Clarksville Amateur Radio Club

The club and repeater call sign has been changed. I saw a 1×2 call that started with a “W”, and decided to grab it for the club. So, no more KB3OKL. Rather, the new call is W3YT for the club and the 146.865 repeater. This new call is much better for contests and DX. The repeater voice ID has been updated, but, it doesn’t sound very cool right now, but at least its legal. We will get a synthesized voice (or a better human voice!) on the system soon.

steve
WA4BVO, owner

I have noticed over the last week that MIDCARS, a net on 7.258 MHz, has good signals from the Midwest, and so the repeater Drake HF monitor will be set to that frequency in the morning.

Remember, *77 brings up the remote HF receiver, and, #1 brings it down.

Steve

WA4BVO

The other day I heard someone try to use the autopatch on the KB3OKL repeater, and it came up with gibberish audio. That means that the landline at the site is being used by another device (its a FAX machine that is rarely used). When this happens , shut it down with #, and just wait a few minutes and try again.

Bob

The long hang time (tail) on the KB3OKL repeater has been changed to 2 seconds. With the longer tail, there were too many times that the repeater was getting ready to time-out, since the transmitter was not allowed to drop during long QSOs. Let it drop occasionally, and you will never reach the continuous 10 minutes that will cause a time-out. If it does time-out, just wait a few seconds and it will reset automatically

Steve

WA4BVO

The other day I looked at the KB3OKL repeater and saw a short piece of RG-58 going from the receive preamp to the duplexer. It probably came from a hamfest years ago. Anyway, I removed it and used a 3 foot RG-213. Well, the receive sensitivity went up, and the desense went down. So, the lesson, at least for VHF, is to use quality and “thick” coax throughout, even the short runs where the dB line loss is not really a factor. It is too easy for RF to sneak out of and into cheap, thin poorly shielded, cable. And of course many of those jumpers that are around have connectors that are not properly soldered.

Steve

WA4BVO

Welcome to the website for the Clarksville Amateur Radio Club. The CARC is home to a full-featured open-access two-meter repeater KB3OKL on 146.865 (-), located in the Clarksville, MD area. All hams are welcome to make use of the open autopatch, HF frequency monitoring, and many other features. See our repeater page for more information! If you have questions, feel free to drop an email to Carksville.Amatuer.Radio.Club@gmail.com.

Elliott

KC8AOT