Medina County Amateur Radio Club (MCARC)

Vol IV Issue 2 January 2021

Inside this issue: January 11 Minutes 2 Calendar 3

Radar Chaff 4 & 5 Repeaters 6

Who We Are 7

Dues Form 8

“Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's

the matter,

That you have such a February face,

So full of frost, of storm and

cloudiness?” ~William Shakespeare, Much Ado about

Nothing, c.1598

I hope your “February face,”

magnified by Covid restrictions, will

soften with the thought that spring

and vaccines are on the horizon.

Having endured 2020, at least 2021

promises a glimmer of sunshine.

Prez’s Preface Thank you to Ed Eyerdom K8NVR,

who submitted this month’s puzzle,

below, for technical tinkerers.

The answers will be published in the

March edition of the News Beacon.

Ed also presented a Zoom Technical

Session on SDR Play on January 21.

If you missed it, the video is

available at W8EOC.org,

Facebook.com/MedinaCountyAmate

urRadioClub and on our NEW

Medina County Amateur Radio Club

YouTube Channel. Check it out.

Member to Member News Beacon

Also, please remember to fill out

the new/renewal Membership form

and send it in with your 2021 dues

(and 2020 if you forgot) to our

new Membership Chair, Diane

KD8SSX. See page 8 for more

info.

Happy Valentines’ Day!

73,

Jane@K8JGR.radio

Puzzler

MCARC January 11 On-Air General Meeting Minutes

MCARC (M2M) News Beacon

page 2

The December 14, 2020 Member Meeting was held on-air because of Coronavirus restrictions.

The net opened at 7:30pm with check-ins logging onto the 147.030MHz repeater. The net was controlled by Toby WT8O. The following paid members (and guests) were present (X - not) for the network meeting:

Toby WT8O - NCO Ed K8NVR Diane KD8SSX Jody KE8GKO

John K8JEK Ray K2RWO Baji K8IIT

Gordon AI8Y Julio KE8JIE Frank KN4AW

Jane K8JGR Doug KD8SST Amy K2KSU

Dave KE8APO Ken K8TV

14 members present for meeting, Quorum (9) was reached.

NCO, Toby, asked net participants for their first go-around comments.

Toby then transferred control over to Jane K8JGR to conduct the regular monthly meeting…

***** The meeting was called to order at 8:09pm and opened with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Secretary’s report: Motion to suspend the reading of December 14 minutes as published in the January newsletter by Ray (K2RWO), seconded by Doug (KD8SST). There were no objections or corrections, so the minutes were approved as presented.

Treasurer’s report: Diane (KD8SSX) read the treasurer’s report submitted by Gail (KD8GGM). Motion to approve was made by Dave (KE8APO) and seconded by Doug (KD8SST). Membership voted to accept the report.

President’s report: Jane stated that she received two email requests for Technician License training and inquired if any members would be willing to tutor them individually. The only comment was an inquiry where they were located. There was a discussion regarding if there are any active VE testing sites for licensing. CARS (2Cars.org) is testing every other month and Silvercreek (W8WKY.org) will be testing on March 6. Ed (K8NVR) will be presenting a technical session on January 21st at 7PM on Zoom for interested members on SDR play receivers. Contact Jane (jane@k8jgr.radio) for an invitation link. Reminder to send in dues for 2021. They should be sent to Diane (KD8SSX) rather than Gail. Anyone wishing to submit articles for our February newsletter should get them to Jane by the last week of January. There was an Ohio simplex contest this past weekend. Club participants were K8FH, NF8O, KD8SST, N8JNX, and K8JEK. This weekend is the VHF contest (6m and above all modes).

New business: Julio (KE8JIE) will be preparing to launch an APRS balloon with his son for a school project. John (K8JEK) offered a Styrofoam cooler for the purpose of holding the radio equipment. Julio explained that this is a “pico balloon” which is small and non-recoverable so the cooler will not be required. Jane asked Julio to let the membership know when it is being launched so interested member can track it.

