The first Suwannee Amateur Radio Club Workshop Night was held on September 18, 2012 at Steve's (N2CEI) well equipped shop.

It may be the last workshop, as the turnout was dismal.  The only people in attendance were Steve and Sandra, and Mary and me.

Acutally it couldn't have worked out better for me as Steve devoted the entire two hours to tweaking my Kenwood TS-120S.  I purchased the radio from a friend of a friend and it worked pretty well except the "S" meter was acting goofy (sorry for being so technical) and (I thought) the frequency display was off. I carried the radio into Steve's shop and was immediately struck with the thought, "holy cow, I have just walked into NASA".  The amount of test equipment and hardware was amazing.

Steve quickly set me straight on the problem of the display being off frequentcy.  There was a loose nut in front of the radio, and it was me.  No, Steve very nicely told me that the display was only off by about 100 hz and it was nothing to worry about.

The "S" meter was another matter.  Steve looked at the schematic and found two trimmers which affected the "S" meter.  He pulled the covers off of the radio and got to work.  He hooked up his signal generator and fed 50uv into the antenna, then adjusted the trimmers to get a "S" reading of 9.  Next he increased the level +20db and made some more adjustments so the meter read +20.  Then he went back to the 50uv level and re-adjusted the trimmers again.  He had to go back and forth several times before he was satisfied that the meter was working correctly.

There a rumor going around that after the radio was fixed we had a cookout and porterhouse steak was enjoyed by all.  I am not sure how that rumor got started and that's all I can say about that.

You all missed a very entertaining and educational workshop.  I hope we can have better attendance if we have a second workshop.

Ron, KK4HGY