This Month, Steve, AB2EW, will be presenting a homebrew receiver he built for 30 meters. Here is an abstract of the talk in Stave's own words:

This talk summarizes my experiences in building an NE-602 based superheterodyne receiver for 30m CW. The original design is taken from 73 Magazine, April 1991. My improved version of this circuit includes a better image-reject filter, a sharp IF crystal filter, and an effective passive audio filter.

The radio has no automatic gain control, and so we must carefully adjust the RF gain control to avoid overload. Otherwise, the radio plays very well, being both sensitive and selective over the band.

We discuss the basic theory behind the operation of a single-conversion superhet, as well as crystal characterization and filter design. We also discuss some important details needed to be understood in order to successfully build, test, and operate this radio.

I built the receiver in a Hershey’s Sweet Milk Chocolates tin, which now sports a big orange tuning knob fashioned from the cap of a Tropicana juice container. The radio will be available for inspection.

Radio Central Amateur Radio Club meetings are open to non-members as well as members. Anyone interested in Amateur Radio or wireless history is welcome to attend.

Our 2013 General Meetings will be at the Middle Country Public Library in Centereach. You can get directions to the Middle Country Public Library here.

On November 3, we celebrated the 92nd anniversary of the activation of the RCA Radio Central Rocky Point transmitter facility in 1921 with our annual "Radio Central Day" special event at the Marconi Shack in Rocky Point, operating as W2RC.

We ran two stations - a Kenwood TS450S into an R7 vertical and a Yaesu FT897 into a G5RV - with a goal of making at least 50 contacts on CW and SSB combined. The November Sweepstakes CW operators were wall to wall but they stayed out of the 40 meter Novice band (7100 to around 7120 kHz) so we were able to make some nice, laid back contacts with some of the SKCC guys on 7114. We has some nice band openings on 15 and 20 meters as well. At the end of the day, we logged 71 QSOs, 18 on CW and 53 on SSB. All told, we worked 18 states and 12 DCXX countries.

The 47 operators we contacted who had valid e-mail addresses posted on QRZ.com have already received certificates via e-mail. If you worked us and would like to receive a certificate, but don't have your email address posted on qrz.com, you can drop us a line at with your email address and we'll get a certificate out to you via email.

QSL Information:

Send sase to:

Radio Central Amateur Radio Club, W2RC

PO Box 396

Centereach, NY 11720

  Ham Radio and Distracted Driving

In light of increasingly strict "Distracted Driving" laws, our ARRL Hudson Division Director contacted the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles to get their position on operation of mobile Amateur Radio equipment with respect to Distracted Driving laws. The DMV responded with a letter of opinion that appears to be very favorable to Amateur Radio. Basically is says that talking via ham radio does not constitute a violation of the Distracted Driving laws. It should be noted that though the DMV's letter (which can be downloaded from the Hudson Division web page here, of or from the RCARC web page here) is pro-Amateur Radio, it's an opinion from the DMV, not a binding agreement, so it's still possible to get pulled over, cited, and required to appear in court. More importantly, you should always give the road and traffic absolute priority over operating your radio while driving. In Mike Lisenco's own words: "Feel free to print out this opinion, but understand that it is not a license to be stupid! Let’s hope that you never need to use it."

Online Renewal is Working Again!

Our capability to renew membership via Pay Pal has been restored. Go here for details.