Jaylene KN4KXK, a graduate of both our Technician and General Class courses in 2018, attended the Richmond Frostfest as her very first hamfest, and ended up winning the grand prize drawing.  She received a huge “Frostfest Bucks” award and turned right around and used her credit to outfit her HF station along with a VHF/UHF mobile transceiver and antenna.  Jaylene built her Off-Center-Fed Dipole at the club’s recent Antenna Buildathon and with her new radio should be working the world soon.  Congratulations Jaylene, see you on the radio!

Kerry NH2A recently decided to adopt and restore an orphan boatanchor Hallicrafters SX-99 all-band HF receiver. This kind of rig was a standard part of a receiver-transmitter pair that hams used to use back in the day. He replaced the fraying line cord and all the paper and electrolytic capacitors before ever even thinking of powering it up.

The radio is vacuum tube based and Kerry used a Heathkit tube tester to verify that the tubes were at least operational. He then brought the rig up slowly on a AC variac with the tubes removed to confirm the tube filament and plate voltages were present (and no smoke was produced!). Once he verified the power supply was working correctly it was time to return the tubes to their sockets, hook up the speaker, connect a short antenna and keep his fingers crossed. Kerry was rewarded by the sweet sound of our own local AM radio station WMBG on 740kHz.

Here’s Kerry inspecting the top side of his receiver.

And here’s the result…his big smile indicates the radio has at least come to life receiving AM signals; more work is required to get the receiver working again in the CW mode but that’s what ham radio is all about…doing it yourself!

Club president Dino Papas KL0S presents a letter of appreciation to Chief Phillip Murdock and President Michael Powers of the James City-Bruton Volunteer Fire Department at the club’s monthly meeting. The club thanked the officers for their support of the club’s recent FCC license upgrade class by making their community classroom available for the five-week course.

Longtime WAARC Treasurer Ted Edwards W3TB is presented a letter of appreciation by club president Dino Papas KL0S acknowledging his six years of service to the club. Ted and XYL Carol will be “TAD” for a while helping out with grandchildren. Greg Pula K3RM was elected interim Treasurer at the October meeting and has agreed to be nominated for the position during the upcoming January 2019 Annual meeting officer elections.

Unfortunately not all repair work at the bench is successful.  Recently after several hours of troubleshooting and head scratching Chuck AI4WU and Dino KL0S finally had to relinquish Ed K1NUH’s Yaesu HF rig power supply to a higher authority.  But don’t feel bad for Ed, the demise of his power supply may have finally put him over the edge to buy himself a shiny new radio!  Actually, there was other good news at the bench that day as Chris KC4CMR and Chuck AI4WU were able to repair a piece of audio equipment used at the WMBG transmitter before Ed’s supply was deemed to be unrepairable at our level.  Ed is really smiling inside!