Scores

I finally looked in the December QST for the 2020 ARRL Field Day Results.

Boy, are there a lot of entries to read through this year.

Our Central Alberta ARC showed 7 entries for a total of 2,928 points. These were the participants that I could confirm in the listings (my digital copy had very small print and I don’t think it supports “Find”}:

(December 19, adding information VA6SJA)

Station Class Points

VE6CIA     1D                               644

VA6SJA     1E                               384

VE6WCE    1D                                56

VA6MPM  1B 1 Operator Battery 155

Points accounted for 1,239.

In addition, by some technical glitch, it appears that the VE6BLD entry was not recorded. He sent in his entry and used the club name Central Alberta ARC. That station had 372 voice QSOs which would have added 372 points to our total.

As a matter of interest. there were scores as low as 2 in the 1D category and 46 in the 1E category. So, you should not have felt that your score was too low to submit.

Did you participate under the Club Name of Central Alberta ARC? Would you like to add your statistics here?

If you cannot look up your own score, send your claimed score to me at va6sja@rac.ca and I will try to confirm it.

John VA6SJA

VE6BLD’s solar pop can heater to warm your shack from the sun.

In 2014 I found a video on you tube of a man in Newfoundland who had built a solar pop can heater. I decided I would build one for my big shop in the back of my large town lot. There is a south facing wall to install it on a foot away from the wall for safety reasons as it can produce 80 -90 degree C!  I had an old double pane window in the shop that was about 3 by 7 feet. So the project began. I also had the aluminum frame from a score clock which had been removed from a school gym which turned out to be the perfect depth to fill with rows of pop cans after being insulated with 2 inch styrofoam. The metal frame also had a perfect indentation on the front to install the double pane window. See the pictures in the link below for how I  built  this pop can heater. I used a small squirrel cage fan on the inlet in the garage and another one on the outlet in the garage. There is a temperature sensor at the top of the outlet pipe connected to an adjustable digital temperature control ($8.00 on ebay). I can set any temperature to turn on the fans and I can also adjust the differential to turn off. As soon as the sun comes up and shines on the heater  it  will quickly come to the set temperature I programed of 32 C. The heater was tested to  produce up to +180 degrees F  (+80 degrees C) before I installed the fans. This is a good reason to have 2 fans so it will not melt the heater if one fan quits! Today Nov 11, 2020 the sun was very low (temperature – 12 degrees all day) but the heater quickly rose to +32 C and the thermostat turned the fans on. The heater produced a steady +18 C temp into the garage all day until there was no more sun shining on it. ! Darn nice free solar heat. 

Click the pictures in the gallery 

 

Click this link to see the picture gallery of this project