YRARC in 2025

We begin 2025 with a new insurance program from Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC), our national organization, which provides general liability, property and some directors' and officers' coverage. While the liability insurance is more expensive than our commercial carrier, it provides greater coverage and most important, insurance not only for the club but for its members. As described by RAC, members of both YRARC & RAC receive liability coverage for all their amateur radio activities (albeit with certain exclusions for high risk activities), and YRARC members who are not also members of RAC will be covered while participating in club-sponsored activities (like field day or public service).

The board also reviewed our existing property coverage and determined that while our coverage of the trailer and its equipment are adequate, the repeater equipment has excessive coverage. This has been corrected, and along with the better rates offered by RAC, we were able to significantly reduce the premium without increasing our exposure. This money can be put to better use for repeater & trailer maintenance and upgrades and for that purpose we have created a reserve fund, which will be increased over time annually as our income permits.

During the summer our web site provider decided to remove the low-cost option we were using, effectively tripling the cost of maintaining the web site. We decided to move the site to a private server using a WordPress platform and this is about to launch. It should also be easier for the site's contributors to keep content up to date.

2024 was a good year for the club. In 2023 we started training new amateurs again and those new hams have become active participants in the club. In January we welcome on of those new hams, Rose VE3SFP, to the board of directors. Her official duties will be determined at the board's January meeting. 

We also had our first hamfest since 2019. With rising costs of venues, it was scaled down from last decade's events at the Markham Fairgrounds, which is now priced beyond viability, but it met our participation and financial goals. Thanks go to the many club members who contributed to its success, and to Jan VE3ZYL for organizing it.

Our ARES Team, along with interested club members, were busy in 2024 with two major exercises and several training classes, including IMS (Incident Management System) levels 200 and 300 classes that were held by the Region of York Emergency Management Office, and ACS (Auxilliary Communication Service) training by Jason Tremblay of RAC. We're looking forward to expanding the core ARES team in 2025 along with some additional preparedness initiatives.

Eric VE3EB and all the public service volunteers had their busiest year ever with events. Not only is this fun to do, and good training, but it provides an immense benefit to the club's image in the community. This pays dividends in attracting new members and winning the support of other organizations in the community. Thanks go to the many volunteers who stepped forward to help.

At the close of 2024 we also mourn the loss of former member David Oman VE3HCR in September.

At the start of 2025 we are looking forward to welcoming new hams, putting some new initiatives into action, and getting together with friends old and new for some ham radio fun.

Wishing everyone a safe, healthy & prosperous 2025,

Chris VE3NRT

President, York Region Amateur Radio Club

Notice of Annual General Meeting 2024

Take notice that the Annual General Meeting of the members of the York Region Amateur Radio Club, Inc., will be held at the usual meeting place, the Sharon Temperance Hall, 18974 Leslie Street, Sharon, at the usual hour of 7:30pm on Tuesday June 4th, 2024 for the purposes of approving the financial statements for fiscal year 2024 and the election of directors to hold office for 2 years commencing July 1st, 2024.

Regular, family and life members are advised that they have the right to attend and vote in person at this meeting, in accordance with the usual rules of order, and further, in the event of a member’s absence, the member has the right to appoint a proxy to vote on his or her behalf. An appropriate form is included at the end of this publication. Members who are unable to attend the Annual General Meeting may complete, date and sign a proxy form, which must be delivered to the Secretary prior to the call to order of the Annual General Meeting, to be eligible for voting.

For those wishing to mail a proxy, please send it to the club secretary, Michael Veit, VE3BWV.

Dated this day May 8th, 2024 at Aurora, Ontario.
Chris Sullivan, VE3NRT, President.

PROXY

The undersigned being a current member of the York Region Amateur Radio Club, Inc. hereby appoints


(Name of Secretary or other person) _____________________________________________ as proxy to attend the Annual General Meeting of the York Region Amateur Radio Club, Inc., on June 4th, 2024 and vote on my behalf on each and any question brought before the assembly, or at any adjournment thereof, and I do hereby revoke and make void any former instrument appoint a proxy on my behalf.


Dated at _______________ this ___________ day of _____________, 2024.


Name and call of member (print) __________________________________


Signature of member __________________________________

Call For Nominations: The Harvey Bell Award

 NOTICE TO ALL YRARC MEMBERS

Each year about this time, the members of our radio club have the opportunity to nominate a member for the Harvey Bell Award by contacting the club secretary no later than May 19th, 2024.

Nominations may be presented by individuals, or may be co-signed by several members. Your nomination should be made in writing or by email to the club secretary Mike Veit VE3BWV, and should include your description, explanation or citation in support of the nominee.

At the January, 1971 meeting of the York North Radio Club, as YRARC was known at the time, the membership established an award in memory of the late Harvey Bell, VE3AFK, of Aurora.

It was the wish of the members that this award be presented annually to a member in good standing with this club, in recognition of substantial achievement involving Amateur Radio, particularly in connection with the York North Radio Club.

