DAREN of WV News April 2, 2017(.C91)
WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, 319 COMMUNICATIONS DR, WAVERLY, WV 26184
www.wc8ec.com or www.wc8ec.org
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 MHz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com. A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'. The DAREN News can also be found on the www.wc8ec.com and www.wc8ec.org websites.
I hope I didn't bore everyone with the article about converting old computer power supplies to 13.8 Volts. There have been some changes in the article since I first started it. If anyone would like a complete copy of the article with the latest changes, just drop me an E-Mail or a message on PKBGWV. My nephew Sammy Mercer, N8SVX, and I are trying to convert some of the newer high current, 20 Amp power supplies. Once we figure out simple conversion we'll let you know.
While at the Charleston Hamfest last week my nephew Sammy Mercer, N8SVX, picked up a Kantronics KPC-3 Plus TNC. While we were checking it out we decided to upgrade it to 512K of memory. We looked through the JAMECO Electronic Catalog for the Static Ram. We found what we thought might work. Sammy ordered a couple of them for around $13 each. They came in on Friday. I took one of them and he took the other. Within just a couple of hours of each other, we both had upgraded two TNCs to 512K. As soon as I had my TNC upgraded, I went on the JAMECO website and ordered ten 512K Static Ram Memory Chips. By buying ten of them the cost was only $10.95 each plus shipping. I remember upgrading my first TNCs from 32K to 128K, and it cost me about $28 per memory chip. If you are interested in upgrading your Kantronics KPC-3 or KPC-3 Plus, or any of the other Kantronics upgradable TNCs, you can get the Static Ram memory chips from JAMECO Electronics, www.jameco.com. The JAMECO Part Number and model number for the 512K Static Ram is: 157358 & 628512LP-70. My memory chips should be here in a couple days.
Members of Wood County Emergency Communications spent several hours today in the woods providing the safety communications for the Challenge at Mountain Bike Race. Since I've been busy getting things ready for it, and a couple of other projects, I hadn't had time to work on getting some of my DAREN stations back on the air. Now that I have a little bit of time I'm starting to work on them. I'm going to replace the Transceivers at JACKWV/RPLYWV, WIRTWV/ELIZWV, and WETZWV/NMARWV stations, with Motorola 100 Watt radios. While I'm working on those stations, I may upgrade them to 512K of memory. As soon as I get those stations back in operation I'll be looking at changing out the transceivers on WOODWV/PKBGWV and RITCWV/HRVLWV. When I change out the RITCWV/HRVLWV transceiver, I'm thinking about changing out the TNC to a Kantronics KPC-3 Plus with version 9.0 software and 512K of memory. By changing out that TNC, I can set it up to have multiple stations connected at the same time to the HRVLWV PBBS. The PKBGWV is already set up to allow multiple stations to be connected, and it already has 512K of memory.
There were 33 check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week. Ken "Cappy" Caplinger, WV8KDC, who has been participating in the net since January 16, 2016, has completed 50 check-ins, and will be receiving his certificate. Gary Rosenlieb, KC8YJJ, needs only one more check-in to make 100.