12/05/2025
St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club
Today (9/13) we poured concrete. Four yards (16,000 lbs.) of mud, 200 pounds of re-bar, followed by
by eight ¾” threaded rods. Everything went as planned. As we wait for the concrete to harden, we can now come up with a plan to relocate the log periodic antenna that is currently atop the Glen Martin tower that is mounted on the shipping containers.
Our tower foundation has been dug, the re-bar cage has been installed, and inspected. We are ready to pour concrete. A few photos below show our progress. We will need to wait awhile while the concrete hardens. Then we get to install the tower base, the tower itself, and finally transplant our LP antenna. Thanks to all that contributed to this effort.
The site behind the DMI Research building where the SPARC station is located is being prepared for the tower. Click on photos to enlarge.
Next step is getting the dirt out that is in the way of the concrete (a.k.a. a BIG hole is needed). White paint marks the spot! The hole will be dug near the building foundation. The tower base will be angled to allow folding over with clearance for the fence and A/C units. John, KI4UIP reports the rebar is bought, cut and bent. Hole digging to start soon.
The Log Periodic antenna (20M-10M) and rotor that is currently on top of the parking lot container will be placed on the tower.
It ought to be a great antenna setup. Stay tuned for more details….
Today (12/29/2015), several SPARC members met at the SPARC Clubhouse to work on several 
projects to help with contesting and other activities at the W4GAC station. Bob N2ESP, John KI4UIP, Dave KR4U, Ron KP2N and Tom NY4I worked on various projects that needed to be done for this weekend’s ARRL RTTY contest. While John, Dave and Bob wrestled the Cushcraft R7 antenna into position outside and ran coax, the rest of us worked on tweaking the Elecraft K3 to work on RTTY FSK mode. For a reason that would become apparent, we could not properly decode signals that we knew were there. As it turns out, we had two issues: one on receive (RX) and one on transmit (TX). The RX issue was that the RTTY frequency was set different on the rig than on the MMTTY program. Once we figured this out, all went well with the receive part. But, then other stations were not decoding us properly. This was a simple issue of switching the FSK polarity to invert our mark and space. Now, it works! There is nothing like reading the manual :). The K3 station will use the Log periodic on 20 and the dipole on 80 along with the Alpha 9500 for 1000 watts. The R7 will be run on other bands as a multiplier station.
Tom NY4I hung around (rather than sit in traffic to Palm Harbor) to work on the K3 remote station. There are a few items that required finishing for the remote station. You may recall, our plan is to allow members to operate the K3 remotely thereby using the radio and antennas at W4GAC from home (great for those of us with limited antennas). After a few configuration issues and hooking up a speaker cable to the back of the K3, Tom was able to connect to the K3 with his K3/0 setup. At least it worked across the room! Not wanting to make any more changed with the contest upcoming, there is a small punch list of items to do to complete this project. This list included routing a few LAN cables, adding an external speaker to the K3 (through the Behringer mixer) and finalizing the inbound WAN ports for access. Please note the technical details were added intentionally to see if anyone has an interest in learning the nitty-gitty details of how remote stations work. If you like mixing hardware and software, it is quite a bit of fun to configure. be sure to ask Tom to help out on this project. There are always things to do and things to learn.
If you want to know how you can use the remote (even with using just your PC or Android device), please talk to Tom. Once the station is fully operational, we will do a training session for those interested.
In order to promote our club, SPARC “eyeball” QSL cards are available free to members. These cards are business card size versions of our world famous W4GAC QSL cards, and feature our web address and Mr. Sun on the reverse side.
Carry a few in your wallet or in your car. When asked about the world’s greatest hobby, simply hand out a card. Personalizing the card with your name and call is encouraged.
Cards are available at all club meetings.
September is the middle of hurricane season. In an effort to make sure that your handheld and mobile transceivers are in good operational shape. SPARC will be available to test your HT and/or (uninstalled) mobile rig on TBD at the club station. HF, VHF & UHF radios can be accommodated.
Our radio gurus, will setup their service monitors and our spectrum analyzer to checkout your transceivers. Be sure the battery is fully charge and the rig works.