This weekend I attended the CARA (Catalina Amateur Radio Association) picnic at Heritage Park in Irvine. I was able to finally put some faces to the call signs. Bandit (my dog) and I enjoyed the picnic and conversations with many of the CARA members. Thank you CARA for putting together such an enjoyable event!
Monthly Archives: September 2008
VHF rig installed at home
Despite the best efforts of my Wifey and dog, my house has been too quiet lately. In what way, you ask? Repeater ID’s sounding off, squelch sounds, interesting conversations, etc. Something must be done!
To remedy the situation, I ordered my second antenna from ArrowAntennas.com and pulled out an old Radio Shack HTX-212 VHF radio. After spelunking in my attic for a few minutes, the J-Pole was secured. The only thing left to accomplish was running the coax to my home-office. Well, I didn’t want to spend more time in my stuffy attic so I simply dropped the coax through the ceiling hatch, into the laundry room and through the kitchen. Just a temporary solution, of course (I promise honey). The SWR was charted in 500 kHz intervals from 144 to 148. The highest reading was 1.25 at 148mHz. The average was about 1.1 across the 2 meter band.
After an hour of SWR charting, repeater programming and a few radio checks, I was good to go. Here is a list of repeaters that I can reach without difficulty: