Once again spring has arrived, even though the spring weather is seriously lagging this year. This however will not likely discourage the faithful on their journey to the Dayton Hamvention 2013.

As usual the gang from WMPORN will be there making memories and I have added a link over to the left hand side for Dayton 2013 where I have started the blog for this years event that will be updated as time and energy permit.

Please note that due to unfortunate circumstances during last years event, WMPORN has found it necessary to place a ban on the use of Motorcycles and/or Motor Scooters for travel to and from the arena. If you had plans to do such an idiotic thing, please make plans to travel using a safer mode of transportation.

Once again we will be located at booths FW2530 - FW2534. You will note that the numbers for the spots are clearly marked on at least half a dozen different locations in the fleamarket, and you will need to count from there to figure it out. Another possible way is to spot the little red wagon (AKA my red minivan) and the WMPORN banner (unless once again removed by super trooper security speacalist Larry Apple).

For those of you wishing to join us, please feel free. We usually have extra chairs and something to drink. If you need to sell an item you may do so, all we ask is that you donate for the table space. WMPORN is not supported by outside donations, and all costs are obsorbed by those who participate. We are quite generous, however a small donation does help defray the costs of bringing more fun to one place than to which any ham has a right.

Unfortunately one of the WMPORN repeaters was damaged by localized flooding in the Moline area. The repeater is still useable however a portion of the telemetry system continues to malfunction due to a leak of Di-Hydrogen Oxide. Unfortunately the Di-hydeogen Oxide leak was not pure and contained impurities that caused a corruption of data that the repeater depended on. Hopefully we will be able to find replacement parts at Dayton so that the repeater can be restored to normal operation in the very near future. Please feel free to stop by the booth and make donations to the repair fund to help defray the expenses.

Please note, WMPORN shall not be healed liable for any sunburn, water damage, bunions, aching muscles, frost bite, wind damage, injury from lightning strike, indigestion, scrapes, bruises, broken limbs, motorcycle crashes, lost items, damage to vehicles, or the attitude of certain security members while attending Hamvention.

We have also found it necessarry this year to add some additional information. When using the WMPORN portable repeater, a fee shall be assessed to any individual that uses certain terms such as "over, over and out, out, or any report or indicator beginging with the letter Q that shall be reserved for CW transmissions. Should ideal weather prevail the repeater will be under net control by the local LAZES Coordinator for the Blue Sky Net otherwise known as Weather WARM. In the event of adverse weather there is no need to use the repeater since pretty much nobody wants to talk anyway. (in reality we suggest that you change the channel on your radio to one of the local repeaters and listen to get proper information, we may have fun, but we don't want to see anyone hurt).

Above all else, have fun. We look forward to seeing you there.

You can read a little bit about a WMPORN Dayton trip by clicking here.

The N8JPR repeater transmitting on 223.920 MHz has been having some serious issues for awhile. The repeater was to the point of being mostly unusable. Many people were dismayed by this, but a crack team of repeater repairmen set out to work on several group repeaters all in one day, and this was one of the repeaters that needed to be looked at. We worked on several repeaters to try to make each of them better.

First off, the N8JPR repeater was found to have a problem with the channel element for the receiver. This resulted in the inability to return the repeater to receiver to the correct frequency and remained out of tune by too much to be usable. A brand new channel element was ordered and put into the repeater and a rough tuning resulted in a slightly more usable system. A few days later, Sam made it up to the Moline site with his test equipment and tuned the repeater correctly and tweaked a few other things as well, making the repeater once again sound great.

John's repeater still has a small problem with the antenna system, but we are a bit limited in what we can do about it at this time. We would like to replace the antenna, but first we have to have an atenna. Once we have the antenna we have to either wait until a professional crew is going to climb the tower so that we can share costs, or we have to hire them directly at a big cost to us. I know, most hams like to do their own climbing, but this is a 525 foot tower and the owner has certain responsibilities. If you want to climb the tower and have both accident and liability insurance, feel free to contact us, we would love to have your help from time to time.

In other news, the Morley repeater that is a joint effort between Sam K8SN and Mike KB8ZGL is beginning to work. It still has issues, and slowly but surely they are being worked out. The Morley repeater was also visited by the work party and Jeff N8FYZ spent several hours trying to run down an odd problem that the system has. The idea is for this repeater to eventually be a full time North link to the K8SN repeater and features an HF remote base that is fully operational from either repeater. With the remote base features of the K8SN repeater the system will have remote capabilities on 144MHz, 220 MHz and HF (possibly more). Hopefully in the near future we will have some pictures of the Morley machine to put on the website.

Also on the big work day and amplifier was installed on the UHF DSTAR module raising it's output level from 22 Watts to 50 Watts.

In a seperate outing Sam stopped by to return his 224.760 repeater to operation again.

We are also in testing mode of some new software to replace the old DPLUS software that we have used on the DSTAR system for several years. Unfortunately the software we were using was not meeting the criteria of what we fealt it needed to do, and the software developer chose to not take on those issues. I want to make it clear right now though, we have nothing against the developer of the old software, it did a great job and it was free, enough said.

The new software will allow running one single piece of linking software on the DSTAR Gateway that allows us to connect to both the standard reflectors as well as the Freestar reflectos and new DCS reflectors. With the hard work of Mike KB8ZGL we can even link the DSTAR machines to the mighty K8SN repeater and the N8JPR repeater. More details later (as in after I learn more about the software that I am running).