field IN COLOR:  The August Newsletter is available.

BVARC AUGUST GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING

Thursday, August 10, 2017 7:30pm, 421 Eldridge

It’s been a hot, humid and rainy summer, typical for Texas. It’ll be time to cool off with some creamy frozen Blue Bell and desert snacks (brownies, cookies, etc.) at the August BVARC meeting. Come hungry! A welcome and longstanding BVARC tradition, the Ice Cream Social!

Also, the newsletter name will be announced along with the winner of the $100 DX Engineering gift certificate. If you haven’t to the notices to date to got your entry in, you have through July 31, 2017 to get it to the Editor.

Report on the July General Membership Meeting

At the July General Membership Meeting, we had a great turnout with 33 members and guests.

We were all entertained by Nizar Mullani’s (K0NM) tales of growing up in Tanzania, and the pictures

he shared of his recent trip “back home”. Somehow he managed to mention a bit about amateur radio

and the German friend who accompanied him. At no time did he mention meeting Crosby, Hope or

Lamour on the Road to Zanzibar!

Mike (TDX) shared pictures and results from the four club Field Day event. We’ll have to wait for

ARRL to publish the results to see how well we did. If you did not attend any of Field Day, mark your

calendar for the last weekend in June, 2018. No excuses.

Newsletter Naming Contest

Last chance

Museum Ships Weekend

BVARC had about 20 people on board for Museum Ships Weekend. All in all, everyone seemed to have a good time. The Undersea Warfare folk were very appreciative of our presence. We did have a scout troop aboard Saturday night. We were able to show the scouts a bit of our operation.

We had the SS Selma station, inside the back part of the USS Stewart, in the bunk and kitchen area. We were comfortably able to run in transmission lines for the trailer mounted tower and also for an EFHW wire antenna. Power was available here, so generators and mosquitos were absent.
HF SSB and Digital stations were set up (see photo). The USS Stewart HF station with an Elecraft K3 and inverted V antenna proved to be the stalwart operation, with those on it putting in yeoman’s service through Saturday night. We also participated in a 2m net Saturday afternoon, including Galveston’s Elissa and solicited local contacts on the Tidelands ARC repeater

We found that 20 meters was the most active and conditions on the other bands were marginal to poor. We did get a South American station on 17 meters though. Operations were interrupted several times by passing storms (especially Sunday morning) We made close to 200 QSOs despite the conditions.

We had pizza delivered on Friday night, with a hearty BBQ dinner (from Leon’s) on Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning, during the extended storms, we munched on Kolaches.

We had about 8 people sleep aboard the Stewart in the “Officer’s Country”, both Friday and Saturday night.
Many thanks to all the volunteers and YL’s that attended.

We’re developing a lessons learned and wish list for next year. There are several significant items we’ll want to work on for the next event, including getting the Cavalla’s antennas in ship shape condition.

NOTE: Dates for 2017 Board of Directors Meetings have been set as follows:

July 8
August 5
September 9
October 7
November 4
December 9
Meetings are open to all, and Club Members are encouraged to attend and be engaged in Club governance.