Medina County Amateur Radio Club (MCARC) Vol IV Issue 2 January 2021 Member to Member News Beacon Prez’s Preface “Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's Thank you to Ed Eyerdom K8NVR, Also, please remember to fill out the matter, who submitted this month’s puzzle, the new/renewal Membership form That you have such a February face, below, for technical tinkerers. and send it in with your 2021 dues So full of frost, of storm and (and 2020 if you forgot) to our The answers will be published in the cloudiness?” new Membership Chair, Diane March edition of the News Beacon. ~William Shakespeare, Much Ado about KD8SSX. See page 8 for more Inside this issue: Nothing, c.1598 Ed also presented a Zoom Technical info. Session on SDR Play on January 21. January 11 Minutes 2 I hope your “February face,” Happy Valentines’ Day! If you missed it, the video is magnified by Covid restrictions, will available at W8EOC.org, Calendar 3 soften with the thought that spring 73, Facebook.com/MedinaCountyAmate and vaccines are on the horizon. [email protected] Radar Chaff 4 & 5 urRadioClub and on our NEW Having endured 2020, at least 2021 Medina County Amateur Radio Club Repeaters 6 promises a glimmer of sunshine. YouTube Channel. Check it out. Who We Are 7 Dues Form 8 Puzzler page 2 MCARC (M2M) News Beacon MCARC January 11 On-Air General Meeting Minutes The December 14, 2020 Member Meeting was held on-air because of Coronavirus restrictions. The net opened at 7:30pm with check-ins logging onto the 147.030MHz repeater. The net was controlled by Toby WT8O. The following paid members (and guests) were present (X - not) for the network meeting: Toby WT8O - NCO Ed K8NVR Diane KD8SSX Jody KE8GKO John K8JEK Ray K2RWO Baji K8IIT Gordon AI8Y Julio KE8JIE Frank KN4AW Jane K8JGR Doug KD8SST Amy K2KSU Dave KE8APO Ken K8TV 14 members present for meeting, Quorum (9) was reached. NCO, Toby, asked net participants for their first go-around comments. Toby then transferred control over to Jane K8JGR to conduct the regular monthly meeting… ***** The meeting was called to order at 8:09pm and opened with the Pledge of Allegiance. Secretary’s report: Motion to suspend the reading of December 14 minutes as published in the January newsletter by Ray (K2RWO), seconded by Doug (KD8SST). There were no objections or corrections, so the minutes were approved as presented. Treasurer’s report: Diane (KD8SSX) read the treasurer’s report submitted by Gail (KD8GGM). Motion to approve was made by Dave (KE8APO) and seconded by Doug (KD8SST). Membership voted to accept the report. President’s report: Jane stated that she received two email requests for Technician License training and inquired if any members would be willing to tutor them individually. The only comment was an inquiry where they were located. There was a discussion regarding if there are any active VE testing sites for licensing. CARS (2Cars.org) is testing every other month and Silvercreek (W8WKY.org) will be testing on March 6. Ed (K8NVR) will be presenting a technical session on January 21st at 7PM on Zoom for interested members on SDR play receivers. Contact Jane ([email protected]) for an invitation link. Reminder to send in dues for 2021. They should be sent to Diane (KD8SSX) rather than Gail. Anyone wishing to submit articles for our February newsletter should get them to Jane by the last week of January. There was an Ohio simplex contest this past weekend. Club participants were K8FH, NF8O, KD8SST, N8JNX, and K8JEK. This weekend is the VHF contest (6m and above all modes). New business: Julio (KE8JIE) will be preparing to launch an APRS balloon with his son for a school project. John (K8JEK) offered a Styrofoam cooler for the purpose of holding the radio equipment. Julio explained that this is a “pico balloon” which is small and non-recoverable so the cooler will not be required. Jane asked Julio to let the membership know when it is being launched so interested member can track it. Motion to Adjourn: Amy (K2KSU) and seconded by Julio (KE8JIE). The meeting was adjourned at 8:29 p.m. Respectfully submitted by Dave KE8APO ======== Jane K8JGR transferred control back to NCO, Toby WT8O, who continued the net with a second round of comments, before returning the repeater back to normal operations. MCARC (M2M) News Beacon page 3 February 8, 2021 On-Air Meeting The Medina County Amateur Radio Club will not be holding in-person meetings until the threat of Coronavirus is under control. However, Monday, February 8th, the Club will hold the meeting during a special 2-meter net at 7:30 pm. See page 6 for frequency and tone. MCARC (M2M) Calendar Hamatuer Antix February 1 7:30pm Monday Night 2M Net February 8 7:30pm MCARC On-Air General Meeting February 15 7:30pm Monday Night 2M Net February 