The USS Wisconsin Radio Club will hold its regular monthly meeting at Noon on Saturday, February 8th. The Club meets the 2nd Saturday of each month at Gus and George’s Spaghetti & Steakhouse, 4312 Virginia Beach Boulevard in Virginia Beach. As mentioned at the last meeting, the Club is considering a logo of its own, rather than using the official crest of the ship itself. Examples received to date will be reviewed. Additional submissions are encouraged. Please send any logos that you wish to have considered direct to me. A committee of club members met with Jason Hartberge, who is the main electrician for the ship. A decision was made to install aft either another Carolina Windom antenna or perhaps a long wire antenna. Jason and his crew worked with us to run two new coax feeds into our new space opposite our original shack on the 03 Deck. This will allow us to move all of the WWII gear over to the new space. I will provide more details at the meeting. The donation of the RAK & RAL radios shipped from Texas has been received. Preliminary investigation is being made into the steps necessary to renovate these historic radios. See the 3 photos above. I will go into more detail at the meeting. Our 100 milliwatt WSPR transmitter, based on a Raspberry Pi platform, continues to perk right along. Aside from stateside stations, our signal is routinely received in Europe and the Canaries, and occasionally in Alaska, Hawaii, and even Antartica. I hope you were able to attend FrostFest in Richmond last weekend. Forum highlights included the forum presentations by the Space Weather Woman Dr. Tamitha Skove, and the new ARES initiatives for Virginia. If you found some bargains on the main floor, let us know what you purchased. Our own club QSL Manager, Ed Gibbs, KW4GF, is now the Public Information Coordinator of the ARRL VA Section. If you are not already receiving his periodic newsletters via email, see Ed at one of our meetings and sign up. All of these improvements require not only many hours of hard work by our members and friends who have the necessary skills and expertise … but also CASH. Dues for 2020 are now due. Those failing to re-up by the end of March will, unfortunately, be culled from our membership roster and email list. As a reminder, only local members pay annual dues - $10 for an individual or $15 for a family. Associate and honorary members do not pay dues on a continuing basis, but donations are gratefully received. You may pay your dues online via PayPal by following THIS LINK. However, bringing a check, money order, or cash to a meeting is the preferred method as it saves us the PayPal transaction fee. It is going to be 70 degrees on Saturday or 20 degrees? In Hampton Roads, who knows? Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, but either way, come to the meeting! 73 Bill, N3WM President USS Wisconsin Radio Club, Inc. The USS Wisconsin Radio Club, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation engaged in educational and charitable activities ==
