Bloghorn

With the wild success of the first meeting of the year, we’ve started full scale planning for the events that we want to do to mark the 100th year of the Penn State Amateur Radio Club’s existence on the air. Well, at least the 100th as far as we can tell. Here’s a quick rundown of the schedule as it stands now (subject to minor alterations, of course), and our plans for the semester:

The next General Meeting will be February 11th, 2009 at 8:30 PM in the Wagner building. We will finalize all the dates and such at this meeting, and hopefully have a presentation from one of the club members. Shouldn’t take too long.

As requested, the review sessions for amateur radio exams will take place on February 18th at 8:30 PM in the wagner building. We’ll go over technician class topics first, then transition into general class topics for those seeking an upgrade.

The big party will be a culminating weekend of activity, specifically April 18-19. All weekend, the club will be using a special call sign we’ve secured from another ham for the weekend, K3PSU, and we’ll be sending out special QSL cards made specially for the occassion. On Saturday, we will be holding an open station day for all students and interested parties to drop by and see how it all works, and on Sunday we will be co-sponsoring a foxhunt with the electrical engineering first year lecture class. We’re expecting a lot of activity that weekend, and will have some special T-Shirts made to mark the occassion.

But that’s not all! Thanks to Sander, the current Vice President, we’re talking to iCom about getting a new D-STAR repeater set up in the station to bring the club’s equipment into the 21st century. We’re still working out the details, but with some luck the system will be in place for the weekend.

We’ve got a lot of work to do to get ready for the weekend, but I’m sure that everyone who shows up will have a great time.

This weekend was the prep weekend for the upcoming “tactical” at Newville. The site consists of two parallel trenches and some surrounding woodlands, with impact craters between the trenches. It looks pretty cool on Google Maps. Our unit’s role is going to be combat engineers, which means that instead of making suicide charges all day, we sneak around, plant charges, clear trenches, cut wires, essentially the fun stuff. The purpose of the training was to get everyone on the same page as to tactics, signals, commands, and the like.

Me and Rob dragged Ryan from down the hall to the event as well, and he had so much fun that he’s going to be coming to Newville as well. But don’t take my word for it, the proof is in the pictures.

Ryan's first shot

Everyone hates Mosin stripper clips

Rob thinks he's accurate at 100 yards in the freezing cold. LOL!

I check my last shot before lining up another.

Me and my borrowed Mosin

My kill. Everyone was trying to shoot it, but when I fired, it practically exploded.

The commanders giving a chalk talk on Commie tactics

Creepy old Uncle Olaf talking about bunker busting

The morning's spent brass

I think we’re set for Newville after this weekend.

And live rounds are FUN!

Found this picture of the Russian unit from the North Carolina event. Someone’s photoshopped it to look “period” (like it came from the Eastern Front from 1944), and I really like the way it came out. Thought you reader(s?) might like it.

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