Dues for 2020 need to be paid by January 31. If you’ve already paid your dues, THANKS! If not, please fill out the printable application for membership and send it in right away to get your membership status up to date.

Dues are only $30 per year for an individual, or $35 for an entire family!

Remember, YOU are an integral part of the club and your dues permit us to finance our activities. We have several recurring bills (website, liability insurance, phone, etc.) that are paid for entirely by the club dues. Don’t keep putting it off!

Please mail your dues to Joe Ducar, KJ4QFV, 9519 Edwards Place, Mint Hill, NC 28227. Do not mail anything to 501 Archdale Dr., The Salvation Army HQ!! Send it to Joe!!

The 2019 W4CQ Christmas Party was held on December 12, 2019 at the Salvation Army.  We had a good turnout, enjoyed some great fellowship, and had some great dishes to devour.

To view a slide show of photos from the party, click here.  All photos by Barbara Jones-Goodin.

You can now listen to the 444.4500 repeater on Broadcastify or via the Scanner Radio app on iPhone or Android devices.

Click here to listen on Broadcastify, or click on the play button below.

The Club now has a group on Facebook for anyone interested in amateur radio in the Charlotte area. It’s not just for Club members – if you are interested in amateur radio and need help with anything, such as how to get your license, how to set up an antenna or radio, or want to share something with the group, please join the W4CQ Facebook group.

We’ll try to respond to your join request ASAP, but it could be delayed a day or two.

To get to the Facebook group, click here.

We had a pretty good turnout at our March 2, 2019 Club meeting.  Bill Turner W4WNT came by and did a presentation on FT8, which was very well received.

FT8 is an amateur radio QSO communication protocol developed by Joe Taylor (K1JT) and Steve Franke (K9AN). FT8 uses 8-FSK modulation, transmission takes less than 15 seconds.

While sometimes criticized as being only a “paper chasing” mode because of its very structured format (no free-form text) and not being a conversational mode (like PSK), it’s great as a weak signal mode (and sometimes low-power).

It’s very good for evaluating propagation, since it’s easy to tell where you are being heard via the PSKreporter web site.

The software (WSJT, WSJT-X) is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

Bill’s presentation is available in both Microsoft Powerpoint and OpenOffice formats.

For the Powerpoint version, click here.

For the OpenOffice version, click here.

For a printable PDF version, click here.

To download the software for your computer, go to https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/

Shawn, K4RSG