Calling all would be Fox hunters
Note to all the new hams. Nows the chance to put your shiny new 2 meter hand-held radios to use.
A Fox hunt is a hidden transmitter hunt. ... read more

The Burnaby Amateur Radio Club will be holding their Swap Meet on 26th February 2012 @ 10:00 AM. ... read more

R.A.C. is now publishing parts of TCA magazine on line for all to view. ... read more

After four years under the Motorola umbrella, Yaesu has split from that company. According to Vertex Standard President and Chief Executive Officer Jun Hasegawa, effective January1, 2012, Motorola will keep the Vertex Standard Land-Mobile Division, while the amateur, marine and air-band will be under the Yaesu Musen banner. The new company will be known as Yaesu USA in the US. ... read more

In order to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the CBC, Special Event Canadian call signs have been approved for use for all amateurs by Industry Canada. ... read more

Industry Canada has recently instituted web based services for Amateur Radio. Accredited Examiners may submit new exam marks and upgrades. Call sign search, additional certificates and call signs may be done via this page.
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/025.nsf/eng/h_00001.html ... read more

Membership dues are collected by the treasurer every September with the cut-off for collection at the end of December.

NARA membership provides you with full access to all local repeaters and it also helps with the cost of maintaining our repeaters and Club projects. Members also benefit from Club purchases and supporting Amateur radio in the Mid Island area. ... read more

Heathkit Educational Systems hopes to re enter the Amateur Radio market by the end of 2011.
http://www.heathkit.com/ ... read more

RAC has started a nation-wide change process for the organization. They are inviting all amateur radio operators to be a part of this change (members and non-members alike). ... read more

QRZ is pleased to announce two major developments in its evolution. After many months of program and systems development, QRZ will shortly make available an online Logbook that will be accessible by all of its Ham users. In addition, we are announcing today that QRZ will begin issuing operating awards and certificates for all classes of on-air activities with direct coupling to our online Logbook and Callsign Database. ... read more

Sponsor: Cowichan Valley Amateur Radio Society
Start date: Sunday, August 28, 2011
End date: Sunday, August 28, 2011
Closest town: Duncan, BC
Directions to location: The new Cowichan Exhibition Grounds, just North of Duncan at 7380 Trans Canada Hwy, Duncan, BC V9L 6B1. ... read more

NANAIMO CITY COUNCIL PROCLAIMS WEEK OF 22-28 JUNE 2009 “AMATEUR RADIO WEEK IN THE CITY OF NANAIMO” ... read more

Winter Cruise 2009
Feb.24/09 2100
We left home at 1700 with the truck loaded so heavy, it looked like we were going away for 10 years. We arrived at the marina and proceeded to return Karina to fighting form. We took off some of the maintenance tools and left them in the truck. ... read more

Please place all personal BLOGs under this Menu

Learning and Activities Night

Efforts are being made to organize weekly Training, Demonstration, and Hands on activities. An appropriate day and time would be Tuesdays at 7:30 PM. This is just after the weekly Emergency Group VHF Net (members could arrive at 7 and participate in the net from the clubhouse). This would be every week. The purpose is to elevate our club members basic skill set, inspire participation and spawn club projects. This is similar in concept to "Hot Solder Night" with the most emphasis being put on organizing topics to draw the member base in. It is being discussed that we should welcome the public as should these related interests mix, we may have a new ham.

* Basic Networking
Learn about IP addresses, NAT Routers, VPN, etc
* Path Estimation and Planning
Learn about transmit power, antenna gain, path loss, feedline loss, receiver sensitivities, and link margins
* Radio Mobile
Extension of Path Estimation and Planning, learn how to do coverage plot and link feasibility studies
* Feedlines
Comparisons of different feedlines, performance, market prices and availability etc.
* Drupal (ve7na.ca) Content Maintaining
Learn how to edit content on the NARA website without any HTML or programming knowledge
* 802.11a/b/g/n ("WiFi")
Learn about wireless networking. Infrastructure, Ad-Hoc, typical radio characteristics. Standard practices, etc. Extension of Basic Networking.
* Satellite
Learn about satellite modes, equipment required, etc. Plan a club station.
* Packet
Learn about the basics of packet radio. How the modulation occurs and typical interfacing to radios, etc.
* APRS
APRS System. Lead up into APRS build?
* IRC
Internet-Relay-Chat, Servers, Clients, Channels, Moderation
* Winlink

