This event is a joint Field Day with both the BEARONS (Boeing) and MicroHAMS, N7OS (Microsoft) employee clubs hosting.  It "officially" starts at 11 AM on Saturday June 22nd running 24 hours through Sunday the 23rd, with setup starting on Friday the 21st, at 11 AM.

It will be at Camp Freeman, a BSA campsite north of Monroe (right next door to Camp Edwards). The address is 25503 Monroe Camp Rd, Snohomish, Washington.   It's a short drive from Redmond and a really nice venue.

The GPS coordinates are: 47.979884793138716, -121.8866643689889. And here is the link in Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HazGPrJp23waeg7C7 There is an image of the site inserted below.

Talk in will be on 146.580 and contact numbers are in the emailed announcement.

Food! We'll have the expected fare with burgers and brats, and word has it that someone from BEARONS is bringing real BBQ!  Please bring a side dish to share as well as beverages if you want more than water.  We're trying to minimize waste so please plan to bring a cup or water bottle. We'll have cake for dessert!

There will be a nice camp fire both evenings.  We expect the temperature to be very nice there due to the great forest canopy surrounding the site. The day won't be too hot, and the nights won't be too cold.

Regardless of your experience level, we'd love for you to come and operate.  We'll have plenty of mentors and experienced hams to guide you and answer questions.  And with four stations, there will be plenty of opportunities to get in front of a radio and have some fun!

We will have educational materials and demos and other fun activities.  If you ahve a D-STAR or DMR hotspot, bring it to connect to our internet and be part of connecting our field day to hams everywhere!  

We will have a networked logging system with real-time data on "HamDash" https://hamdash.affirmatech.com/

Select the ARRL Field Day, and locate the entry for W7FLY to see what's happening with the on-the-air action.

And BEARONS has a facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064838762483

We really look forward to seeing you at field day this weekend!

73,

Grant, KB7WSD MicroHAMS club Secretary

Potentially more interesting was that we lined up some engaging speakers for the future.  This fall we'll have Tom Sykes, NU7J speaking about his experience as part of the H44WA Guadacanal, Solomon Islands DXpedition.  We also have Mike Lewis, K7MDL talking about desgning and building several important station components for VHF operation for the May meeting, and Ion Todirel, W7ION, talking about using Docker, and Linux to build a self healing (nearly) worry free APRS gateway in June.  As always, we welcome any suggestions for speakers or presentations, especially if youve' got an "in" with the speaker.

We also discussed our original Field Day plan (we had approached BEARONS to have a joint field day) that seems to have gone nowhere, and what we can do instead.  It looks like we will indeed be doing something for Field Day 2024, but the location and station details are still up in the air at this time.  We'll absolutely update you when we know more, which we expect to be in the next few days.

And as always, if you have any questions or ideas your Board of Directors wants to hear from you!

Microhams club meeting presentation recorded May 16, 2023
Joe Decuir presents Bluetooth Radios: Core 1.1 - Core 5.0

We'll also have the usual meeting activities including Ham Help and Show and Tell.

We will also discuss what field day plans people might have.

Meeting location is:

Garage Hub
MSFT Building 27, South wing
Address: 3009 157th Pl NE, Redmond, WA 98052

https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=7ffa44dd-2f41-4261-82d5-8fba0392cf77&cp=47.63597~-122.131628&lvl=17.55&pi=0&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027

Please congregate about five minutes before the meeting at the front entrance of the building, and a MS employee will come escort the group in.  146.58 MHz simplex will be monitored for anyone who needs help finding the site or for access to the building. (Monitoring is done with handhelds, so range is limited.) If you’re running late and are locked out, please call us on the radio or phone. We’ll send someone to let you in. PLEASE NOTE: Anyone who is not currently badged for unescorted access to Microsoft buildings MUST be escorted into the building by a badged MicroHAMS member. Do NOT under any circumstances attempt to “tag” onto or “tailgate” Microsoft employees entering the building.

MicroHAMS meetings are open to club members, those interested in joining the club (see club membership policy at http://www.microhams.com), and guests of club members. Others may also attend a club meeting by sending email to the club (we ask you to do that at least seven days prior to the meeting.)

73,

Grant Hopper, KB7WSD, MicroHAMS club Secretary

Each year since 2007 the Microsoft Amateur Radio Club (Microhams) has held a conference with a focus on digital communications.  The conference offers a variety of topics across a range of skill levels.  Our motto is “Inspire, Inform and Educate”.

