W5DQ - Presentations & Whitepapers

A few years ago, I was the 2nd VP (Presentations) in the local club. Finding people willing to get up in front of the club membership (20-30 people on a good day) and do a short presentation on whatever subject they wanted to cover was a daunting task. To fill the bill of the 9 needed months where a presentation would be needed required me to come up with some informative yet simplistic presentations aimed at moving our general membership from just HT FM users talking on the local repeater to being more experienced hams having been exposed to a variety of more advanced knowledge than just FM and repeaters.

Some of those presentations I make available here for downloading. Feel free to use any or all of these as starting points or use them as is. They are somewhat dated and have not been reworked for current equipment or trends.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A HF OPERATOR - 2 part presentation outlining steps from getting the license to assembling a working HF ham station,with ideas and info on things to watch out for while belaying some old wives tales about HF setups.

CONSIDERATIONS - Whitepaper by Gene Brewer KI6LO (now W5DQ) covering the list of topics to consider and take into account when designing and installing a mobile HF amateur radio station.

THE ZEN OF QSLing or “Why does it take so long to get my QSLs back?”, a primer on the basics of proper QSLing.

CALCULATING ERP - A beginners guide to determining what is an effective Antenna System. Determining the Effect of Antenna System Components on Effective Radiated Power.

INTRODUCTION TO 6 METERS - "The Magic Band" - An basic introductory look at operating on 6M.

THE NEW DX'ER HANDBOOK - Written by BRYCE K. ANDERSON, K7UA. Probably one of the best DX primers ever created. The SARC and HiDEXA groups provide this on our "NEW DX'er Information CD" we hand out to all newly licensed hams in our club sponsored training classes. This link will take you to the PDF file online.

CUSHCRAFT A505S - Optimization plans for the classic Cushcraft 5 element 6M Yagi. As delivered from CC, the A505S is a weak competitor at the SSB/CW weak signal end of the band. This easy mod (no cutting of antenna tubing or required parts, only redimensioning of elements and spacings) will step it up and make it a much better preformer. The mod was created with EZNEC 4.0 and I used for a long time before upgrading to a M2 6M7JHV 7 element yagi. The ZIP file has dimensions and data files.

NEW DXer SOURCE LIST - This short one page resource list will provide the budding DX'er with several good sources for obtaining quite a lot of information to absorb. This page is also included on the "NEW DX'er Information CD" our local club provides to new DX'ers.

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A NEWBIE - Parody on the TV show "Are you smarter than a 5th grader". A fun little fill-in program which ask a series of questions and displays the answers and additonal information to the crowd. Good for a short notice fill-in program. Break the audience into 2 or more teams and see who can score the highest.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE RADIO TELETYPE (RTTY) MODE - An introduction to what Radio Teletype, aka RTTY, is and how we as hams use it for ragchewing, DX'ing and contesting.