Union County Amateur Radio Club, Ohio

We will be participating in Winter Field Day January 28-29 from

Marvin C. Gilbert EMA Operations Building - EMA Station 720
20900 Northwest Parkway.
Marysville, OH 43040

Google Maps Link:
https://goo.gl/maps/9hT7PZfubpR2

Our Winter Field Day plans will be informal and for lack of better terms, we will be winging it when it comes to food accommodations. 

We will be arriving at Station 720 around 11am EST to get things setup. There will be a control operator present so anyone with a technician license or anyone that does not have their amateur radio license will be able to make some contacts on the HF bands with the control operator.
The official Winter Field Day Operational Period: Winter Field Day is always held the last full weekend in January. For 2023, it will be held on January 28th and 29th. The 24-hour operational period starts at 1900 UTC (2pm EST) on Saturday, the 28th and ends at 18:59 UTC ( 1:59pm EST ) on Sunday, the 29th. Stations may begin setting up no earlier than 19:00 UTC on Friday before. However cumulative set-up time shall not exceed 12 hours.

Please plan on bringing something to contribute towards pizza for supper on Saturday evening. We will order pizza based on the number of people that are present around 6pm. Feel free to bring soda, snacks, etc to share with everyone.

If you plan to operate over night, please bring your own sleeping bag, blanket, pillow, cot, sleeping pad, etc. The sleeping arrangements will be inside the station on a concrete floor or commercial carpeted concrete floor.

If there is enough interest to operate over night, we will be having pancakes for breakfast when everyone is awake. If you are arriving Sunday morning to participate in winter field day, please eat breakfast at home, bring your own breakfast, or call / text  Ed at six one four 804-6569 to let him know to to include you in the head count for pancakes when they are made.   

If there isn't enough interest to operate over night we will not be making pancakes for breakfast. In this case, please eat breakfast at home or bring breakfast with you to eat at Station 720.  We will shut things down Saturday night, go home and come back on Sunday morning around 8 or 9am to resume winter field day operations.

Please monitor the 145.350 repeater Sunday morning for an exact time when Winter Field Day operations will resume. We will be letting everyone know when we are heading to Station 720, etc  on the repeater. Sunday lunch will be determined and likely will be based on what everyone wants to do that are present at Station 720 (winging it) .

We will have coffee and water available to drink while we are operating for winter field day. 

I hope to see everyone this weekend for Winter Field Day at Station 720

73,

Ed KE8ANU

January 3rd - 7pm Club meeting at EMA Station 720 - Topic "Show and Tell" Bring that new Christmas present, project, etc to show and tell about it. We will have a "fox" transmitter available for anyone to test out their tape measure beam antenna. Winter Field Day planning

January 8th - 4pm Club Dinner at Asian Buffet 601 Colemans Crossing Blvd Marysville, OH 43040 all family members are welcome. 

January 14 - 8:30am Club/ARES Breakfast at EMA Station 720 located at  20900 North West Parkway, Marysville. We will be cooking up pancakes and sausage.  After breakfast we will be connecting a couple of MFJ 915 filters https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-915#description  on a couple of HF stations to see if it improves operating two hf stations at the same time. We will also be working on Winter Field Day preparations. 

January 28-29 Winter Field Day at EMA Station 720

At this months meeting, we held elections for our club officers.  Ed will remain President, Frank will remain Treasurer, and I will remain Secretary.

On to the fun part!  In preparation for fox hunting in the spring, we built tape measure yagi antennas!  This was definitely a fun hands on activity.  I think we all learned a thing or two about building home made directional antennas. Click the article to see pics!

The club meeting is at 7pm Tuesday Dec 6th 
This will be club election night. We will be electing the club president for the 2023 term.
If you would like to be or nominate the next club president or hold any of the other positions like vice president, secretary, or treasurer please let everyone know at the meeting on Dec 6th. 

The activity for the meeting will be working on tape measure beam antennas to use for fox hunting.
Information to make the beam antenna is here  https://www.w3hzu.com/content/emcomm/2%20Meter%20Tape%20Measure%20Beam.pdf  
Please bring your materials needed to make the antenna.

Ed will bring a PVC pipe cutter, tin snips, and what is left of a tape measure to make the antenna elements to the meeting.
Chris will also be bringing a what is left of his tape measure to share.
There will also be an antenna analyzer available to use to test or tune your antenna.  

The meeting location will be at :

Marvin C. Gilbert EMA Operations Building - EMA Station 720
20900 Northwest Parkway.
Marysville, OH 43040

Google Maps Link:
https://goo.gl/maps/9hT7PZfubpR2

The Delaware Amateur Radio Association test session location has changed.
Their test sessions will now be at

Scioto Township Community Center
3737 Ostrander Rd
Ostrander, OH 43061

Please visit this page for their test session schedule.
https://www.laurelvec.com/index.php?team=DELARA

Ohio State Parks On The Air has posted the results for 2022. We had two station call signs representing the club, W8UCO and KD8UFE. We activated Alum Creek State Park with the club call sign W8UCO. Our final official score was 2738 points. We ranked in 15th place out of 27 stations for our operating class, multi op, multi radio in a park. Frank activated Buck Creek State Park. Franks final official score was725 points. He ranked 20th out of 29 stations in his class, single op, low power in a park. 
Here is a link to the official results https://ospota.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/OSPOTA22-FINALS-20221030.pdf

What a fun meeting!  

Thanks to Philip Stanley W8NZB for making the long drive to his hometown to give the presentation!  We went over the guidelines and structure of a basic fox hunt, and had some hands on time with attenuators and home made yagi antennas.

We are at Alum Creek State Park for OSPOTA. Click on the title to see pictures. 

Click on the title to view pictures from Field Day taken on Saturday..