The winner would hold the trophy for one year, and would also receive a certificate, or other citation outlining the achievement.

Any club member would be eligible to nominate any other club member for the award. Nominations will be considered by the 2024 Board of Directors at the May 21st meeting.

Harvey Bell died unexpectedly in December of 1970. At that time he was in the process of making his third attempt at keeping the club together and active. He had been a club member for almost ten years, enjoyed the fellowship and the sharing of technical information regarding Amateur Radio. He was especially interested in the Morse Code, and CW operation, but was also very involved with the fairly new SSB technology that was growing with leaps and bounds.

During the late 1960’s activity in the club seemed to wane, and Harvey Bell, along with a couple of other area hams kept up a steady contact with other hams in Newmarket and surroundings. Invitations were sent out on at least three occasions in a an attempt to keep the club active and growing. He had just succeeded, in the fall of 1970, to get the membership back together again, and had turned the leadership over to Frank Rusholme.

His influence and his leadership in club affairs will long be remembered by the Amateurs in this area who knew him personally. In addition to being an active 80-metre DX chaser, Harvey was also involved in RTTY (radio teletype), VHF, and had one of the outstanding stamp collections in the region.

The award, which honours his name, is considered the highest acclaim that the club can give to one of its members.

73,
Chris VE3NRT
President, YRARC

SSTV from the International Space Station

Receiving SSTV is one of the easier things to do when it comes to space communications. Two or three times are year the ISS broadcasts SSTV images on the 2 metre band. The most recent one finished a few days ago and was themed on Lunar Exploration. The signals are strong, and cycle constantly (2 minutes on, 2 minutes off) so there's a good chance of copying lots of them.

Sending SSTV could be done with a old school tape player, as it is just audio. The images are likely not encoded into audio right there on the ISS, but only exist in audio form. Still, for many who never done it, it's quite fun. The majority of passes in my area were during the night, so I left the radio and computer running and just looked at what I'd received in the morning, as did other members of the club. John VE3IPS went minimalist and copied an image by holding a smartphone microphone up to the speaker of a handheld.

I used my home VHF station, MMSSTV software, with an ICOM-7100 (removed from the car shortly after the pandemic shutdowns) and a Diamond X300-NA antenna at 25'. Verticals aren't idea for satellite communications but they do work. I heard the first ham transmission from the space shuttle by Owen Garriott W5LFL (SK) in 1983 using my mobile radio and a mag-mount antenna on the roof of my Volvo.

I tracked the ISS using gpredict, a multi-platform free open source software package. Through the (also free open source) programs rigctld and rotorctl it can compensate for Doppler shift and point your antennas at the spacecraft. With less than 3kHz shift it is hardly necessary to do Doppler compensation but I did anyway because I could, and with a vertical I certainly didn't need the rotor control capability. 

One small complaint about the organization of the event was that the 12 images were almost perfectly timed with the orbital period, so I received many copies of some, few of others and none of #5. On each pass I'd received 2 to 3 images and while most of them time there was some noise, when I received 3 images one of them was usually only partially copied.

Here's the best of each. These are unedited files. If I combined several into a single image, it could be cleaned up considerably.

1/12

2/12

3/12

4/12

5/12 - I missed this one, but Mike VE3EYS copied it and sent it to me. 

I did not copy image #5

6/12

7/12

8/12

9/12

10/12

11/12

12/12

Local Nets for YRARC Members

Here's a list of the nets that YRARC is running or in which YRARC members participate. Let me know if there are any others that should be added to list, with the criteria that at least two members should be regular check-ins.

YRARC-Sponsored Nets

• YRARC Health & Welfare Net: On the VE3YRA/V (145.350-, 103.5 Hz CTCSS) and VE3YRC/U (444.225+, no CTCSS at present), every evening from 8:30 to approximately 9:15 except on club meeting nights (first Tuesday of month September to June). This net requests the status of the participants with respect to COVID-19 and the operational state of their radios, and asks a single "10 second question" on a variety of topics.
•  YRARC 6m net: On 50.135 MHz upper sideband horizontally polarized from 8:00pm to 8:25pm Mondays and Wednesdays. Moderated discussion on recent activities by participants or anything else of interest.
• Ragchew Ramble Net: On VE3YRA/V and VE3YRC/U from 4-5pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Moderated by Joseph, VE3FMQ, on topics of interest to the participant, which are usually related to amateur radio. 
• New: YRARC "Fusion Friday", will run every Friday from 8:00 to 8:25 PM on the VE3YRC/V Fusion repeater on 147.225MHz. VE3YRC repeater is also connected to the VE3YRC-ROOM, so can be connected through WIRES-X or directly through the repeater. This will initially have no net control and will run as a round-robin net.
• New: YRARC "Simplex Saturday", every Saturday from 10 to 11AM, on 146.550MHz (YRARC channel #24) and see who you can contact. This will initially have no net control and will run as a round-robin net. Please keep a record of who you can hear and or manage to connect to. Commences 2022-01-08.
• New: YRARC Winlink Wednesday, every Wednesday at any time. Use the Check-In template form to report how you have connected, e.g. Telnet, Packet, VARA, HF, ARDOP, the equipment used, the radio, TNC, Soundcard, band, mode, operating system, software client, the RMS gateway if used, and the Winlink client program. Send the email to Mike Crabtree, VA3MCT, the York Region Emergency Coordinator, who will report the results the following day.

