W4CQ - Charlotte Amateur Radio Club - Page 5 of 5 - The official web site of the Charlotte Amateur Radio Club W4CQW4CQ

The Official Site of The Charlotte Amateur Radio Club – W4CQ

The Charlotte Amateur Radio Club - W4CQ is a general interest radio club serving the Charlotte, NC area. We generally meet on the first Saturday of every month at 10:00 AM at the Salvation Army Divisional headquarters, our served agency. We're located at 501 Archdale Drive in Charlotte, NC. 28217, near I-77 Exit 4 (Nations Ford Road).

Check our Calendar of Events for changes and additions to the meeting schedules.

Feel free to come by and meet the members. We have a working club station on site with active HF, VHF and UHF equipment. This is a secured facility, please arrive no later than 9:35 AM to assure access.

W4CQ 444.4500 Repeater On The Web

Published August 11, 2019 | By Shawn 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.

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W4CQ Facebook Group Online!

Published April 24, 2019 | By Shawn Goodin

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.

Great FT8 Presentation at March 2019 Meeting!

Published March 4, 2019 | By Shawn Goodin

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

Mailing List Moving to Groups.IO

Published February 17, 2019 | By Shawn Goodin

Hey Club members!

This is a friendly reminder that the Club mailing list is moving to Groups.io. If you have not accepted the invitation from W4CQ at Groups.io, please do so as soon as possible,

We are moving the list from w4cc.net to Groups.io because sometime later this year, w4cc.net may be shutting down.

Groups.io has no ads (unlike Yahoo), is simple to use, and data from there is not used for marketing purposes (like Google sometimes does). It is safe, and many other user groups have already moved there.

If you have any questions, send an email to k4rsg at w4cq.org.

Thanks, and 73,
Shawn K4RSG