BTARS

Fancy a party after the holidays? Like good food? Well do we have the solution for you! The Houston Vintage Radio Association has extended an invitation to all BTARS folks to come join them at their post-holiday party. Details below, and if you intend on going, please RSVP to the email listed below and let them know you are from BTARS.

Hope to see you there!

Yep, it’s official, the results are in and BTARS took second place for Texas Multi-Operator station in the 2011 Texas QSO party.  This was out of a field of 10.  For our first contest entry of ANY type, that’s not too bad!  We all had a great time, and look forward to next year’s contest.  A big thank you goes out to everyone who participated, we couldn’t have done it without you!

Pearl Harbor remembrance was a great success. We had many callers, and we were able to work through them all. We had to resort to calling “by the numbers” when the pileups got big; we appreciate everyone’s patience in waiting their turn. If you did miss a chance to get us, you won’t have to wait too long, as we will be back on the air next weekend for “Yuletide Texas”. Operating times will be from roughly 11 am to 3 pm or so. It’ll be the last time to get the TEXAS this year, and quite possibly until May of next year.

We had many visitors to the shack on the ship. Sometimes there were more than could fit in our room – and that’s a good problem to have! I wasn’t in the room the whole time, so I hope everyone who wanted to get a chance to operate did…and if not, next time bug us and say “hey! I want a chance at the radio!” Some of the out of town visitors got special tours on the ship, and I was able to take a few around to some of the non-public access areas to see some of the old radios and transmitters.

Now, for QSL information you may be looking for. If you look in the upper right corner of the website, you’ll see a “QSL Info” link there. We ask that you please be patient with us, as we’re still behind from the Texas QSO party! However, QSOs from before the TQP (before Sep 24th) should be confirmed. If you have sent a card prior to that date and have not received a response, please click the “QSL Info” link and use the email there to find out what may have happened.  Our latest antenna improvements have made us much more successful on the air, and now we have quite the mountain of cards to go through, so it will take us some time.

Those of you who were lamenting the fact that the TEXAS was not on 80m, we have heard you , and we are sorry for that. We now realize we left out our local folks and we apologize. Getting a multi station going isn’t easy, and that only gets harder as one goes to the lower bands. Right now we can run 40m or 80m at night and we stayed with 40m on the ship’s vertical, since we were having good luck with that (59+20 into Europe on 100w is hard to turn away from!) Hopefully by the next event I’ll have filters built so we can run 80m/40m simultaneously. Also on the board is a set of filters for 10m, although I did run some 10m before anyone got there.

There were several folks who attended who stated they want to join the club. We are doing our best to put together a constitution, which will then be followed by a membership form. So, in the meantime, watch this space. We’ll keep y’all updated and hopefully we’ll have that done very soon.

If you’ve got something to say, please feel free to join the forum. Just look for the link on the right side of the main page that says “enter discussion forum here”. Register as a new user and you’ll be able to talk with us, make suggestions and get an idea of how we are progressing on our projects.

Until the next event, 73 de NA5DV/N5TGL …-.-

BTARS will be activating the ship on December 2nd – 3rd in remembrance of the sacrifices made at Pearl Harbor.  Times of operation will be as follows:

Friday, December 2nd: 10am – late night.  We’ll start on 40m, but most likely move to 15m as the day progresses.  Friday evening, we’ll be on 40m, and possibly moving to 80m.  We’ll keep the site here updated with our operating frequencies.

Saturday, December 3rd: 8am – 3pm.  Again, starting on 40m, but will move to 20m and higher as band conditions warrant.  We’ll post frequencies here, or check the DX spotters.

We’ll be happy to QSL with a full-color QSL card.  Just enclose a SASE and we’ll get it right out to you.  Anyone in the local Houston area who wants to participate in this event must contact Joe at prez@na5dv.org to make arrangements.

Thanks and hope to talk to you on the air!

A meeting of the Battleship Texas Amateur Radio Station board of directors will be held tonight.  Meeting will be at Starbucks at 547 South Mason Road, Katy, TX at 7pm.  Everyone is welcome to attend.

BTARS Board of Directors attended the monthly Houston Vintage Radio Association (HVRA) Board of Directors meeting.  BTARS provided an activities update to HVRA and outlined the short term goal to restore at least one of BB-35 longwire antennas.

HVRA voted to support BTARS in purchasing 2000 QSL cards and also to provide funds to restore one of the longwire antennas.

BTARS and HVRA reconfirmed our common goal, common origin, and our commitment to work together in the promotion of historical preservation of radio and the Battleship Texas.

A very special thanks goes out to HVRA for their continued and gracious support of BTARS activities!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and gave us a shout this weekend.  We got a new coax section run to our vertical, and also got a 14,700 btu air conditioner installed in the shack, which should make things much more comfortable.

Our next event will be on December 3rd.  Keep an eye on our “upcoming events” section in the sidebar for information.

73 de BTARS/NA5DV

QST! QST! QST!

We’re going to be on the ship this Saturday working on getting a new air conditioner installed, and also working on some more permanent coax runs. Since we can’t have all work and no play, we’re going to put the ship on the air after the work is done. We’re hoping to have the work complete by 6:00 pm and we’ll stay on the air probably until midnight or later if we don’t fizzle out. We should have two radios on the air, 20m and 40m. Look for us around 14.245 and 7.220 +- for QRM. Later evening may see us move down to below 7.200 so we can give the DX stations a chance.

vy 73 de NA5DV

• I’ve updated the site with a new theme that shows if you’re using a mobile device.  You can turn it off at the bottom if you don’t like it, but it should load pages a lot faster.
• I’ve added a plugin that will email registered users when new content is posted on the site
• I’m reviewing plugins that will do online polls
• I’m reviewing plugins that will show upcoming events in the sidebar

If you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know.  Also, if you get a mysterious email with a password in it, that’s your login for the blog here, and also so you will get an email when I post new content.