Motion to Adjourn: Amy (K2KSU) and seconded by Julio (KE8JIE). The meeting was adjourned at 8:29 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by Dave KE8APO ========

Jane K8JGR transferred control back to NCO, Toby WT8O, who continued the net with a second round of comments, before returning the repeater back to normal operations.

February 1 7:30pm Monday Night 2M Net

February 8 7:30pm MCARC On-Air General Meeting

February 15 7:30pm Monday Night 2M Net

February 22 7:30pm Monday Night 2M Net

MCARC (M2M) Calendar Hamatuer Antix

page 3 MCARC (M2M) News Beacon

February 8, 2021 On-Air Meeting

The Medina County Amateur Radio Club will not be holding in-person meetings until the threat of

Coronavirus is under control.

However, Monday, February 8th, the Club will hold the meeting during a

special 2-meter net at 7:30 pm. See page 6 for frequency and tone.

Feb 8-12 ARRL/LIMARC February School Club Roundup

Feb 20-21 International DX CW Contest

February ARRL Contests

Feb 13-14 Virtual Hamcation https://www.hamcation.com/

We are hosting some unique Webinars, a QSO Party and Prize Drawings for 2021.

With a virtual event, you can attend from anywhere you have an internet connection. Attend great webinars,

join our QSO party, checkout our great prizes, earn or upgrade your license with in-person VEC exams, and

more! Do it all from 'virtually' anywhere.

Hamfests

page 4 MCARC (M2M) News Beacon

Her work long overlooked; physicist Joan Curran developed

technology to conceal aircraft from radar during World War II.

On June 4, 2013, the city of Huntsville, Alabama was enjoying a gorgeous day. Blue skies, mild temperatures.

Just what the forecasters had predicted.

But in the post-lunch hours, meteorologists started picking up what seemed to be a rogue thunderstorm on the weather radar. The “blob,” as they referred to it, mushroomed on the radar screen. By 4 PM, it covered the

entire city of Huntsville. Strangely, however, the actual view out of peoples’ windows remained a calm azure.

The source of the blob turned out to be not a freak weather front, but rather a cloud of radar chaff, a military

technology used by nations all across the globe today. Its source was the nearby Redstone Arsenal, which, it

seems, had decided that a warm summer’s day would be perfect for a completely routine military test.

More surprising than the effect that radar chaff has on modern weather systems, though, is the fact that its

inventor’s life’s work was obscured by the haze of a male-centric scientific community’s outdated traditions.

The inventor of radar chaff was a woman named Joan Curran.

Born Joan Strothers and raised in Swansea on the coast of Wales, she matriculated at the University of Cambridge’s Newnham College in 1934. Strothers studied physics on a full scholarship and enjoyed rowing in

her spare time. Upon finishing her degree requirements in 1938, she went to the University’s preeminent

Cavendish Laboratory to begin a doctorate in physics.

At the Cavendish, Strothers was assigned to work with a young man named Samuel Curran. For two years,

Strothers got along swimmingly with her new lab partner. But with international conflict brewing in Europe, in

1940 the pair was transferred twice to work on military research and ended up at Exeter.

There, the two developed proximity fuses to destroy enemy planes and rockets. There also, Strothers married

Sam and took on his last name, becoming Joan Curran. Shortly after their wedding in November, the Currans transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in the autumn of 1940. Curran joined a

team led by British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert R.V. Jones that was developing a method

to conceal aircraft from enemy radar detection.

The idea, Jones later explained in his book Most Secret War, was simple. Radar detectors measure the reflection

of radio waves of a certain wavelength off of incoming objects. As it turns out, thin metal strips can resonate with incoming waves, and also re-radiate the waves. Under the right conditions, the re-radiated waves create

the sonic impression of a large object when in reality, there is none—hence, the blob in Alabama.

This property means that a few hundred thin reflectors could, together, reflect as much energy as a heavy

British bomber plane would. A collection of strips might conceal the exact location of an aircraft during a raid behind a large cloud of signal, or even lead the enemy to believe they were observing a major attack when in

reality, there was only one or two planes.

By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, Curran was nearly a year into painstaking experiments on using metals to reflect radar signals. She had tried a seemingly countless number of sizes and shapes, from singular wires to metal leaflets the size of notebook paper. The leaflets had been a particularly interesting idea, since they could do double-duty as propaganda sheets with text printed on them.

