News from the Sterling Park Amateur Radio Club (SPARC)

I attended this weeks meeting of the Vienna Wireless Society to do a presentation on the Virginia QSO Party. While there, Lee, KD4RE, asked if I could pass the following invitation to SPARC members.

QCWA Chapter 91 would like to invite radio amateurs in the area (in particular members of SPARC) to our March 20th lunch meeting for a presentation by Dr Kerry Kingham (WA4BQM) on Sunspots. I know this overlaps a little with the start of the VA QSO Party.

We will be meeting at Neighbors Restaurant on March 20th at 11:30 AM. for our monthly lunch meeting. The featured speaker will be Dr Kerry Kingham (WA4BQM) who is an astronomer with the Naval Observatory. Kerry will be explaining everything you would want to know about sunspots (except for perhaps a detailed prediction of the future, although there were 15 of them this past week). What exactly is a sunspot? How do they form and why? How do sunspots and other solar emissions impact radio propagation here on earth? Kerry is an excellent speaker and we are looking forward him to share this information with us. I am sure you will find this an informative and enjoyable meeting.

Neighbors restaurant is located just east of Vienna in a small shopping center at the intersection of Cedar Lane and Park Street. Information is available on our website at www.qcwa-91.org .

73,
MARK KI4OBT

SPARC held their monthly meeting on March 3rd at the Claude Moore Community Center. There were 23 members and guests in attendance.

Our meeting started with a round of member introductions. Bruce, KJ4MFF, announced that he had successfully completed upgrade of his license to Extra class. Congratulations to Bruce!

Our presentation this month was on software defined radios and we were fortunate to have Frank, K0BRA, and Bill, N4TS, from AMRAD present an overview of their efforts. AMRAD's purpose is to promote interest in radio technology and you can find more information at http://www.amrad.org/ . AMRAD members are currently exploring the use of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) to implement digital signal processing functions. They are hoping to achieve significant performance improvements (as much as 30x) over dedicated DSP chips. They do group-builds of prototype systems with surface mount technology using solder masks and a "toaster oven". They manually place parts on the board with tweezers and a microscope. They are using a development environment form Digilent along with Verilog software. This is an exciting project on the forefront of technology. Thanks to Frank and Bill for their presentation.

Reports were provided by the secretary, treasurer, and QSL bureau. Dick, W2YE, mentioned that the bureau had a table at a local hamfest and he received some interest from potential volunteers.

Preparations for the Virginia QSO Party are nearly complete. Publicity efforts and presentations will continue right up to the party. Dick will host the K4NVA station again this year at his QTH. The station will be set up for two positions to operate SSB and CW.

Duane, K4UW, discussed his efforts in compiling data for the club history. We believe the club holds some data, but it cannot be located. If you have any old materials, please pass them to Duane. We'll develop a history section on the SPARC web site to document our legacy.

73,
--MARK KI4OBT