Club News

As a result of the retirement of Dave – K6HWN, I recently volunteered to take on the Wednesday night Swap Net duties.  The Swap Net comes on every Wednesday night at 8:00 pm after the Club Net. Then Hayden – KK6OYV, expressed an interest in helping with the nets, so now I share this responsibility with him.  We trade off every other week.  I get to the 146.79 K6TZ repeater using the remote link through the 224.08 repeater on La Cumbre peak. My only 1.25 meter radio is a 5 watt HT from Wouxon, model KG-UVD1P.  Ok, so why this article?

If you were listening to my net control debut last November 25, 2015 you would have heard a very well prepared novice net control operator.  For about 20 minutes.  Unlike most other nets, the Swap Net is a net that has the control operator reading for 30 minutes, with occasional breaks for other traffic.  That means I was asking my little hand held to do the job of a base station with all its heat sinks and fans and the like.  It did not like that one bit and expressed its displeasure by shutting down due to overheating.  I was frantic trying to figure out what to do.  To those listening, I just went silent in mid sentence.

So, I had a choice.  I could go out and buy another mobile radio that covers 1.25 meters for about $150 to $250 or figure out a way to cool my little HT.  Since I’m trying to scrape up the money for a decent antenna analyzer, I decided to try to stretch my radio’s capacity for handling excess heat.

I had a “battery saver” device from Wouxun that allows me to plug the radio into a cigarette lighter socket.  It was already becoming unusable because overheating caused warping of the plastic that supports the contacts.  This device supplies 12 volts to a circuit that converts 12 volts to 8 volts as well as conditioning to protect the radio.  Computer CPU fans use 12 volts DC to run them.  When I remove the battery from the radio there is a big magnesium body with two power connectors and several labels.  So, I thought a big heat sink and fan stuck on the back might do the job.  So, off to the local computer repair store to look for parts.

CompuWest on Hollister, near Turnpike in Goleta has a lot of older computer repair parts and the guys that run it are really helpful.  Turns out that a standard CPU fan with heat sink for the old Pentium processor fit just right in the back of my radio with just a little play side to side.  I carved up the “battery saver” and used everything except the case, which is now a pile of plastic chips.  I plucked the 12 volts from the cigarette lighter cable and provided a little connector to the fan.  I then soldered up two alligator clips, with insulating booties, to supply the 8 volts to the radio.

I removed the labels from the back of the radio and cleaned the bare metal with acetone.  I then applied a good amount of thermal grease to the area where the heat sink will interface with the radio.  Clamped it all together with tie wraps and electrical tape.  The photos below are the result.  I tested it on the Digital Modes net on Tuesday night to see if the fan acoustic noise was too loud or if electrical noise was getting into my signal.  All reports were that I sound OK, and the fan acoustic noise is barely a whisper.  The real test will be tonight when I run the swap net and hold down the transmit button for 30 minutes.  These modifications can be completely undone in minutes to return the radio to standard use.  The main issue will be cleaning the thermal grease out.  Not too bad on flat surfaces.

I’ll update this after the swap net tonight.  Wish me luck!  Jim – N6SXB

Update:  Worked like a champ!  Did the entire net using 5 watts and the radio barely got warm. Jim – N6SXB

Photo 1

Photo 2

Dave’s parting display

Our official “Shackmaster” Dave K6HWN peddled off into the sunset (or sunrise) on November 30th at 0800 hours. Dave managed the club station and hosted numerous daily and weekly nets for over eight years. He put a tremendous amount of work into turning the club station into a functioning radio room and making sure it was always open at scheduled times. Over the years he welcomed dozens of new amateurs and club members with his trademark friendliness and willingness to help others. Dave takes his rightful place in the annals of the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club as one of the most dependable and dedicated members we’ve ever had the experience of associating with.

Dave left some final comments for SBARC members here. However, we’re hoping that we may not have heard the last of him.

The audio from Dave’s final morning net can be heard by listening to the embedded audio link below.

Post expires at 1:00am on Tuesday December 15th, 2015 but will still be available in the archives.

SBARC Board for 2016, left to right – Frank Dambach K6FLD – Director, Dorothy Oksner K6DSO – Secretary, Tom Saunders N6YX Treasurer and CFO, Brian Milburn K6BPM – President and CEO, Jay Hennigan WB6RDV – Director, Levi Maaia K6LCM – Director, and Theo Howe KK6YYZ
– Director

Annual elections were held at the well attended club meeting on November 20th, 2015 to elect the SBARC Board of Directors for 2016. As there were no nominations from the floor, Darryl KF6DI made a motion that the club accept the proposed slate. The motion was seconded by Dave K9KBX, and carried after majority approval by the members present. The newly elected officers and directors are Brian Milburn K6BPM President and CEO, Tom Saunders N6YX Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Dorothy Oksner K6DSO Secretary, and Directors at Large Theo Howe KK6YYZ, Levi Maaia K6LCM, Frank Dambach K6FLD, and Jay Hennigan WB6RDV. The new board will continue to move SBARC forward with new faces, new ideas, and new enthusiasm. We look forward to 2016 being another year of progress for amateur radio in Santa Barbara.

Post expires at 6:47am on Tuesday January 5th, 2016 but will still be available in the archives.

Over the past few months, Bill (W1UUQ) and Levi (K6LCM) have been working on a system to receive position information from aircraft flying over Southern California and the Central Coast using the Federal Aviation Administration’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS–B) system. Similar to the APRS and AIS protocols which allow for the tracking of mobile amateur stations and ships at seas respectively (both also supported by SBARC sites) , ADS-B is part of the FAA’s NextGen plan to more accurately track aircraft in busy airspace and provide better cockpit situational awareness for pilots. ADS-B position reports are sent unencrypted by many commercial aircraft and by some private aircraft.  The FAA has issued a mandate for all aircraft flying in the vicinity of medium and large traffic volume airports to carry ADS-B equipment by 2020.

Using a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, a USB software defined radio (SDR) dongle and open source software designed to receive ADS-B data signals broadcast on 1090 MHz, the SBARC ADS-B receiver is receiving position data from the SBARC site at Santa Ynez peak. From the mountain, the data is sent via microwave to the club’s La Vigia repeater site on the Santa Barbara Mesa. From this prime location at about 4,300 feet above sea level, the receiver directly detects nearly 1,500 individual aircraft per day flying in airspace from Fresno to Mexico. This is such an incredible reception location it was not a surprise to learn that the official FAA ADS-B site for transmission and reception of ADS-B signals for air traffic control is also located atop Santa Ynez Peak.

SBARC is feeding ADS-B data to Flight Aware and adsbexchange.com.  Both sites make data received by many worldwide receivers available to the general public, however adsbexchange.com provides live data access, while Flight Aware delays position reports by several minutes.

Go to adsbexchange.com and then from there click the icon that looks like this to launch the map:

The first time you view the map you may have to scroll to find Santa Barbara. This should not be necessary on subsequent visits from the same computer and browser. Note that you are seeing aggregated data from the SBARC receiver site as well as many other sites around the world.