UPCOMING 5/17/2021 HVDN:LIVE - Putting balloons into the sky with USMA

On April 27th 2021, the United States Military Academy at West Point put its 11th Astronomy Club and Amateur Radio Club balloon up into the atmosphere of the Hudson Valley and reached 80,000 ft.

Cadets Raymond Triggs '24, Rathin Shah '24, Jacob Willis '23 and Nolan Pearce '22 KE8JCT led a team of fourteen cadets, four of which also have amateur radio licenses.  A total of seven USMA faculty members, including  MAJ Robert Perezamemany and COL. Stephen Hamilton KJ5HY, MAJ Ben Popko N2IAV and Dr. Kate Duncan KB2ZOO helped make this years mission a success.

CDT Nolan Pearce '22 KE8JCT

Please join HVDN: LIVE on May 17th at 8:00 PM EST for a detailed overview of this project

CIC(Cadet In Charge) Pearce will cover the design, build process, launch and recovery of the 6 lb.  STEM focused payload which  included:

• VHF APRS
• GPS
• SSTV
• GoPro camera
• Space beer? (Wet yeast!)
• More....

Cadet Pearce will share details from this years launch over a 30 minute presentation with audience questions saved until the end.

Nolan is active within the USMA radio club W2KGY which will also be participating as N2D during Hudson River Radio Relay this year and he also has a rather excellent blog covering many topics of interest to the amateur radio community.

How to attend?

This presentation is free for anyone to attend via the free open source Jit.si application and will also be live streamed on the HVDN YouTube Channel.

First 50 guests can join via https://meet.jit.si/hvdn/livemay2021 and use password = helium

Additional "human" attendees can follow live or during the replay on the HVDN Video Channel. 

UPCOMING 3/15/2021 HVDN:LIVE - VHF/UHF is NOT just FM Repeaters: The IC-9700 & IC-705 Punch-Out

On the 8:00PM EST March 15th 2021 episode of HVDN:LIVE, we will take the Icom IC-9700 and IC-705 for a in depth conversational review thanks to Neil W2NDG as moderator with Jim WA2UMP and Steve K2GOG trying to defend reasons why to or not acquire either of these radios.

VHF/UHF is NOT just FM repeaters

This review is not going to be a product endorsement in any way, but it just so happens that both of these radios do not have any direct current production competition, so that is why we are stuck with making this an Icom focused discussion. 

The goal will be to highlight all the interesting things you can do on VHF/UHF aside from only talk on repeaters.

Both the Icom IC-9700 and IC-705 will be in full view during the discussion to ensure we provide fact rather than fiction for both radios. It will be really fun! 

Basic flow is going to be:

• Introductions 

• Reasons why did Jim acquire the Icom IC-9700  

• Reasons why did Steve acquire the Icom IC-705 

• Discussion on if they would do it again

• Discussing "Was it easy to do...…" 

• Focus on hardware tips & tricks

• Focus on software tips & tricks

• Remote operation comments 

• Live Q&A

How to join HVDN:LIVE?

We are going to experiment and see how many people can join the live meeting and we will be using  Jitsi instead of Zoom since HVDN supports and encourages open source projects.

If interested in attending on March 15th at 8:00 PM Eastern Time , please join using http://meet.jit.si/hvdn/livemarch15th2021 and use the password "hvdnlive"

This event will be recorded for later playback, but anything live is always better than a recording, so be sure to check it out and get your questions ready for Neil, Steve & Jim! 

Feel free to drop some questions below in advance!