WARA 2024 Holiday Party
WARA held its holiday party at The Great Wall Restaurant in Bedford, MA for the second time on December 11, 2024, 6:00 – 8:00 PM. Good food, good company!
Repeater Updates: ’64 EchoLink & 900 MHz P25
The WARA 146.64 MHz repeater now has a connection to EchoLink directly at the repeater site. Roger WA1NVC set up the new equipment, and installed it on December 10 with help from Tom KA1GXR and Eliot W1MJ. The procedure for making EchoLink connections from a radio using DTMF tones has changed – see About / Repeaters.
The 927.1375 MHz repeater now supports P25 digital voice as well as FM. See About / Repeaters.
Roger WA1NVC prepared the equipment for these updates, and installed it over two December site visits with help from Tom KA1GXR and Eliot W1MJ.
November 27, 2024 Meeting
We continue to meet via Zoom.
Zoom Meeting Info
Time: October 30, 2024 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2695622043?pwd=WEJwSkhYYWtyZndjbitJQXFFNWY4dz09&omn=86745545466
Meeting ID: 269 562 2043
Passcode: 362611
One tap mobile:
+13126266799,,2695622043#,,,,*362611# US (Chicago)
+16469313860,,2695622043#,,,,*362611# US
January 31, 2024 Meeting on HF Mobile
At the January 2024 WARA meeting, guest speaker Fred Kemmerer, AB1OC, did a wonderful presentation on HF Mobile. Fred’s slide show is available here; it includes links to some excellent online resources for this aspect of ham radio.
Holiday Meet-Up 2023
The Waltham Amateur Radio Association held a Holiday Meetup on December 13. It was our first since 2019, and was also our first at Great Wall Restaurant in Bedford. Our old venue, Sichuan’s Garden in Waltham has closed.
It was nice seeing people in person that we normally only talk to over the club repeaters. In addition to nice food and conversation, we also had a raffle.
Report on Field Day 2023
For this year’s ARRL Field Day in June, the Waltham ARA partnered with the Montachusett ARA (MARA). We operated from the summit of Mt. Wachusett in Princeton, MA in Class 3A (3 transmitters, in the field on emergency power). We also operated a “Get on the Air” (GOTA) station for new hams, future hams, and Technician class operators. Over 1,000 contacts were made with other FD participants around the country, and in a few other counties, including an FT8 digital contact with New Zealand.
Though off the grid, the CW and Digital stations shared a single log file using N1MM Logger+ and an on-site wifi network. The columns in the log excerpt below are: Time, Call, Frequency, Mode, Class, Section. For example, the first contact shown was on FT8 on the 15-meter band with KF0X in Arizona:
The Waltham ARA Repeater Site in Prospect Hill Park
Great picture of the repeater site – from Mt. Wachusett!
While at Boxboro a fellow HAM W1AWX introduced himself and showed me this great pic of WARA’s site taken from almost 40 miles away! Thanks Arthur! -Ron / KG1T
