Puget Sound Repeater Group

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Board Policy on Gatherings: In light of the uncertainty about when large group gatherings will be safe again, it is not a good use of volunteer time to plan for our normal events. Board Meetings and Educational Meetings will be held online until further notice. The Annual Dinner will be replaced by an online social gathering (potluck?) and the Annual Meeting will also be conducted online.

Meeting Minutes for the August Board Meeting were approved at the October meeting and are available under the News and Information menu tab at the top of the page.

November Educational Meeting Recording. The Zoom meeting for the November Educational Meeting was recorded and is now available: November 2020 Educational Meeting.

Volunteers Wanted for 6m Repeater—Details below.

Got photos of PSRG events? Contact K7RCH@PSRG.ORG.

Coming Events:

Update: PSRG Board Meeting–Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 1:30 PM. Details below.

The QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo–March 13-14, 2021. This first of its kind Ham Expo was held in August 2020. A second Expo will be held in March 2021. Details can be found at: QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo.

Comm Academy—An emergency communications & amateur radio conference to be held online April 10-11, 2021. Information will be available at the updated  website Comm Academy.

PSRG is adding a 6m repeater to the stable! Are you interested in helping out with some technical projects ? This is a call for volunteers looking to get into some repeater building work! We provide parts and mentoring.

1. We need an air-cooling system for the new 6m repeater, that will trigger when the transmitter’s PTT is pushed and stops maybe 30s after the PTT is dropped. Great project for an Arduino or similar.
2. The 6m repeater will be set up much like our 2m system, so we need someone interested in setting up the Raspberry Pis that will act as the Allstar nodes.
3. Finally, we need to be able to remotely control the repeater — power cycling, shutting down the transmitter, etc.. This is also an RPi project.

If you’re interested in helping out and learning a little about repeater systems, contact Quenton Caudron and he’ll connect you to the right person.

Update: The next PSRG Board Meeting is on Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 1:30 PM. The Board Meeting will be online-only. Here’s the link:  December 12 Board Meeting.

This is an important meeting. Election plans will be discussed (election to be held at the annual Meeting in January). We will also be discussing suggestions for a change in how  membership is handled going forward.  As always, only board members will vote, but everyone’s input is welcome.

The November PSRG Educational Meeting, Repeaters, WWARA and the Future was recorded and is now available: November 2020 Educational Meeting.

The amateur repeater landscape is currently undergoing a significant change and it has been happening for the last 10 years. The WWARA is the repeater coordination body for western Washington and has identified trends, which mirror what happened in the commercial space, with a slow transition from traditional ‘wide band’ analog FM repeaters to digital and narrow band repeaters. This talk will provide some background on the how and why repeater coordination happens, the role the WWARA plays and provide some insight into the coming narrowband transition. The goal is to educate the repeater users and owners in western Washington and collect some feedback on how hams would like to shape this transition.

The speaker was Kenny Richards, KU7M. Kenny is the Secretary of WWARA, the frequency coordination body for Western Washington.

UPDATE  The PSRG Annual Picnic Social will take place on Sunday September 27th, at noon, via Zoom. Join us for some social fun! At 12:30, Doug KD7DK will be giving us all a review of the past year with the PSRG. The picnic is potluck and you are guaranteed to have food and beverages that you like! Zoom Link

Update: The September PSRG Educational Meeting, Build that rig ! An exploration of home-built radios through the ages, with speakers Tim, WT1IM, and Quentin, K7DRQ was recorded. The session can be viewed here: September Educational Meeting

Updated: The next PSRG Board Meeting is on Saturday, October 10, 2020 at 1:30 PM. The Board Meeting will be online-only at the following link:  http://zoom.us/join.

UPDATE: The next PSRG Board Meeting is on Saturday, August 8, 2020 at 1:30 PM. Unless otherwise posted, the Board Meeting will be online-only at the following link:  http://zoom.us/join. Click on the the following meeting ID to join the meeting: 99637186085

UPDATE: Unfortunately the board was unable to organize an educational meeting, but that’s no reason not to get together! The PSRG Educational Meeting scheduled for Saturday, July 11, 2020 at 1:30 PM has been changed to a social meeting on Zoom. The Zoom ID is 980 8658 8551.