Kansas City DX Club

Home of the Annual Dayton CW Pileup Competition

February 19, 2018
Kansas City DX Club Meeting Minutes
Carmack Community Room, Central Resource Library
Overland Park, KS
The February meeting of the Kansas City DX Club was called to order by President Russ Woirhaye, K0VXU at 6:01 pm CST (0001 February 20, 2018 UTC). The meeting was held a week early because the meeting room was not available on the 27th.
Agenda -

Greeting Introduction of Guests
Business
DXing and Contesting
HF Station Systems Engineering Part 2 of 2 – Ghosts in the Machine Grounding and Common Mode (CM) Drew – Vonada Smith, K3PA.

Introductions -
We introduced ourselves. No official guests were noted but Jerry, NX0I was present after being away for a while.
Business
Club dues of $20 for 2018 are now being accepted by AB0X. You can also pay using Pay Pal at the club website.
AB0X now has five hotel rooms available for the Dayton Hamvention. Contact Mike if you are interested. Mike would like to hand the room coordination task off to someone else. Contact Russ or Mike if interested. He has performed this task for a long time. So far it looks like about ten of us are planning to go this year.
There was a brief discussion about the disappointment of the cancellation of the Bouvet DXpedition due to ship engine failure.

DXing and Contesting
DXing for February - March
Based on NG3K website: http://www.ng3k.com/Misc/adxo.html
Highlights reported were 4B4B Revilla Gigedo, Z2LA Zimbabwe, 9M0W Spratly, XX9B Macao, TN5R Republic of Congo. Check your usual sources for DX activity.
Contesting for February - March
Based on WA7BNM website: http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/
Important contests noted were ARRL DX SSB, CQ 160 meter SSB, FOC CW, and several state QSO Parties are on of course.
Some KCDX Club results from the ARRL DX CW contest held this past weekend were presented with some pretty impressive scores given.
Program

Drew – Vanoda Smith, K3PA, HF Station Systems Engineering Part 2 of 2 – Ghosts in the Machine - Grounding and Common Mode (CM)

This presentation is a followup to Part 1 which was given at the November 27 KCDX Club meeting.

Grounding

AC Power Safety
Lightning Protection

Towers
Cable Entry to Shack

Antenna RF Return Paths

Common Mode Currents

Transmit CM Currents
Cure for TX CM Currents – 1:1 Balun
Receive CM Currents
Cure for RX CM Currents – Toroidal chokes strung on cables

Reference articles

Cost Effective Chokes GM3SEK http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek/in-prac/inpr1005_ext_v2.pdf
Common Mode Chokes W1HIS http://www.yccc.org/Articles/W1HIS/CommonModeChokesW1HIS2006Apr06.pdf

Drew listed some other references. He has promised to provide a copy of this presentation to the club Web Site as he did for Part 1. Thanks for a great body of work, Drew.

Announcements

Upcoming meeting place change date:

The next club meeting will be held as previously scheduled on March 26 at 6PM but the meeting will be held MARCH ONLY at the Shawnee Branch of the Johnson County Library located at 13811 Johnson Dr, Shawnee, KS 66216 which is near the intersection of Johnson Drive and Pflumm Road.
Looking ahead the meeting for May will be held on JUNE 4.

If you need or you know of someone who needs a ride to our meetings let Jeff know. We would like to make sure everyone who wishes to attend can do so.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:33pm.
Charles Hett KCDX Club Secretary

Minutes Archive (.pdf format)

January 2018

December 2017 - no meeting - Christmas Party

No minutes available