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If you would like to help plan and organize WARA Field Day 2021 please sign up here:

https://forms.gle/ZfGAkDYsYDGR2fmw7

We will be organizing planning meetings as well as as site tour via this list.

BEST and 73

Ron / KG1T

Please join us in welcoming Bruce Blain K1BG to discuss the free CW Academy program offered by CWops.org. https://cwops.org/cw-academy/

Non-members are welcome to attend. Please fill out this Event Notification form to be notified of upcoming presentations and to receive the meeting call invitation details.

Wednesday, March 31st @ 7:00 PM

Location: Amazon Chime https://aws.amazon.com/chime/download/

Meeting dial in details will be sent to club membership and those registered with the event notification form.

The February 2021 meeting’s presentation on Dire Wolf APRS software from WB2OSZ is now available for viewing. Thanks John Wb2OSZ!

Links:

About Dire Wolf: https://packet-radio.net/direwolf/
WB2OSZ’s Github: https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf
Building an iGate: https://ww8tf.club/building-an-aprs-igate/

Please join the Waltham Amateur Radio Association in welcoming John Langner WB2OSZ for a presentation on Dire Wolf, APRS Software. John is one of the main developers of Dire Wolf so we are lucky for this opportunity!

If you are not a WARA member and would like to be invited to the presentation, please fill out this form and we will email you an invite before the presentation starts. SIGN UP HERE

Agenda: 
Pre-Net: 6:00-7:00 PM 
Club Business: 7:00-7:20
Presentation: 7:20 – 8:30

In the early days of Amateur Packet Radio and APRS, it was necessary to use an expensive “Terminal Node Controller” (TNC) with specialized hardware. Those days are gone. You can now get better results, at lower cost, by connecting your radio to the “soundcard” interface of a computer and using software in place of the traditional TNC.

Dire Wolf is a software “soundcard” AX.25 packet modem/TNC and APRS encoder/decoder. It can be used stand-alone to observe APRS traffic, as a tracker, digipeater, APRStt gateway, or Internet Gateway (IGate)

We are starting this disussion on APRS as the club has identified a goal of improving our APRS installation. This will further leverage our existing investment in full time high speed internet access. The club’s current APRS setup is a digipeater with a traditional TNC. We are in a great location and can serve the APRS community well to add in iGate functionality.

Some links to look at before the meeting if interested:
About Dire Wolf: https://packet-radio.net/direwolf/
WB2OSZ’s Github: https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf
Building an iGate: https://ww8tf.club/building-an-aprs-igate/

See Chime info below. For best experience use a computer and install the client. Dial in to the pre-net to check it out!

Hope to see you soon! BEST 73 DE KG1T

Ron Senykoff
President – Waltham Amateur Radio Association
https://walthamara.org/

Note: WARA uses Amazon Chime for online meetings. It will work with just Firefox or Chrome, but you may want to consider downloading the client to avoid issues. Also consider signing in for the “pre-net” where we start an hour early to test your A/V setup.

https://aws.amazon.com/chime/download/

If you are not a WARA member, but would like to be notified of our meetings and receive the dial-in info, you can now SIGN UP HERE. We send 1-2 emails per month and only use it for critical announcements. We will not share your email address.

The December 2020 meeting would have fallen during Christmas week, so it was shifted a week earlier. Here is a screen shot from meeting.

The October 28th meeting’s presentation is now available on YouTube.

Greg Algieri WA1JXR is the presenter. The presentation is an Introduction of Principals, Techniques, and How to Use the popular MFJ 259B Antenna Analyzer and the SDR-Kits Vector Network Analyzer. How they Work, What is inside Under the Hood, and what are some of the things you can do with them.

Note: The recording missed the first part of the discussion on the 258B. However a lot of techniques discussed with the SDR-Kits apply regardless of analyzer brand.

When: Wednesday October 28th @ 7:00 PM

This month we welcome Greg Algieri WA1JXR who will be presenting. The presentation will be an Introduction of Principals, Techniques, and How to Use the popular MFJ 259B Antenna Analyzer and the SDR-Kits Vector Network Analyzer. We will show How they Work, What is inside Under the Hood, and what are some of the things you can do with them.

If you are not a WARA member and would like to be invited to the presentation, please fill out this form and we will email you an invite before the presentation starts.

Sign up here ——> https://forms.gle/vpVMJdso6NNLdqBf8 <—–

Note: WARA uses Amazon Chime for online meetings. It will work with just Firefox or Chrome, but you may want to consider downloading the client to avoid issues. Also consider signing in for the “pre-net” where we start an hour early to test your A/V setup.

https://aws.amazon.com/chime/download/

Hi Waltham ARA members. I recently sent out WARA membership renewal emails, and my mail provider, Yahoo, bounced most of those messages. Apparently, Yahoo now has severe restrictions on “bulk mail” – I was only sending 39 emails. Fortunately, I had better luck by emailing via the club’s web hosting company, DreamHost, who by the way is kindly giving us free service! Unfortunately, I know of at least one club member who didn’t see the email until he looked in his Gmail Spam folder. So …

If you are a WARA member, please look in your Spam folder for email coming from membership@walthamara.org. These emails were sent on Monday, August 17, just after 8:00 PM. And please add this address to your Email Contacts, or otherwise tell your email provider that you trust me.

Thanks,

Eliot
W1MJ