In 1942, Curran finally settled on reflectors that were about 25 centimeters long and 1.5 centimeters wide. The reflectors were aluminized paper strips bundled into one-pound packets and intended to be thrown out of the leading aircraft. When defenestrated from a stream of bombers once every minute, they could produce “the radar equivalent of a smokescreen,” according to Jones.

Cont’d Next Page

The Woman Whose Invention Helped Win

a War — and Still Baffles Weathermen

MCARC (M2M) News Beacon page 5

A Woman’s Invention – Cont’d…

In 1943, the reflector strips were put to a serious military test when the Allies launched Operation Gomorrah on Hamburg, Germany. Operation Gomorrah was a brutal campaign of air raids that lasted over a week, destroyed most of the city and resulted in almost 40,000 civilian deaths. But with rates of only 12 aircraft losses out of 791 on one evening’s bombing raid, the campaign was a major victory for the Allies, in large part due to Curran’s reflectors.

Perhaps most notably, radar chaff was used as part of a large-scale, elaborate diversion on June 5, 1944 to prevent German forces from knowing exactly where the Allied invasion into Nazi-held continental Europe would begin. Deployed on the eve of what would become known as D-Day, two radar chaff drops, Operations Taxable and Glimmer, were combined with hundreds of dummy parachutists to draw German attention towards the northernmost parts of France, and away from the beaches of Normandy.

Curran went on to work on many more scientific and military technologies in both the UK and U.S., including the Manhattan Project. She is remembered as being a truly unique and skilled researcher and was lauded in her obituary for having “the scientific equivalent of gardening green fingers.”

But despite her impressive body of work, Curran’s legacy was obscured due to the customs of the time. In fact, Curran did not actually possess a degree from Cambridge when she did all of her remarkable war-winning work. This was not for reasons of merit—she had, of course, completed all her coursework for an honors degree in physics—but only because in that day and age, women were simply not granted degrees, despite completing all the work and being hired to continue their studies.

In 1987, Curran was finally awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Strathclyde. She died in 1999.

In her obituary, Jones was quoted as having said, “In my opinion, Joan Curran made an even greater contribution to [Allied World War II victory] than Sam.” Like many other female scientists who have faded unrecognized into history, Curran and her work was discussed only by men, and only in the context of that of her male counterparts. And her own words have never been published, nor recorded in interviews, making her voice unavailable to generations of female scientists who followed in her footsteps.

According to Jess Wade, a postdoctoral scholar studying solid state physics at Imperial College London and who also creates Wikipedia pages for female scientists, it’s crucial that we tell the stories of Curran and other scientists whose work has been obscured.

“We don’t know how many women were working in the labs of famous male scientists, or how many discoveries women contributed to, because for centuries men did a very good job hiding the achievements of women,” Wade remarked in an email.

This sense of urgency is echoed in the work of organizations like the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), an education nonprofit organization based in Dallas, Texas. “It’s important for young girls to see women who are achieving in this field, to give them hope, excitement and encouragement that it is totally possible to achieve this dream,” said NMSI communications manager Lauren Little.

NMSI focuses on developing culturally relevant teaching to encourage underrepresented groups like women to careers in these fields. Such teaching includes stories like Curran’s, which are crucial to tell now because it’s vital to “find [uncelebrated scientists’] family members and interview them before it is too late,” wrote Wade.

We are in an age where female scientists are, at last, getting their due. They’re being recognized through a

number of efforts—a poster series intended to be hung in lab and classroom walls and a bestselling

anthology of women in science. Outreach organizations like 500 Women Scientists are working towards

increasing diversity in science through public speaking events, consulting gigs and political campaign

support. And stories of women in science are entering mainstream media through television shows, feature

films and documentaries.

Curran’s life and work may not be splashy enough for a TV show, nor well-documented enough for a book. But she still deserves a place in history for changing the course of airborne warfare, and for confusing the heck out of 21st century weathermen.