22 7:30pm Monday Night 2M Net February ARRL Contests Feb 8-12 ARRL/LIMARC February School Club Roundup Feb 20-21 International DX CW Contest Hamfests Feb 13-14 Virtual Hamcation https://www.hamcation.com/ We are hosting some unique Webinars, a QSO Party and Prize Drawings for 2021. With a virtual event, you can attend from anywhere you have an internet connection. Attend great webinars, join our QSO party, checkout our great prizes, earn or upgrade your license with in-person VEC exams, and more! Do it all from 'virtually' anywhere. page 4 MCARC (M2M) News Beacon The Woman Whose Invention Helped Win a War — and Still Baffles Weathermen Her work long overlooked; physicist Joan Curran developed technology to conceal aircraft from radar during World War II. On June 4, 2013, the city of Huntsville, Alabama was enjoying a gorgeous day. Blue skies, mild temperatures. Just what the forecasters had predicted. But in the post-lunch hours, meteorologists started picking up what seemed to be a rogue thunderstorm on the weather radar. The “blob,” as they referred to it, mushroomed on the radar screen. By 4 PM, it covered the entire city of Huntsville. Strangely, however, the actual view out of peoples’ windows remained a calm azure. The source of the blob turned out to be not a freak weather front, but rather a cloud of radar chaff, a military technology used by nations all across the globe today. Its source was the nearby Redstone Arsenal, which, it seems, had decided that a warm summer’s day would be perfect for a completely routine military test. More surprising than the effect that radar chaff has on modern weather systems, though, is the fact that its inventor’s life’s work was obscured by the haze of a male-centric scientific community’s outdated traditions. The inventor of radar chaff was a woman named Joan Curran. Born Joan Strothers and raised in Swansea on the coast of Wales, she matriculated at the University of Cambridge’s Newnham College in 1934. Strothers studied physics on a full scholarship and enjoyed rowing in her spare time. Upon finishing her degree requirements in 1938, she went to the University’s preeminent Cavendish Laboratory to begin a doctorate in physics. At the Cavendish, Strothers was assigned to work with a young man named Samuel Curran. For two years, Strothers got along swimmingly with her new lab partner. But with international conflict brewing in Europe, in 1940 the pair was transferred twice to work on military research and ended up at Exeter. There, the two developed proximity fuses to destroy enemy planes and rockets. There also, Strothers married Sam and took on his last name, becoming Joan Curran. Shortly after their wedding in November, the Currans transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in the autumn of 1940. Curran joined a team led by British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert R.V. Jones that was developing a method to conceal aircraft from enemy radar detection. The idea, Jones later explained in his book Most Secret War, was simple. Radar detectors measure the reflection of radio waves of a certain wavelength off of incoming objects. As it turns out, thin metal strips can resonate with incoming waves, and also re-radiate the waves. Under the right conditions, the re-radiated waves create the sonic impression of a large object when in reality, there is none—hence, the blob in Alabama. This property means that a few hundred thin reflectors could, together, reflect as much energy as a heavy British bomber plane would. A collection of strips might conceal the exact location of an aircraft during a raid behind a large cloud of signal, or even lead the enemy to believe they were observing a major attack when in reality, there was only one or two planes. By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, Curran was nearly a year into painstaking experiments on using metals to reflect radar signals. She had tried a seemingly countless number of sizes and shapes, from singular wires to metal leaflets the size of notebook paper. The leaflets had been a particularly interesting idea, since they could do double-duty as propaganda sheets with text printed on them. In 1942, Curran finally settled on reflectors that were about 25 centimeters long and 1.5 centimeters wide. The reflectors were aluminized paper strips bundled into one-pound packets and intended to be thrown out of the leading aircraft. When defenestrated from a stream of bombers once every minute, they could produce “the radar equivalent of a smokescreen,” according to Jones. Cont’d Next Page MCARC (M2M) News Beacon page 5 A Woman’s Invention – Cont’d… In 1943, the reflector strips were put to a serious military test when the Allies launched Operation Gomorrah on Hamburg, Germany.