So it is with sincere regret that we have to announce that the MHDC 2023 event is cancelled.  We were unable to get commitments from enough presenters to bring you the diverse, high-quality event we aspire to.  The club will be evaluating options for next year and will post updates both here and at https://www.mhdc.live/

Laurence Starks, AG7NB for the MHDC Team

The stream is live, the first talk is scheduled to begin at 9:00AM PDT.  The post conference survey is available now as well.

73,
Kenny

The final agenda, links to the YouTube stream for the presentations and the Zoom information for the breakout room is now all posted on the MHDC2021 page. 

Since 2007 the Microsoft Amateur Radio Club (MicroHAMS) has held a conference focusing on digital communications: the MicroHAMS Digital Conference (MHDC). The mission of the MDHC conference is to “inspire, inform and educate.” As such, the MHDC presenters offer a variety of topics across a wide range of skill levels. 

One of the virtues of going online is that we can invite presenters that would be impractical to bring to the Seattle area.  This year, half of our presenters are from outside our area.  The latest updates will be published on the MicroHAMS web site at http://www.microhams.com/mhdc2021/. 

This year’s conference will feature the following – 

• Walter Holmes, K5WH – Free DV Digital Voice for HF 
• Gregg Marco, W6IZT – Rig in a Box solution for DXpeditions 
• Bob Bruninga, WB4APR – The APRS author will discuss the latest developments 
• Paul Elliott, WB6CXC – Developing and tracking drift buoys 
• Paul Sturmer, KI7WLV – High speed communications from HuskySat-1 
• Bryan Hoyer, K7UDR – The ultimate packet workstation 

See you Saturday! (April 24, 2021)
Scott Honaker, N7SS for the MHDC Team 

With a thank you to Kenny Richards KU7M for acting as Teller for the 2021 Board of Directors election, your board members met Tuesday April 6th to organize themselves into the 2021-2022 Board of Directors for the club with the following results:

Laurence Starks, AG7NB will once again serve as president

Dennis Tillman, W7pF will once again serve as vice president

Grant Hopper, KB7WSD will once again serve as secretary

David Jenni, W7CF will once again serve as treasurer

Scott Honaker, N7SS will again serve as a director and chair of the MHDC

Miguel Mayorga, KC7IGT will again serve as a director

And newly elected to the board, Brian Stucker, KB2S will also serve as a director.

Thank you to all our members for voting, and thank you to all of the board members for being willing to serve and guide the club for the next year.

73,
Grant, KB7WSD

Steve Waterman, K4CJX presentation on SHARES from the August 2020 membership meeting is now available on the MicroHAMs YouTube channel.

73,
Kenny, KU7M

This year we identified a new venue that has room to grow and meets our needs. We started our planning around the new venue when the virus struck. We kept adjusting our plans as the requirements changed. There was a temptation to simply cancel the conference rather than continue to pursue this moving target. Ultimately, we felt it was more important than ever to deliver the conference. The virtual format also offered us the opportunity to reach out to speakers we could not practically bring to Seattle.

We normally get about 100 people at the physical conference. You may have noticed we saw between 300-500 people actively watching the stream over the course of the conference. Interestingly, we also saw 2000 unique views during the conference so clearly some people only attended a portion of the day or specific sessions. We’re pleased with these numbers but if we had been better prepared for all the changes, we would have created a larger advertising push for a greater reach.

We’re happy to announce the videos have been published to YouTube on the Microhams channel. You can find the agenda with the links to the corresponding video on the Microhams web site at MHDC2020. We would encourage you to pass this information along and share broadly with others.

The final accounting isn’t complete but it appears the donations just covered our expenses this year. Feel free to help others find the donate button on the Microhams web site so we can continue to bring you this content in the future. We don’t know what next year will look like but we’ll be ready. We already have a date and deposit on a venue.

It would also be very helpful if you would complete the conference survey so we can improve the conference experience in the future. The survey is short and should be quick. You can find it HERE.

Mark your calendar. We hope to see you Saturday April 24, 2021!

Scott Honaker, N7SS

MHDC 2020 Chair

The event had several technical challenges in the morning, but the onsite crew continued to work through the hurdles and eventually were able to stream all the planned talks. (A huge thank you to all the speakers and especially the Winlink guys who came to try their talk again after we completely messed it up in the morning)

Because of all the technical challenges, the original stream isn’t planned to be released. But all the individual talks have been moved to the new MicroHAMS channel on YouTube

If you would still like to donate to help cover the production and streaming costs, please use the link below.

More information about the stream and conference details will be posted later this week.

73,

MHDC-Crew

Speaker Bio’s