I am excited to inform the Club that I have secured Rob Sherwood, of Sherwood Engineering to be our Guest Speaker for the August 2, 2023 Club Meeting via Zoom. Here is Bob’s bio, which is quite impressive. Bob is the Gold Standard with regard to review and testing of all Amateur Radio receivers. Please join us on August 2, 2023 at 7:00 PM for this presentation, which is sure to be very informative!
Ham radio began for me in 1961 in Cincinnati, Ohio, as both a novice and general-class operator. After graduating college in 1969 with a degree in physics, I moved to Denver and worked for KOA radio as an engineer until 1987. While at KOA, I maintained their 50 KW AM and FM transmitters, microwave links and studio equipment.
1974 saw the beginning of Sherwood Engineering, offering roofing filters and upgrade kits for the Drake R-4C. In 1976 I started measuring receiver performance on dozens of radios, since reviews in QST did not correlate with actual on-air observations at crunch time in CW contests. In 1977 “ham radio magazine” published the first of several of my articles on receiver problems and cures, vertical antenna ground systems and mobile antenna efficiency. Those articles are available on my web site as PDF files. Receiver test data is now web based with 150 transceiver and receiver listings.
In the 80s I was invited to be a forum speaker at the Dayton Hamvention on several occasions, discussing both receiver and antenna performance issues. In 2004 I returned to the Dayton Contest Forum, giving a talk on the status of receivers both old and new, with special emphasis on the Orion and the Icom 7800. In 2007 the Drake Forum had me present a talk on the pros and cons of the new batch of DSP transceivers. In 2009 I made a presentation at the Dayton Hamvention Antenna Forum on ground systems for vertical antennas.
2016 included a presentation at the Visalia DX Convention. In 2017 & 2023 I spoke at ARRL Hamcon in Wyoming. Also two appearances at the Duke City Hamfest in Albuquerque, NM. Contest University 2023 will be my 16th annual presentation at this great event.
Other speaking invitations at ham events have included W0DXCC, W9DXCC, W4DXCC, YCCC, New Orleans, Austin, Huntsville, Tucson & St. Louis. Locally around Colorado I have discussed receiver performance at the Boulder Amateur Radio, Northern Colorado Amateur Radio, Colorado QRP & 285 TechConnect Radio Clubs.
Sixteen years ago, my XYL encouraged me to build my dream contest station on 10 acres east of Ft. Collins, Colorado on the Pawnee Grassland. This has made it possible to evaluate top transceivers in major contests in a real-world environment to augment my laboratory data. This rural setting has allowed me to focus my interest on effective antennas. Six towers support 9 mono-band HF Yagis, plus 6m, 2m and 70cm, and wire antennas for 160, 80/40 and 30 meters.
I use WSJT X on the 475 kHz band with a 630 meter transverter manufactured in Australia driven with an IC-7610. I use my 160-meter Marconi T antenna with a separate tuner on 475 kHz. My 630m log of 38 states, including Hawaii, Alaska and Maine using JT9 & FST4. My best DX on 475 kHz is over 8000 miles between Colorado and Australia, having worked Roger, VK4YB,
three times.
In person presentations for 2023 so far have been Winterfest in Collinsville, IL, and Contest University the day before Hamvention in Xenia Ohio. I often have Zoom club meetings every month or two in the US and periodically in the UK.
BARS will announce the link to join the Zoom meeting before the meeting, but it will be posted to the BARS email list and
should not be shared outside our Club. Are you on the email list? If not, please send an email to bars-subscribe@w1hh.org and then simply reply to the robot response from the server and you will be subscribed.
Observing our Zoom meeting requires only a web browser and headphones/speakers. You do not need a webcam or microphone
unless you want to speak or be seen.
Before our meeting date, please go to https://zoom.us/test and see if it will function for you. If you have problems, we can try to
assist – feel free to ask questions on the BARS email list.
We are looking forward to “seeing” many of you on Wednesday 8/2 here at 1900.
Doug, N1WRN
