By Jack Roland, CBRE, AMD and CBNT
KLove /Air 1 Denver Engineering.
During the early part of the month we had our western region EMF engineering meeting here at the Denver offices/studios. We had a great lunch meeting on one of the days and Cris W5WCA, Amanda KDØCIC, Ray AAØL, and Greg, WB7AHO joined us and great discussions on the new LTE cell services and interference were discussed, a lot of ham radio topics and more. It was a great time with all of our western region EMF engineers here, some of whom are hams. Then, the next two days after the meetings Jeremy Preece, (also N6JER) hung out with me and we visited our Castle Peak KLRY, and Vail KLove/Air1 sites on Thursday, then he and I had a work visit to KLDV on Friday, went to the local SBE Chapter 48 lunch/meeting on Lookout Mountain, and then a fun visit to HRO here in Denver. Before Jeremy’s flight home to southern CA we spent some time in the KEØVH ham shack! Jeremy worked a station or two on PSK31, and we had a lot of fun. Now, Jeremy is enthused again about ham radio, and we have some possible plans in the works for setting up an EMF Engineering ham net similar to the SBE/IRLP/Echolink hamnet. Keep it here for more to follow on that.
N6JER in the KEØVH shack, operating PSK31 on 14.070 mHz
August 4th is the Colorado 14’er event (http://www.14er.org/) details at: here in Colorado where amateurs will be hiking the 14,000 foot peaks here in Colorado and activating ham radio from the tops and communicating with each other in this yearly event. It was back in August of 2009 when Jim, KCØRPS and myself made the trek up Mount Lincoln, south of Breckenridge and activated that peak. (Read my ARRL article here for that trip: http://www.arrl.org/news/hamming-on-high ) I injured my right ankle during the trip down which made a trip the next year impossible. Then, due to busy-ness and life, I haven’t had the chance to do so again. BUT, this year the mountains are calling, and Jim and I are planning a trip up Quandary Peak, just north of Mt. Lincoln and activating ham radio from there. Jim will be operating mainly 2 meter FM and I will be operating 6m SSB on or about 50.130 mHz from grid square DM69. Last time I had a QRP MFJ-9406 6 meter rig to a dipole inverted V using my painters pole/walking stick as the mast with a UPS battery as the PS. I worked stations back in Tennessee and the southeast with this cool little station. This year I am packing two 7AH UPS batteries to power my Ranger RCI-5054 DX-100 6 meter rig and running it at about 10 watts or so to the same dipole antenna I used back in 2009.
The QSL card Jim and I made for our August 2009 operation from the top of Mount Lincoln. Quandary Peak, our quarry for this year, is visible lower right.
IF you would like to be on my work list for this event that day send me an email with your text number and I will put you on my list to let you know when I am on the air and what frequency I am on.
During Field Day this year, a lot of guys gathered at Kelly, WØKDE’s home during the event and operated. Lots of fun, food and great radio operating took place. Here you see Cliff, NØZUQ hard a work making contacts.
Photo courtesy of WXØPIX
And, beware of what you might find when you open up an air conditioner unit that the site owner hasn’t maintenance in a year.
(Snakes Pic)
These dead snakes and mice were found in the year and a half old AC unit at KLJV/KDAI in Scottsbluff NE. The brown material and other flotsam in the drain pan is exactly what you think. The coils were all frozen up and no wonder it was literally 147 degrees in the transmitter room when Rich, W9BNO and I arrived on the site. This was on July 4th by the way, and the AC people didn’t get to the site until the next. AC is great now with the unit cleaned out. Go figure………
As always don’t forget the SBE IRLP (and Echolink) Hamnet, the first Saturday of the month. Details on how to join are at http://www.qsl.net/ke0vh/sbehamnet. I hope you will be able to join us and share your engineering and ham exploits!
73’, God be with you, & see you next time! KEØVH