Come join us at our annual Fullerton Radio Club Holiday Dinner.

Festivities start at 6 p.m. at the Black Bear Diner.

Tom Gaccione (not pictured) will be our speaker this month. He will be talking about the recently installed Wildfire alerting system, how it works, and how we will use it to guide fire response and simulate/ plan for future firefighting. He’ll then diverge slightly and talk about wildlife in the Big Bear area and, as it’s all tied together, an update on some renewable energy systems.

The program for the regular meeting this month will be a DVD titled, Big. Fast. Deadly. Titan II.

This documentary describes the Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile and its underground launch complex. There is a tour of one complex in Arizona now a museum and a focus on the electronic controls and communications capability therein. One interesting aspect described is a completely underground antenna system. Above ground security and intruder detection and how these systems reacted to desert wildlife are described. This Titan II museum is active today and available for visitors to tour.

This month, Walter Clark will talk about his website that illustrates the 28 miles of trails in Fullerton. There’s history involved as well as descriptions that should inspire you to walk these trails. If you now walk the trails, you have probably gotten in the habit of always walking the same trails. This website and the short examples in the slide show, will inspire you to try out some of the other trails that Fullerton offers. That’s the generic part. Since this talk is targeted for hams, it will be customized for FRC by showing photographs of antennas that occupy the high places in Fullerton and other things of interest to the engineering type.

Field Day 2019 is over. Join us this month for a discussion about our recent Field Day activity at Hillcrest Park. Let’s talk about what we did right and what we might want to change for next year. If you participated in Field Day, come share your perspective. If you missed the event come and find out how you can contribute next year.

Joe Moell K0OV is back again this month, with the second half of his field day extravaganza:

This month’s program is “So You Think You Know Field Day!” by Joe Moell K0OV. It’s your chance to brush up on the FD rules and hear about our plans to have the best Field Day ever at the Izaac Walton Cabin at Hillcrest Park. After attending this meeting, you will be ready to sit down at a FD station and operate or log like a pro. If there’s time, you might see some bloopers from FRC Field Days of the past.

Joe Moell K0OV has participated in ARRL Field Day almost every year since he was a Novice in 1958.  Follow Joe and his friends in this multi-media presentation as they operate from an airport, an AM radio station, a WPA camp, hospitals, and a dam site.  See and hear it at the next Fullerton Radio Club meeting on Wednesday, May 15, 2019 and then make your plans to participate in the club’s Field Day operation in June.

Between Amateur Radio Direction Finding (ARDF), QRP CW, 40 meter SSB, food, and good company, this year’s Antennas in the Park was a lot of fun. We had over 40 people attend, including some folks we had not met before (but hope to see again). Here are a few pictures.

Every spring, hams in north Orange County organize an outdoor day where they operate radios, find hidden transmitters and eat lots of good food.  The annual “Antennas In The Park” (AITP) event is organized by the Fullerton Radio Club.  This year, AITP will take place at Hillcrest Park in Fullerton on Saturday, May 4.

The AITP foxhunt is in celebration of the twenty-first annual CQ Worldwide Foxhunting Weekend.  All ages are welcome, so bring the family.  AITP transmitter hunts are simple and informal.  They are suitable for beginners, but more advanced hunters can treat them as a “sprint.”  There will be no charge for participation in the hunts, which will begin around 10:30 AM and continue until 2 PM.  Be sure to bring your two-meter handi-talkie and know how to program it to any frequency in the two-meter band.

If you don’t have the antenna/attenuator system for on-foot foxhunting on two meters with your ham radio handi-talkie or scanner, a limited amount of equipment will be available for loan.  Better yet, you can easily make your own during this session.  Beginning at 10 AM, Marvin Johnston KE6HTS will conduct a clinic for building his kits for measuring-tape yagis and for 90 dB offset-type attenuators.  An assembled/tested attenuator in a special housing that goes inside the boom of the yagi is also available.  If you want one or more kits, please register in advance by sending e-mail to marvin@west.net, so he will have the kits reserved in your name waiting for you.

It takes about an hour to put the antenna and attenuator kits together with tools and soldering irons that will be provided.  If you’re not an electronic technician, don’t worry because there will be plenty of experts to help you.  Then with your HT and the kitbuilt equipment, you will be all set to hunt.

In addition to the two-meter band, international ARDF championships also include an 80-meter band event.  At least one optional 80m transmitter will be on the air for you to try.

Besides the transmitter hunts, Fullerton Radio Club members are expected to have at least one HF station on the air and to fly some radio-controlled aircraft.  There will be a barbecue at lunchtime with burgers, hot dogs and soft drinks.  A $5 donation per person is requested if you want to take part in the barbecue.  The traditional Worldwide Foxhunting Weekend cake will be served to participants in the transmitter hunts.  A few canopies and tables will be set up, but for eating and sitting around, please bring your own lawn chair.

Hillcrest Park in Fullerton is bounded on the west by Harbor Boulevard, on the north by Brea Boulevard, on the east by Lemon Street and on the south by Valley View Drive.  From the 91 Freeway, take the Harbor Boulevard exit and go north about 1.8 miles to Valley View Drive.

We will gather at the Izaak Walton Cabin in the southwest area of the park.  You can park in the lot north of Valley View, midway between Harbor and Lemon.  Look for the orange and white orienteering flag at the entrance to the parking lot.  Walk north through the playground into the lower picnic area and then west up the hill to the cabin.  You can also drive the one way road through the park and park in the lot north or the cabin or along the road northeast of the cabin.  Talk-in is on K6QEH/R, 146.97(-) PL 136.5.

73,
Joe Moell K0OV – ARRL ARDF Coordinator – http://homingin.com/index.html

At last month’s meeting, we watched the first half of a two-hour documentary by Ken Burns, titled Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio. For this Wednesday’s meeting, we will watch the second half.

This is a wonderful Ken Burns documentary about the history of radio. Based on the 1991 book of the same title, by Tom Lewis.

“For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry, and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth, RCA.”

For the March FRC meeting, we are trying something different. We will show the first half of a two-hour documentary by Ken Burns, titled Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio.

This is a wonderful Ken Burns documentary about the history of radio. Based on the 1991 book of the same title, by Tom Lewis.

“For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry, and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth, RCA.”

Wednesday March 20 – next Fullerton Radio Club General meeting

Saturday April 27 – Donate Life Walk/Run – Radio Communications Support – CSUF

Saturday May 4 – Antennas in the Park – Hillcrest Park, Fullerton (pending cabin reservation)

Saturday and Sunday June 22-23 – Field Day – Hillcrest Park, Fullerton (pending cabin reservation)

We had a good turnout for the November FRC General Meeting. After the members elected the 2019 Board, Rich Belansky gave an interesting talk on the theme of  “Radio Science.”

Rich talked about his interest in the aspects of radio that lend themselves to collecting data. He touched on propagation, including its measurement using WSPRnet, showed us a study he did of WWV 10 MHz signal strength as a function of time-of-day, and gave us an overview of how Software Defined Radio works.

Eight of us met for a pre-meeting dinner at the Black Bear Diner.

At the October FRC meeting, member Tom Fiske told a little-known story about a friend of his who played an important role in both the US and Soviet space programs. For the full story, read his book  The Insider.