"when you pass the test you have just begun the journey"

HamBone College Announces the Final Word on the Upcoming Technician Class Teaching Session

by Frank N. Haas, KB4T  Instructor

Thank you to John K4TUG for organizing the meeting of Tech Class instructors and support staff Saturday from 1100 to 1230 at Riverside Vets Memorial Park in South Daytona. Thank you to everyone of you who have volunteered to help teach the next Tech Class and support it with Demos. Here are the results of the meeting.

Present were:

John K4TUG

Art WB4MNK

George WB4DVP

Joe K2SAN

Jose AJ4BN

Bob WA4IDI

Jeff KG4DHZ

Frank KB4T

Jayson KI4ZAG

Concerns from previous classes were:

1. Getting students on the air more often during the training.

2. Convincing students that they are welcome on area nets & freqs.

Next we discussed how we are and could be promoting ham radio classes. Efforts will be made to get the word out better and exploit area media. Jose AJ4BN will help with this.

Frank KB4T will email the syllabus used for recent tech classes to everyone who attended.

TEACHING SCHEDULE

Week 1

April 26th -- Welcome students, Describe the process, Safety Briefing KB4T will teach Chapter 1 (Welcome to Amateur Radio) and introduce Chapter 2 (Radio & Electronic Fundamentals)

Demo: Intro to the Handheld VHF/UHF Radio - Every student holds & talks on a handheld radio (to someone outside the building on simplex.)

Week 2

May 3rd

K2SAN and WB4DVP will team up to teach portions of Chapter 2. (They will advise KB4T which portions and KB4T will do the remainder.) This is the Radio & Electronic Fundamentals chapter

Demo: Intermediate Handheld VHF/UHF Radio Operation. Every student practices setting a frequency & offset and tone on a handheld radio and storing a memory. QSOs if time permits.

Week 3

May 10

K2SAN & WB4DVP & KB4T complete presentation of Chapter 2

Demo: Advanced Handheld VHF/UHF Radio Operations: Repeaters. Practice previous control use. Every student has a QSO with someone on a repeater.

Week 4

May 17 (KB4T & AJ4BN will be away at Dayton Hamvention) WB4MNK will teach Chapter 5 (Licensing Regulations)

Demo: Intro to VHF/UHF Mobile Radios. Use of basic controls. Every student has QSO with someone outside the building on simplex.

Week 5

May 24

K2SAN will present Chapter 4 (Communicating with other Hams)

Demo: Intermediate VHF/UHF Mobile Radio Operations. Students practice setting a frequency, offset & tone and storing the info to a memory.

QSOs if time permits.

Week 6

May 31

KB4T will teach Chapter 3 (Operating Station Equipment)

Demo: Advanced VHF/UHF Mobile Radio Operations. Practice previous control operations. QSOs on area repeaters.

Week 7

June 7

AJ4BN will teach Chapter 6 (Operating Regulations)

Demo: Choosing antennas for handheld, mobile, portable and base VHF/UHF operations. Repeater Review. Net Review. Repeat after me, "EVERYONE IS WELCOME!"

Week 8

June 14 -- Last Teaching Day

WB4DVP will teach Chapter 7 (Radio Safety) Review & Test Prep No Demo. Time used for Review.

June 21

Test Session. K4TUG will arrange with Paul AB4PM to conduct a test session at the Halifax Marina Boater's Lounge.

Please send me your additions, corrections, adjustments, comments, ideas, anything else on your mind in connection with the class.

73,

Frank KB4T

Posted on 04.06.2008

Hambone College Advanced technical session 3-2-08
by Bill Schwartz, WS1C

Since I am lazy I combined two groups. George & Leah Bowan with Belinda Hoyt wanted to know how to operate their brand new AIM 4170 antenna analyzer. Lee and Laura Walker wanted to test their new "tape measure" hunt antenna, and Jim Needham wanted to watch.

We went over the various functions of the analyzer by turning off most functions, starting with a termination, looking at R, then X, then adding Theta (phase of X). After looking at these we combined them into Z or impedance. Now that we could read all of the above terms like VSWR, reflection coefficient and return loss started to make sense.

Now that the colored lines had some meaning we looked at various terminations, and found some were not great at VHF. One of the better terminations is a 20 db attenuator pad that can reach 40 dB return loss.

We went on to examine some "rubber ducky's" finding most were not really great due to the compromise in size. We checked the Walkers "tape measure" and found it very good at the high half of 2 meters. I think Lee must have already tuned it. We also looked at some of my antennas including a couple way out on the dock without calibrating the feed line on the "Bowan" box.

That led to the line calibration feature, so we calibrated a short line and looked at a "duck" without considering line and then moved the plane of reference to the end of the line. We then looked at a roll of RG/58 type wire and calibrated it. We then demonstrated line loss makes load look better than it is, and it is even possible to find a pretty good match at certain frequencies with an open or short at the end of the line.

We also looked at resistors and discovered leads become significant at HF and VHF and discovered coils can be capacitive above self resonance and capacitors can become inductive above self resonance. We also discovered L and C appear to vary with frequency due to stray circuit elements.

I believe all learned a lot and I know I had a lot of fun. We just scratched the surface on antenna measurements, maybe we will do some more hambone advanced concept classes if desired.

Basic Oscilloscope use, Spectrum analyzer operation, more antenna concepts come to mind quickly. Another area might be homebrew practices.

73 WS1C
 

03.03.2008