Hands On Topics

* Tune up your Radio
Bring in Spectrum Analyzer, DSO, Sig Gen, RF Sig Gen, etc. tune deviation, check splatter, etc.
* Anderson Powerpoles
Bring in proper powerpole crimper, learn to crimp and buy connectors, change over existing radio connections
* Build an emergency pack
Assemble various useful interconnects, etc. to equip your emergency radio system
* Build a portable VHF/UHF antenna
Build a
* Build an APRS Tracker
Group buy on parts, then build beacon.
* Build a TNC
Group buy on kits, then build basic TNC
* Show and Tell
Spectrum Analyzers, Digital Storage Oscilloscopes, Dynamic Signal Analyzers, RF Signal Generator, etc.

International Year of Astronomy - for use by all Canadian Amateurs, Jan. 1 to Feb. 28, 2009, the following prefixes may be used: CG for VE, CF for VA, CH for VO, CI for VY. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) will be a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture, stimulating worldwide interest not only in astronomy, but in science in general, with a particular slant toward. (Click here for info on how Amateur Radio operators can contribute during the International Year of Astronomy in 2009.) More info at http://www.hamiya2009.info/

UPDATE: Below is a copy of the video segment which has been airing continuously since Thursday, November 13.

Shaw is set to air a segment about NARA on Thursday evenings and the weekend. The segment will air during community programming on channel 4.

The player will show in this paragraph ... read more

For the convenience of the community, we provide some interactive calculators to make quick work of some of the more tedious or difficult formulas.

Power Calculators

mW to dBm

dBm is an absolute decibel power ratio referenced to one milliwat (mW). Remember this by understanding the m stands for milliwatt.

Predicting RF Coverage and Link Performance

Calculating RF Links and coverage plots must take many influencing factors into consideration including, but not limited to:

* Propagation and Absorption
* Power output
* Antenna gains / patterns
* Topography and obstructions
* Receiver sensitivity
* Feedline losses

Tools

Radio Mobile

Radio Mobile is a freeware windows software application written by VE2DBE. It is available on the web here. This program has a learning curve but the results are very rewarding. Radio Mobile can take all of the above mentioned radio link & coverage variables into effect and produce coverage maps, and link calculations. RM supports multiple topography data formats with SRTM being the most convenient.

Radio Mobile can be found here
A tutorial can be found here.

Modeling Data

SRTM Data

The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) obtained elevation data on a near-global scale to generate the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth. SRTM consisted of a specially modified radar system that flew onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour during an 11-day mission in February of 2000. This topographical data can be used directly by some software.

SRTM Data Sources

After substantial editing efforts by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NASA released Version 2 of their SRTM data. It is referred to as the "finished" version. Some incomplete data still remains but is highly usable.

The resolution of the data is measured in arc-seconds with the lower number being greater. Most of the world has SRTM3 (3 arc-second) data while SRTM1 or 1 arc-second data is only available for select regions. The map showing the 1 arc second regions is available here.

SRTM V2 3 arc-second

ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM3/

SRTM V2 1 arc-second

Locals Note: 1 arc-second data covers at the most the lower half of Vancouver Island.

ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM1/

Longley Rice Modeling

http://lrcov.crc.ca/cov.php?lang=en

Misc Data

Typical Parameters

"Typical" 25W VHF Transmitter (Motorola CDM-1550-LS+)
Output Power: 25-45W (44-46.5 dBm)
Receive Sensitivity: 0.3uV/-117.5dB (0.23uV/-119.8 Typical)

Page Maintainer--
Matthew Currie VE7MJC

This page serves as a central list of proposed and upcoming group build projects and group buys.

Group Builds & Projects

Planned
Dual band VHF/UHF J pole antenna

Proposed

Portable

Group Buys

Current

RG 213/U

The club has RG 213/U available for club members at wholesale prices. Contact a member on the executive.