Other Nets

• ONTARS: None of our members is currently a net controller, but several have been in the past and several current members participate in this net which runs on 3.755 MHz (80M) lower sideband every day from 7AM to 6PM. See their web site for more information

Edward Rogers Sr. 100th Anniversary

Somewhere around December 10th, or 9th, or maybe the 11th, depending on the account, Edward Rogers Senior made the first successful transatlantic radio transmission by a Canadian amateur operator. The event was more significant than it sounds. Commercial radio was at the time using long waves, at low (LF) or very low (VLF) frequencies. The thinking of the day was "the lower the better" and radio stations for transatlantic traffic were huge undertakings. Some of the big ones used generators to produce these low frequency waves. At least one, the Grimeton Radio Station in Sweden is still operating, although only once a year.

The 1921 Transatlantic tests, sponsored by the ARRL, used wavelengths around 200 metres. This is still quite low by amateur standards. It wasn't until several years ago that the lowest frequencies in use by amateurs were in the 160 metres band, although now we have small 630 and 2200 metre for experimentation at low power. The tests proved that long distance communication was possible with a tabletop station rather than a building full of equipment.

Edward made this historic transmission from his lodgings at Pickering College, on Main Street in Newmarket, Ontario, right in the centre of York Region using a 500W spark set and call sign 3BP. He was heard by Paul Godley, operating a receiving station in Ardrossan, Scotland, using a Beverage antenna. Rogers was the only Canadian station to be heard during that weekend of testing.

The York Region Amateur Radio Club is celebrating the 100th anniversary of this event by running station CF3BP. Club members will be operating on various bands and modes from November 13th to December 12th. Logs will be uploaded to LoTW, qrz.com, and others. We are also in the midst of designing a QSL card for anyone in our logs. Canadian amateurs can send us an SASE. Outside Canada, please send $3 or equivalent to cover postage.

Edward went on to found Rogers Majestic, a very successful radio manufacturing company, a vacuum tube company, and AM radio station CFRB, located in Aurora, Ontario (also in York Region and the city that I live in). CFRB was heard all over North America and exists to this day. Edward's son, Edward "Ted" Jr., founded Rogers Communications in 1960, which is a principal player in the Canadian telecommunications industry.

See you on the air!

73,
Chris VE3NRT
President, YRARC

Update - the first electronic QSL has been received. Thanks Marcel!

N1MM Logger for ARRL Field Day

It seems that the two most popular logging software programs are N1MM Logger+ and N3FJP Logger. Both operate only on Microsoft Windows, so if you're using Linux you either need to use Wine or a different logging program.

I've used N1MM for contest logging for a long time, but I feel I've only scratched the surface of its capabilities. It has hundreds of features designed to shave fractions of a second from the contest exchange and logging process. Calling it a logger is an understatement, as it can also control and operate the radio by sending CW or recorded voice messages. It also knows how to interoperate with WSJT-X or JTDX for use with FT8/FT4 and other modes.

N3FJP is also very popular. It is simpler than N1MM+ and has fewer features, although its capabilities have been increasing steadily. Most of our operators on Field Day use it. It costs around $10-20 for a perpetual licence including updates.

Let me give an example of shaving fractions of seconds from the exchange. The CW in N1MM+ messaging facility will send CQ for you, as well as the contest exchange (e.g. "5A GTA" that the club station uses on field day) and the final thank you at the end of the exchange as well as messages like "AGN?" which can be useful from time to time. The CW can be tailored to speed up when there's something that is totally expected by the other station, like his own call sign, then slow down again when the exchange information is sent. Another example is that the spacing between CW characters can be changed from the standard 7 dits to 6 dits. That might reduce the message time by 50ms or so, which might add up to 5 or 10 more contacts over a 24 hour contest.

Learning N1MM+ can be daunting, but well worth the the time invested. The first time I used it I had it set up for RTTY in a hour or so. Support by N1MM himself and the team is excellent on the Google group and the program is free-of-charge (but not open source). I don't use N1MM+ for my general logging but after the contest I can produce an ADIF format file for upload to my regular logger which I then use to confirm the contacts in ARRL Logbook of the World.

It is truly an amazing and comprehensive tool to make your contest experience fun and productive. Here's a link to a video by the RATPAC team (who have lots of great videos) on using N1MM+ on ARRL Field Day.

Topic: N1MM Logger for Field Day

Speaker/Presenter: Anthony Luscre, K8ZT
View Video: https://vimeo.com/561658305
Download Video: https://vimeo.com/user107547861/download/561658305/d3de10fd9e
Documents: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1mvexqaudmkd4jc/AABgFaleuXUzwDVtiK8XZek0a?dl=0