Richardson Texas – Club Call K5RWK
By Chip Coker KD4C The Richardson Area Balloonatics successfully launched (and mostly successfully recovered) another High-Altitude Balloon (HAB) on May 31 2025. Launch location was Gainesville TX and the landing/recovery location was Celeste TX (about 9 miles north of Farmersville…
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The Richardson Area Balloonatics will be planning to launch a high-altitude weather balloon on Saturday May 31, weather and upper atmosphere conditions permitting. The launch will be from Gainesville (details below), just north of the DFW metroplex, but near apogee…
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We’re taking advantage of the launch delay of our High-Altitude Balloon (now planned for May 31st) to again go over what’s on the balloon and how you can participate, either in person or from your shack. We look forward to…
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By Chip Coker KD4C There are several ways that you can participate in the May 2025 RWK Balloon Launch. If you want to participate from the comfort of your shack, here’s what you can do: Follow the launch on VHF…
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Larry KI5UXC is going to talk about (and possibly demonstrate) the benefits of adding some power to your signal by using a linear amplifier. While there have been some advances in linear amplifiers recently (especially in solid state amplifiers), using…
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One of the recurring payloads on the Richardson-area balloon flights is a DMR single-frequency repeater (SFR). This payload is very effective as a voice repeater, and very simple to access if you have a DMR radio. In various forms, we…
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For the RWK March 2025 General Meeting, we had Craig KM6LYW on to show off his DigiPi software, which combines most Ham Radio digital modes into a single, compact, easy-to-use, Raspberry Pi-based solution. For QRV Tech this month, we thought…
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It’s an unseen but critical component in every ham’s station – coax. But do you know how to select and handle coax, and why it matters? And how do you install and maintain coax? We won’t go into excessive detail…
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UPDATE: Cancelled! Well, we had hoped that the weather gods would be smiling on us when we planned the RWK POTA outing for tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. There’s the possibility of overnight rain to add…
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If there’s any subject that confuses hams, it’s likely to be grounding. It’s often discussed and often confusing. That’s because there are really at least three different types of grounding, and they are all different and require different solutions. A…
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