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From the Archives 2025...

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January 2025 Membership & Annual Meeting
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Are You Working Amateur Radio Satellites ?

Did You Know That You Already Have What You Need ?

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Frank Karnauskas, N1UW, a long time OVARC member, is Vice President of Development for the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, better known as AMSAT. In just fifteen or twenty minutes, Frank will set your mind at ease in that most everyone at the meeting already has what they need to start making contacts through satellites. Frank will spend some time on basic operating tips and give us a look at what’s ahead in the exciting world of the Amateur Satellite Service.
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Presenter Bio:

Frank- N1UW was first licensed in 1962 with his Novice ticket while in eight-grade. While living in Minnesota, he held various ARRL Section appointments including Section Emergency Coordinator and Affiliated Club Coordinator and was active as a CW traffic handler, net control station and section rep in the National Traffic System (NTS). As VP-Development for AMSAT, Frank is busy with both fund-raising activities as well as building the AMSAT Youth Initiative designed to welcome youth into amateur satellites and communications

February 2025 Membership Meeting
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Are you Operating on VHF or UHF?

This meeting is for you!

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Our February meeting will be a live presentation by Walt - AL7KE.

 

The subject focuses on UHF/VHF operation, including many different operating facets of these frequencies.

 

Walt will discuss cross - band repeaters? What is the cross - band repeater? Come and find out. Why are crossband repeaters so useful in various situations. Walt will also cover the “Reverse Function” on your handheld or mobile radio, and the benefits of this.

 

In addition, Walt will also provide some operating tips for VHF and UHF operation, including repeaters and various simplex operations.

 

Come and tune - up your VHF and UHF skills at our February meeting.

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Presenter Bio

Our presenter is Walt-AL7KE, a long-time member of OVARC. He has been so helpful to the club and to many members that have reached out for some assistance.

March 2025 Membership Meeting
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Easy QRP Portable

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Shel’s “Easy QRP Portable“ presentation will show how easy it is to go QRP portable with a simple, lightweight setup, and achieve great results.  He will describe the various components he’s used and developed for many years, including the rig, antenna, power source, and accessories…and why these were chosen.   Included are lots of pictures showing some wonderful places to enjoy operating while enjoying the outdoors.   It was especially rewarding for the National Parks on the Air event in 2016 where Shel made over 5300 QSOs from many parks.  Shel will also discuss the impetus for forming QRPworks with his business partner Steve KB3SII.

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Presenter Bio

Shel Radin, KF0UR has been licensed since he was a kid in the New York City area in 1965.  Starting with the one-year-non-renewable novice license back then, Shel has an extra class license and has now been on the air for over 60 years.   He enjoys the many facets of our hobby…DX’ing, Ragchewing, and Contesting using a variety of modes...CW, SSB, RTTY, and FT8/FT4.  For the last 16 years, Shel has enjoyed operating HF QRP portable, mostly hiking on the trails of the Rockies near his home in Colorado .

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Over the years, Shel has fine-tuned his portable QRP setup to the extent of developing QRP accessories, and is now the co-owner and software developer for QRPworks LLC., manufacturer of the SideKar and other products for portable operators.  QRPworks products are geared to make operating (and life) in the field easier.  They have been shipped worldwide and are in use from Arizona to Bhutan.

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Shel has a BS in Electrical Engineering and is retired after many years of hardware and software development in the Aerospace, Flight Simulation, Telecom, and the Education fields. He lives in Colorado Springs, CO (at elevation 6850 feet) with his non-ham, but very supportive XYL.

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April 2025 Membership Meeting
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Titanic and its Onboard Telegraph Station

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parks Stephenson, our featured speaker and a life-long Titanic enthusiast, has had a long-standing passion for analyzing shipwrecks for the stories they have to tell. He has had a special fascination with the Marconi marine wireless telegraph station aboard the ill-fated liner.  Parks will present what he knows about Titanic’s Marconi marine wireless telegraph station, some of which is from research but mostly from analysis of the actual remains of the station inside the Titanic wreck. He will show us some original schematics, dive imagery and even a digital reconstruction of the Marconi Room and Silent Cabin.

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Presenter Bio

Parks Stephenson has held a long-standing interest in both history and undersea exploration. He is a 1979 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (with post-graduate degree from Auburn University) and 20-year U.S. Navy veteran, with qualifications in submarines, aviation and amphibious operations. After retirement from his military career, Commander Stephenson pursued a 26-year career as a Systems Engineer in the aerospace industry, working for Hughes Aircraft, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Moog Aircraft and General Atomics. 

His research was presented to James Cameron before his 2001 expedition to the wreck site.  Cameron was able to identify the remains of Titanic’s Marconi transmitting apparatus because of Parks’s information and Parks was able to re-create the layout of the Marconi Silent Cabin based on Cameron’s ROV imagery.  Consequently, Parks became part of Cameron’s team as Technical Advisor.  Parks was a co-author and created computer-generated 3D models for Cameron’s 2013 book documenting his Titanic explorations. He's also been a producer, advisor and on-air talent for over 28 televised documentaries; most notably, he was the History Channel field producer during the 2010 RMST/WHOI expedition to the wreck site. Parks dived on the Titanic wreck in 2005 and 2019, participated as dive advisor and principal historian during the 2006 and 2009 expeditions to the Britannic wreck and acted as lead investigator for the U.S.-Japanese team that found and identified the wreck of the last remaining Japanese midget submarine that participated in the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.  In 2021 and 2022, Parks developed the search plan that found the deepest-ever wrecks: USS Johnston and USS Samuel B. Roberts, both lost during the 1944 Battle off Samar.  Parks is the only person ever to have dived in all 3 of the following deep-submergence vehicles: IO RAS Mir 1; HURL Pisces V; Caladan Oceanic’s Full Ocean Depth submersible, DSV Limiting Factor.

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