September VHF contest at NE5BO Mt Nebo

September VHF Contest at Mt Nebo

Crossing the Mississippi River heading west on I-40 (4 hrs til the start of contest)

Arriving at Mt Nebo Arkansas EM35 (10 mins til contest)

I was greeted promptly by a resident of Mt Nebo (5 minutes til contest)

Stations are set up and ready for the contest.

NE5BO @1600 feet ASL

From this location with completely flat bands the entire time we are still able to make contacts from Texas to Georgia.

Working the contest with great friends KD4NOQ ( left / rear) manning 222Mhz station, WB4LHD (center) Logging contacts, and myself manning the 50, 144, & 432 Mhz station

Huntsville Hamfest 2016

Delta Club Huntsville Bus



HamFest!



With my Cousin Randall / W4DEU



2m Stack Halos found in the flea market

Field Day 2016 Photos

Last Month’s Program
Submitted  by Dan Lasley, NE7JN, contributions by Michael Knight, KK4IOH

May's  club program was "Field Day, 2016," presented by Delta's Vice President, Michael Knight,
KK4IOH.  Because Michael's presentation was clear and succinct, I will borrow heavily from it in
the description below.

2016's Field Day will be Saturday, June 25th,  and Sunday, June 26th,  at  7771  Poplar Pik
Germantown,  TN, behind the Pickering Center.  Set up operations begin at 8am (CDT) Saturday with
on-the-air operations commencing at noon Saturday and ending at 3pm Sunday, followed  by tear down
operations.

This year the  Nashoba Club is joining  Delta Club,  MARA, and the Tri-State Repeater
Association  in Field Day operations.


The Field Day objective:   "To work as many stations as possible on any and all amateur bands
(excluding the 60, 30, 17, and 12-meter  bands) and to learn to operate in abnormal situations  in
less than optimal conditions."

Michael explained the rationale for Field Day:


    Emergency Preparedness

    Training and Practice Operating

    Social Gathering

    Recruit New Hams

    Demonstrating  Our capabilities

    Experimentation  with  Antennas and Power Solutions

We will have a dedicated Get On The Air (GOTA) station again this year.  Michael says, "T GOTA
station may be operated by any person licensed since the previous year's Field Day, regardless of
license class. It may also be operated by a generally inactive licensee.  Non- licensed persons may
participate  under the direct supervision of an appropriate control operator."

Our capabilities will include voice, CW, digital,  satellite, packet and APRS demos, and networking
via HamWAN.

The Field Day operation accumulates points for on-air contacts:   phone contacts  count one point,
and CW and digital contacts  count two points.   We accumulate additional points in

number of other ways,  such as youth participation, using 100%  emergency power, media publicity,
satellite QSOs, and more.




      How you can help:

    operate a voice or CW station

    log contacts

    help coach

    greet the public

    act as tour guides for the public

    loan batteries for the event duration

    help with  set up or tear down (or bot




Photo by Dan Lasley, NE7JN.



Thanks to Michael for an interesting  and informative program.


Delta Amateur Radio Club                            June 2016 Sparks                            
                Page 11

Presenting 2016 Field Day to Delta Club

2016's Field Day will be Saturday, June 25th, and Sunday, June 26th, at 7771 Poplar Pike, Germantown, TN, behind the Pickering Center. Set up operations begin at 8am (CDT) Saturday with on-the-air operations commencing at noon Saturday and ending at 3pm Sunday, followed by tear down operations.

Foxhunting/DF finding at Delta Club Ham 101

01/30/16 - Magnolia Radio Intertie Presentation

Working on the Delta Club 146.625 repeater

Working on the Delta Club 146.625 repeater. 

Soon it will have AllStar. 

Delta Club Tech Class 8-13

Last night was the final night of the latest Delta Club Tech class lead by Joe / WA4OVO.

Topics covered were:

Repeater Basics Joe Lowenthal 
D-Star/DMR: Michael Knight
EchoLink / All Star: Michael Knight
Delta Club Net
HF/MARS/WinLink: Pat Lane
APRS: Rick Pellicciotti

If you or someone you know is interested in attending a Technician Class, please let us know by sending an email to wa4ovo@gmail.com with the subject line "Technician Class" and give your name, email address and a contact phone number (preferably a cell number). Or you can call 901-628-4318.

HamWAN and Tri-State Repeater Launch VHF D-Star Repeater in East Memphis

 3 August 2015  ryan_turner

KK4IOH Michael Knight

On August 1st, members of HamWAN Memphis Metro and Tri-State Repeater installed a VHF D-Star repeater module at the Hilton Hotel located in east Memphis, TN. Owned and operated by Tri-State Repeater, HamWAN Memphis Metro helped by providing the network necessary to make this D-Star repeater internet-connected. The repeater is on air, transmitting on 144.940 and receiving on 147.440 MHz in D-Star digital voice mode.

“This connection enables crystal clear world wide communications 24 hours a day,” said Tri-State Repeater Director Michael Knight (licensed General Class KK4IOH).
“If HamWAN weren’t available, we would’ve had to either leave the repeater un-networked, pay for cellular service, or navigate the difficulties of getting a connection through the site sponsor with a public IP.”

The repeater is open to public use and will soon have emergency power. With a Hustler G7 antenna, “it has good coverage of all of Shelby County” said Knight. The repeater’s status can be viewed at https://wb4kog.com/ both on the internet and on HamWAN internally.

“While we’ve had a few AllStar repeaters on network so far, this is the first D-Star repeater to join HamWAN” said HamWAN Memphis Metro president Ryan Turner. “With D-Star reflector REF067 on network, when additional D-Star repeaters join our network, we can join them together even if the internet is down. This is an exciting opportunity for us with wide-area emergency communications.”

Tri-State Repeater Association Inc is a non profit amateur radio repeater group founded in 1975. With about ten repeaters in and around the mid-south, they offer communications capabilities on both voice and packet radio. For more information, visit their website.

HamWAN Memphis Metro provides high-speed wireless data networking for amateur radio operators in the 10 county Memphis Metro region, making up over 5,000 square miles and nearly 2,500 radio operators. MemHamWAN supports microwave and IP networking experimentation, education, and emergency use by deploying a redundant, engineered infrastructure. With microwave connectivity, operators are able to participate in the regional wide area network. Operators may remotely access radio receivers and transmitters, stream media, use voice-over-ip, and many other things. For more information, visit memhamwan.orgor twitter.com/memhamwan.

D-star Presentation at Neshoba.

Presenting D-Star at Neshoba Amateur Club in Germantown, TN with NS4B and KK4IOH. 

DMR Presentation in Memphis

DMR Presentation at today's Memphis Digital Amateur Radio Club Meeting. 

Memphis now has an active DMR system on the air. W4LET - 443.0125

Delta Club Field Day Presentation

On June 9th I gave a pre-field day presentation to Delta Amatuer Radio Club.

Field day is 6/27-28

2417 Lacosta in Bartlett, TN

Everyone is invited!

03/17/15 - HamWAN Presentation to OBARC

HamWAN presentation to Olive Branch Amateur Radio Club.

03/16/15 - D-star Presentation at Chickasaw Radio Club

D-star Presentation at Chickasaw Radio Club

Dstar workshop 1/18/15

We had a nice small dstar workshop today with K5FC, K4HPP, and KK4PRZ. 

Helped with a 9100, 2-7100s, and an 880h. 

Good to help new hams get on D-Star. 

K5FC was very close friends with my first elmer K4EAR who recently went SK. I really appreciate him sharing some old photos and conversation about our mutual friend. 

Cliff and I working to add AllStar to 145.450

Building up the cable.

Checking things out.

We have Schematics. 

Do you cut the red wire or the blue wire??

1/10/15 MDARC Meeting

We had a nice turnout for the Jan meeting of Memphis Digital Amateur Club.

We saw a DV Mega in operation along with a working AllStar naked node.

HamWAN site live

Midtown Memphis Cell Site Live!

October 20, 2014 ryan_turner 

In cooperation with Tri-State Repeater Association, HamWAN Memphis Metro is pleased to announce the deployment of our first cell site, located in midtown Memphis, TN.
Three sectors and one point-to-point link have been installed on the tower above the Southern College of Optometry, offering strong coverage of midtown and downtown Memphis, West Memphis, and even parts of Bartlett and Germantown. The equipment was funded out of pocket by the board members. The 10 MHz channel plan has been selected, with the router configurations published on Github. If you’re in the red area on the map below, you potentially have line of sight to the cell site! Read on for more details about the installation and how to get connected.


Currently, network connectivity speeds are limited due to tree obstruction of the PtP link; over the coming weeks we will be updating equipment to address this issue.

The Installation
Over the 19th and 20th of October, K0RET, KK4IOH, and Sam (future ham!) spent their weekend cleaning up the tower on SCO by removing two antennas and a dish, as well as numerous runs of bad coax and hardline. With this work complete, they then mounted the cell site hardware on the tower, ran wiring to it, and attached it all.

Parts used in the installation include:

3x Mikrotik Metal 5SHPN with power adapter
2x Ubiquiti Antenna AM-5G19 5Ghz 19dBi 120-deg Dual-Pol Sector with SMA jumpers (dual polarity for future use; we get less than 19 dBi since we’re off the center frequency)
2x SMA to N connector adapter
1x Laird SAH58-120-16DB 16dBi 120 Deg sector (single polarity, this is the north sector)
~150 ft Ubiquiti TOUGHCable Carrier, 8x shielded Ubiquiti cat5e 8p8c connectors
4x 16″ section of SuperStrut
8x 1″ OD U Bolts, each with two nuts, plates, washers, and lockwashers
6x 2″ strut-mount pipe clamps
3x 16ga mast
1x Mikrotik SEXTANT G 5HPnD with power adapter
4x RiteAV 10/100/1000 RJ-45 Shielded Surge Protector for Lightning
1x Mikrotik RB260GS Switch
Various zipties, vinyl tape, mastic tape, velcro cable wrap, cat6 1 ft cables

Next Steps
In the coming weeks, we’ll be helping Tri-State with some additional maintenance, fixing the downtilt of the sectors (right now they have too high of a downtilt angle), replacing the PtP link with something higher gain (right now it is severely limited due to trees), installing Flighttracker 24 receiver hardware, converting the WB4KOG-4 APRS digipeater to an igate on the HamWAN network, and adding an exterior network camera.

Additionally, we’d like to return to the site to put all of the equipment on battery backup, install a server, and replace the switch with a router. We’d also like to put a PtP link from SCO to Hilton to get WB4KOG’s D-Star repeater on the network, marking the first HamWAN connected repeater!

Ham breakfast today

Ham breakfast this morning at Danvers.