CMSARA

Central Mississippi Amateur Radio Association

Archives for January 2019

Impromptu Workshop building fox hunt antennas.

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Ok, y’all. I’m going to host a workshop for anyone interested in building a fox hunt antenna. We’re going to do it out of my garage this coming Saturday, Feb 2 (groundhog day) from 10am till about 2pm. I should have all the tools necessary including a solder iron. You supply your materials.

If you’re interested, email me at
CentralMSARA@gmail.com or direct message me on Facebook, and I’ll give you the address.

I’m going to use the following plans…

Build it: 2 meter Tape Measure Yagi Beam Antenna

He’s got an attached youtube video on his build. Looks to be an effective and easy one to make.

His follow-up video is below.

The follow up to the plans I’m following

Eugene Wallace (N5CMA) did a fantastic amount of research and found some addittional plans for y’all to choose from! One of which, I think he’s planning on building. Thanks Eugene!

So, feel free to join me this Saturday in my garage for a few hours to tinker with hand-held directional antennas.

2019 Capital City Hamfest

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What a great turn-out this year! There seemed to be quite a few more attendees this go-round. Maybe it’s because I actually knew some people this year!

CMSARA signed up 9 new members this weekend, and one of them, Kathleen Kable (K5KKD), was the winner of the Baofeng give-away! Congratulations Kathleen, and a warm welcome to all new members!

Eugene Wallace (N5CMA) grew a possum tree especially for the event and placed his coffee-can 2M antenna at the top of it. We were all quite surprised how well that antenna did inside the near faraday cage that we were sitting in.
I tried using my magnetic loop and go-box inside to hit the 40M band. Alas, no luck there. Coffee can wins on 2 meters.

Our booth-neighbors were the Vicksburg Amateur Radio Club folks, and it was great spending time chatting with them. What a great bunch they are! I, for one, can’t wait for field day with them this year.

Many thanks to all who came out and made this a very fun and successful hamfest for CMSARA!

January 2019 Meeting

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Welcome back! We hope you had a fantastic holiday season. This month, we had a great presentation by Frank Howell K4FMH on RF Propagation: Ionization and Prediction. He scratched the surface on a complex and deep subject in a way that made me feel like a genius… until I got home and tried to contact Europe forgetting I had lowered my antenna earlier that week. Apparently, even a guy as smart as Frank can’t help my particular “RF” issues… You can find his slide presentation following and I highly recommend giving it a look through.

Some of the folks from the Vicksburg Amateur Radio Club came to invite us to their Field Day set up this year. It promises to be a great weekend with an even greater group of folks, and we can’t thank the VARC enough for the invite!

We have the Capital City Hamfest coming up on the 25th. CMSARA will have a booth there and could use some members to come man it. So, if you have the time, we’ll have a chair for you!

Or, just come anyway and say hello, the Hamfest is always an interesting event for hams each year.