2020 Winter Field Day

It seems like it was just yesterday that we did this whole “Winter Field Day” thing, but in reality it’s been 365 days. With the combined gusto of everyone, and it was a great turnout, the OVEC crew has once again succeeded at “ham radioing” in a group setting.

We started coming out to the lake about 4 years ago after coming to the conclusion that we wanted our WFD OPS to not only be a ham radio operating event, but a club member social operation as well. It’s always been fun, and this year was no different. read more

OHIO STATE PARKS ON THE AIR 2019

Here we go again, it’s been another year and time for the 2019 Ohio State Parks On The Air (OSPOTA) operating event to grace us once again!

In the past, OVEC has activated Buckeye Lake State Park just east of Columbus Ohio. This year however, we have decided to make things a bit more interesting!

For 2019, OVEC will be activating Kellys Island State Park which is located up in Lake Erie north of Port Clinton Ohio. Everyone is excited to take on the challenge of doing something new, and enjoying the time to be spent with friends and family!
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2019 ARRL Field Day

Well that time of the year is just around the corner once again, time to do what we created this club to do. The 2019 ARRL Field Day is going to kick off next weekend on 6/22 and 6/23, in the same great spot as last year.

If you are looking for a bit of a different club experience, you may consider visiting us! We are a great group of folks in the 20-50 year old range, who value having a good time while operating radio. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect to work, to us it’s more about having fun with good people, operating radio, and eating good food on Saturday night. Look us up! read more

Moving Pictures?! Blasphemy! It’l never catch on..

Well as previously reported, the 2019 OVEC Winter Field Day Festivities went well, and everyone had a fine time. Thanks to the aerial videos courtesy of KD8FYT and his DJI Spark, and all of the other footage supplied by KF7IJZ, Jeremy (KF7IJZ) was able to put together a very fine montage of our experiences.

Check back later when we should have another longer video put together to show off the event!

WFD2019, No Deaths Reported

N8BD, KD8RAP, K8HUB, KD8GQW, KD8FYT, KF7IJZ (Not necessarily in that order…)

And just like that the 2019 Winter Field Day event has come to a close. Hams all over the country (and perhaps world) have started thawing out from their operating stations, finished eating their sandwiches, and commenced the long trek back to their respective QTH’s and personal bathrooms.

This year the OVEC group decided to hold their event in two cabins out at Cowan Lake State Park, located near Wilmington Ohio, and it was a great success. With sleeping accommodations that were more in line with a 4 star hotel room than what the mind thinks of when you say “cabin”, everyone involved came away from the event feeling spoiled. read more

Fast Radio Bursts and OVEC

So what is the deal with these fast radio bursts, or “FRBs” from space? It’s been reported that a repeating source of these signals has been discovered and identified by the CHIME observatory located at the University of British Columbia. (BBC Story Here) So what does that mean to the Ohio Valley Experimenters Club?

Well to be perfectly honest, aside from being a pretty neat story, it doesn’t mean a whole lot to us unless they can speak PSK31, CW, RTTY, or DMR (even though that’s “not really ham radio” so I hear..). And although it would be pretty great to have one of our members make contact with the source of these radio signals for the first time, I have a feeling that the people of earth could probably find another more suitable resident smart person to ask the good questions. And lets just be brutally honest here, would we REALLY want our first contact with extra-terrestrials to be made by a ham radio operator? Although imagine the irony if the first contact was between a local ham here on earth, and some random alien-ham doing his/her thing on their planet. What do you think they would discuss? Because I’m fairly certain it would go something like this:

Earth Ham – “The weather here is pretty nice. We had rain yesterday, but it has since cleared up. I was able to pick up my medication from the Walmarts yesterday between rain storms which is good, but the XYL was pretty unhappy that I couldn’t get those gutters cleaned. Back to you Alien Ham”
Alien Ham – “Yeah its been pretty nice here too. But it rained acid for a bit, which hurt. My XYL was also unhappy I couldn’t clean the florp from my florpkens, but I’ll just have to do that another day.. 73 Earth Ham, and keep doing that hammy thing you do…”
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January 2019 Club Meeting

Tonight OVEC held it’s first club meeting to kick off 2019, and the hot topic at this month’s meeting was Winter Field Day planning!

Some of the topics covered include:

  • 1 Station to be operated
  • Multiple antennas to be used
  • The club repeater will be monitored
  • Will use N3FJP logger or KC8QCH’s custom made logger
  • KD8GQW will bring “THE SANDWICH”
  • There will be coffee
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