Smithsonian Magazine - Irena Fischer-Hwang

Remember to

check in to the

2-Meter Net

147.030 on non-

meeting, Monday

evenings at

7:30pm.

MCARC (M2M) News Beacon

MCARC (M2M) Repeaters

Summary

MCARC (M2M) Monday Night 2-Meter Net Control

page 6

Please consider paying your dues for ARRL membership through our club Treasurer, Gail KD8GGM. M2M will retain $15.00 for each

NEW membership and $2.00 for each renewal.

Yearly dues are $49.00 for regular membership, $25.00 for youth under age 21 being oldest Ham in household, and $10.00 for Additional

Ham member in family. All but Additional Ham memberships will receive the monthly QST magazine. Dues can be paid by cash, personal

check made out to “Medina Two Meter Group” or credit card.

A copy of the ARRL Membership Application/Renewal form can be obtained from Gail Helwig KD8GGM, Treasurer, M2M Group, 12891

East River Road, Columbia Station, Ohio 44028.

ARRL Membership

Repeater Directories

Call Location Function Repeater Input

Repeater Output

CTCSS (PL)

Band

W8EOC Medina (Main Site)

Repeater TX & RX

147.630 147.030 141.3 2 Meter

W8EOC Brunswick (North)

Receive only

147.630 From Main Site

131.8 2 Meter

W8EOC Lafayette (South)

Receive only

147.630 From Main Site

88.5 2 Meter

W8HN Medina

Digital C4FM

TX & RX Repeater

147.885 147.285 (0) 2 Meter

Analog TX & RX

Repeater

147.885 147.285 (110.9) 2 Meter

W8UQZ Medina Repeater TX & RX

223.260 224.860 - 1.25 Meter

We’re on the Web!

See us at:

www.W8EOC.org

Also,

“Like Us” on

Facebook

“Medina County

Amateur Radio Club”

President: Jane Reed K8JGR jane@K8JGR.radio

216-570-8500

VP: Toby Kolman WT8O

Treasurer: Gail Helwig KD8GGM

Secretary: Dave Swancer KE8APO

W8EOC Repeaters: Ken Koyan K8TV Ed Eyerdom K8NVR

Membership: Diane Snider KD8SSX

Who’s Who

The Medina County Amateur Radio Club (M2M) is a nonprofit, ARRL Special Service registered, amateur radio organization based in Medina County, dedicated to communication, public service, education and fellowship.

Many of our members also are involved with Skywarn, ARES/MECARS, RACES, and assist with community events

About Our Organization…

MEDINA TWO METER GROUP (M2M) INC.

DBA: MEDINA COUNTY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB

1254 HADCOCK RD

BRUNSWICK, OHIO 44212

TO:

Net Scheduling: Baji Panchumarti K8IIT

Social Events:

Gail Helwig KD8GGM

Skywarn:

Tracey Liston W8TWL

MECARS/ARES: Bob Mueller K8MD

RACES:

Dave Rickon NF80

Program: Toby Kolman WT8O

Trustees: Doug McClure KD8SST

Dave Oravec N8JNX

Ray Orobona K2RWO

Amy Panchumarti K2KSU

Ed Eyerdom K8NVR

Sunshine: Diane Snider KD8SSX

Newsletter:

Jane Reed K8JGR

Field Day: Fred Helwig K8FH

Websites: Jane Reed K8JGR

such as bicycle and foot races. We meet on the second Monday of each month at either the Medina County Senior Center (Sr) or the Medina County Career (JVS)

Center. See Website or page three for more information.

MCARC (M2M) News Beacon

page 7

Please become a member or renew your Medina County Amateur Radio membership. Dues are our

primary source of income and are used to pay for the administrative costs of liability insurance, website

domain registration fees, web hosting for www.W8EOC.org and operating costs of repeater and tower

maintenance, along with passing on fun perks to you, our members.

Checks are to be made out to the Medina Two Meter (M2M) Group, Inc., our corporate name.

Please print and fill out the new/renewal Membership Form completely, since our new Membership chair,

Diane KD8SSX is updating our recordkeeping. Dues should be mailed to her to the address on the Form.

Thank you for your support of YOUR club.

73,

Jane K8JGR