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FARS Meeting Programs - 2012 [2011] [2010]


FARS meetings take place on the 4th Friday of each month, except for no meeting in January (Winter Banquet), and meetings on a different Friday in June (Field Day), November (Thanksgiving), and December (Christmas). See the calendar for specific dates.

Meeting Schedule

7:00PM - General socializing.

7:30PM - Introductions, Show and Tell.

7:45PM - The evening's program.

8:45PM - FARS business.

After the program, and FARS business, we hold a prize raffle and the "Wish You Were Here" drawing for all the cash in the jar!

Visitors are welcome to attend our regular meetings. (directions)

FARS meetings are held at Covington School, 205 Covington Road, Los Altos, CA.


Friday February 24, 2012 - Membership Meeting

Balloons and the California Near Space Project
Ron Meadows, K6RPT, and Don Ferguson, KD6IRE.

Ron and Don are active members of the California Near Space Project http://www.californianearspaceproject.com/.

Ron and his son Lee have been outfitting balloons with high tech electronics since 2009. They've put GPS, APRS, cameras and crossband repeaters on balloons filled with hydrogen and helium.

In 2011 they set new records for both altitude and distance, beating US government agency records. The records were confirmed by the use of onboard GPS, and balloons were tracked by their APRS transmissions. They were featured in two stories on ARRL's web site at http://www.californianearspaceproject.com/arrl_cnsp-10.html and http://www.californianearspaceproject.com/arrl_cnsp-11.html.

The first record was in October 2011, when Ron's tenth balloon, CNSP-10, reached a record altitude of 136,545 feet. That's 26 miles up! Two months later, in December, their eleventh balloon, CNSP-11, cruised as high as 115,000 feet as it crossed the United States, then the Atlantic Ocean. It was tracked by a Nova Scotia coastal station to the limit of reception before it's signal was lost to the noise. Then the faint signal was picked up from the island of St. Miguel in the Azores. Stations around the world tuned to listen to the little balloon from Silicon Valley as it headed toward Europe. The balloon eventually landed in the Mediterranean Sea, a whopping distance of 6,236 miles!

Come and hear the exciting story of these amazing feats of Amateur Radio and ballooning.

Other:

Refreshments
Raffle prizes
Questions for Dr Know-it-All

We will be raffling off prizes at this meeting:



Previous Programs

Friday January 20, 2012 - FARS/PAARA Winter Banquet

Radio on the High Seas
Richard Dillman, W6AWO
Maritime Historical Radio Society

Richard speaks about the history of radio on the high seas with a slide show of photos and a stirring and melodramatic narration.

We had $1,200 in prizes for the banquet raffle. The major prizes include a Yaesu FT-857D HF/VHF/UHF (100W HF, DSP, and 60M band), and a Powerwerx KG-UV3D/UHF (Dual band HT 2M/70cm). Click banquet for all the details.



Past Programs 2011