Showing posts with label amateur radio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amateur radio. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

February UARC meeting: DX Topics!

Mark, W7HPW
One of the facets of amateur radio that sparks the imagination of many hams (and would-be hams) is DX — the chance to work foreign countries in exotic places.

Our next meeting, Thursday, February 14, will feature Mark Richardson, W7HPW, telling us about some of the facets of DX. We hope to have more details shortly, but Mark is a seasoned DXer with some serious power and antennas and can fill us in on a lot of the secrets of the DX recipe!

We hope to see you there!

The room assignment for February:

Our February meeting will be in the Warnock Engineering Building, room L105.

For those who remember when we met in what was called the “Engineering and Mines Classroom Building,” down on the bottom floor, it's on that same floor, just a little ways down the hall - and all of it is now considered part of Warnock.

Getting there from the main (east) entrance:

If you enter the Warnock building on the main floor (e.g. through the east door), you need to get to the southwest corner of the building to find the stairway and elevator that go down to the L1 level. To do this, as you enter the open area on the main floor, notice some conference rooms along the far wall of the open area, left of the main corridor. Turn left along the pathway that goes past these rooms and follow it into a hallway that soon makes a sharp right turn. Follow the hall through the right turn and continue until you find the elevator and stairs near the end of the hall. The lowest floor accessible via the elevator or the stairs is your destination. Once there, look for room 105.

When are the UARC meetings held?

UARC meetings are held on the second Thursday of each month at 7:30 P.M., in the Warnock Engineering Building on the University of Utah campus. See the map for information on finding the building. Rooms for the remaining Spring 2013 meetings are as follows:

February:   L105 (Three levels down from the “main” floor)
March: 2230
April: 2250

Of course, the meeting will include the “standard” meeting features:
  • Availability of ARRL books from Brett, the “book lady”
  • An opportunity to join UARC or renew your membership
  • An opportunity to join ARRL or renew your membership
  • The chance to meet face-to-face the people you talk to on the air
  • The “Meeting after the meeting”: A chance to enjoy pizza or other gastronomic delights with other hams. It happens at Litza's Pizza, 716 E. 400 South.
  • The “Meeting before the meeting”: A similar get-together for those who can leave work early enough to get there by 5:15 P.M. The February get-together will be at “Charlie Chow's Dragon Grill,” 255 E. 400 South in Salt Lake City.

Monday, January 28, 2013

The UARC "Ham Hotline" is back!

The Utah Amateur Radio Club
Ham Hotline:  801-583-3002
After several months of absence, the Utah Amateur Radio Club's "Ham Hotline" is back in service.

The telephone number for the hotline is 801-583-3002.

If you have a question about any upcoming UARC events, events of note sponsored by nearby (Utah) clubs, upcoming sessions for amateur radio license testing or a technical or regulatory question related to amateur radio, this is a place to start!

Currently, this telephone number is directed to Linda, N7HVF and you may get an answering machine during business hours or when she is not home.  If Linda doesn't have the answer for your question there's a good chance that she can direct you to someone who does!


Why was it offline for so long?

We're not quite sure.  Several years ago this the ham hotline was "ported" to a VOIP service to reduce the costs and this worked fine for quite a while.  Suddenly - several months ago - we got word that it no longer worked and after some digging around we discovered that the VOIP provider had inexplicably cancelled the service and returned it to the pool of available numbers.  When asked why they had done this, we could not get any sensible answer!  (Yes, we'd been paying our bill on time!)

Fortunately, the number was still available so we obtained it through a different provider and, eventually, got it back into service!