The final test session of the year will be held this Saturday, November 8 at 10:00 AM EST.

The source of the broadband QRM that has been plaguing the radio room has finally been identified.

If you’ve recently tried to score a QSO for the club on the 20 through 6 meter bands, you may have heard a modulated 4KHz-wide digital signal on both the Kenwood and Icom rigs. This was finally traced to the network cabling running next to the electrical conduits in the radio room. Unfortunately, the strongest signal is coming from the PC on the MARS shelf, which cannot be disconnected.

Any club members with access to shielded Category 5e cabling are encouraged to donate approximately 25 feet to help eliminate the interference.

We are proud to announce the (re-)launch of our EchoLink node! Formerly known (some years ago) as KD4NED-R (located at his QTH), it is now back on-line as W4GZX-R and located at the clubhouse on our microwave Internet link. We are currently running the same equipment from the old node other than a new computer with Windows XP which should alleviate some of the lag issues we used to have.

The node number is 930937. It is currently tuned to the 146.924MHz repeater. Feel free to connect up and try it out!

Due to the numerous power outages we have been seeing here in Cleveland, it was off-line for a couple days this past week. Turns out the EchoLink machine wasn’t set to power back on after a power outage. This has been resolved, so power outages should only result in a reboot once the generator kicks on.

All of the standard EchoLink commands work on-air. As the 146.925 machine doesn’t have any DTMF muting there are no special procedures for getting your tones to pass through to the node.

Don’t forget our next club meeting coming up Tuesday, January 14th! This will be our first meeting of the year with our new officers. Meeting begins at 7PM as usual. See you all there!