Speakers

Over the course of more than five decades in amateur radio, Chip Margelli, K7JA has been a Field Day addict. Chip will share his experiences, tricks of the trade, and humorous anecdotes about the most popular event on the ham radio calendar, as we all battle Murphy’s Law, mosquitoes, lousy propagation and nasty weather, and new chili recipes each year in June.

First licensed in 1973, Janet has been an Extra Class licensee since 1997, and she lives in Garden Grove, CA with her husband Chip, K7JA. Trained in Tacoma, Washington as a broadcast engineer, she received her commercial First Phone with Radar Endorsement, and worked as Studio Engineer and Operations Manager at KLAY-FM before moving to Seattle as a Master Control operator at KCTS-TV. After marrying Chip in 1978, she moved to Tokyo, working at Yaesu Musen Co. Ltd. and later at Yaesu USA, before joining HRO in 1984.

Kevin Zanjani from Bioenno Power will be providing an overview about LiFePO4 batteries for use in ham radio applications. This exciting presentation will discuss typical applications and have an exciting show-and-tell of the various products!

ARRL Southwestern Division Director Dick Norton, N6AA9, will speak on the ARRL and current happenings in Amateur Radi

During emergencies , repeaters may be tied up , or down . Simplex long range tropospheric ducting can reach out hundreds of miles on a hot day. Gordo will tell you how this occurs , with live show-and-tell of super-refraction , plus radio calls from 2500 miles distant from tropo !

Don Minkoff, NK6A, will give a presentation on one of the fastest growing special interests in amateur radio today. This group has an award scheme for radio amateurs and shortwave listeners that encourages portable operation in mountainous areas. SOTA has been carefully designed to make participation possible for everyone – this is not just for mountaineers!

Bob Brehm, AK6R is Chief Engineer of Palomar Engineers (Palomar-Engineers.com), and has been a ham for over 50 years with experience in contesting, RTTY, amplitude modulation, vintage radio restoration, boat anchors, linear amps and unique antennas. He is active on 3.870 AM and 3.895 Vintage SSB as well as other nets offering his expertise to new and old hams alike.

Ground is something you stand on, but in an electrical sense, the meaning is much less clear. When it comes to Hams and ground, things get really confused. We drive rods into the earth, but why? Let’s take a look at whether any of this makes sense, and what theory tells us about “ground”, and if it exists in any sensible way at all. We’ll talk about DC grounds, RF grounds, and even about gravity.

Hal Kempfer is the CEO and Founder of KIPP, Knowledge and Intelligence Program Professionals Inc. in Long Beach, California. Hal is a senior instructor and course developer for the Terrorism Liaison Officer courses, Infrastructure Liaison Officer (InfraGard) course, Fusion Liaison Officer course, Countering Violent Extremism two-day course, Pre-Incident Indicator workshop, and a variety of other courses, workshops, seminars and Homeland Security exercises.

The presentation will cover all of the latest digital and analog innovations available to the amateur community. We will discuss the technology in use today and some of the projects coming to us in the near future.

This presentation has been well received by the more than 80 clubs and conventions the past several years. Clint’s session has been written up in CQ Magazine, the AMSAT-UK Newsletter, on two of Bob Heil’s HamNation podcasts, and other print and online outlets.

Dr. Kate Hutton K6HTN is a retired Caltech seismologist. She spent 37 years tracking earthquakes in southern California and interfacing with the news media whenever “something interesting” happened. She got her ham ticket in 2009 and passed her Extra in 2010. She has been having fun with CW and message traffic handling ever since, as well as helping to convince residents to get prepared for the next disaster.

Dennis was first licensed as WN6NIA in 1969 and was granted W6DQ, the callsign of one of his Elmers, a little over ten years back. He is a retired system engineer out of the aerospace industry, having worked on everything from satellites to airport telecommunications systems, military air traffic control to battlefield comms. His interests in ham radio range from weak signal V/UHF/microwave to boatanchor collecting and restoration.