The Ohio Valley Experimenters Club

Dayton Hamvention 2019 is here folks, and we are back at our same spot in the flea market as years past! Come see us at Booth 9530 IN THE FLEA MARKET! We are straight across from Hertz Hall and the Administration Building!

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!

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

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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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:

It’s that time again folks, for us hams to freeze our modulators off by operating Winter Field Day! This year OVEC has reserved two cabins to be used by club members at Cowan Lake State park, and we are looking forward to the event as always. Good times will be had and one station is to be operated.

Look for us on the bands, we will be operating as KD8LBS. And if you are local or passing through, hit us up on our club repeater AND/OR our DMR talk group for a chat! (Information provided below) read more

Well it looks like OVEC has come up with another crazy idea to give a go, we are going to send some manner of balloon up toward space.

Our illustrious president, NF6H, put together a fine presentation describing the finer points of sending “lighter than air” craft into the earth’s atmosphere at last night’s October 2018 club meeting. With the enthusiastic roars of all those in attendance, it was decided that this project received approval from fellow OVEC members.

Initial planning shows that this balloon will do MANY THINGS, such as recording atmospheric temperatures and pressures, transmit real-time telemetry, take 1080p video and HD picturegraphs of our earth from the edge of space, and possibly even provide a temporary cross-band repeater for those interested in seeing how far one can talk using a 100,000ft high repeater location.

Planning has begun, and initial roles have been taken on by those interested in participating. Please feel free to check out the power point presentation below if you would like to see just how large of a taskt we are planning to accomplish. Failure is not an option…

Balloonacy Powerpoint Presentation