Pointers and considerations when deciding to change your callsign. What’s involved, how to research a new callsign, and what are the costs associated with it.

Presenter Bio

Ray Ehrlich holds a General ticket and has been licensed ham since 2023. He enjoys POTA, Field Day, WSPR, and some contesting. He has a career in corporate IT and resided with his family in Corcoran MN (western Hennepin County). His other hobbies are snowmobiling and occasionally fishing and ice fishing.

John will be available after the presentation to display and answer questions about his Enigma replica.

CW sent via HF radio played a major role in World War II. However, intercepted messages were of little use unless they could be decoded. To understand that process, we must look beyond the radio itself and look at what happened after those signals were captured from the airwaves. This presentation focuses on the German military Enigma cipher machine and the critical network used to compromise them. Topics include the design and mechanics of the machine, an overview of how the German military utilized them, and an overview of the Allied interception and cryptanalysis efforts. We will touch on at the historic work done by Bletchley Park and the Y Service (or Y Stations)—the top-secret network of wireless intercept operators who spent hours scanning the HF bands to log every single click of enemy Morse code, providing the vital raw data that the Cryptanalysts needed to crack the Enigma.. An electronic, kit-built replica Enigma machine will be on display. At the conclusion of the presentation, attendees will receive a challenge to decode a simulated Enigma message at home using online resources. Successful decoders will be awarded a Certificate of Cryptographic Achievement.

Presenter Bio

John Dean, K0JDD has licensed since 2007. He spent 35 years designing and implementing computer networks for a global medical company. A computer programmer at heart, he still dabbles in writing code when he is not chasing the latest bright shiny object in Amateur Radio. Squirrel!

Showing the evolution of the Ground Plane antenna. Review modifications of the Delta Loop for gain or SWR. Multi bands using OCF designs. Pat Wintheiser is the author of Nec2Go Antenna Modeling program. As such there are many different designs that can be discussed depending on participant input.

Presenter Bio

Pat Wintheiser began and ended his working career as a computer programmer. Initially it was Fortran coding for Boeing during design of the 747 aircraft. Once retirement set in, he set a goal to design the best Antenna Modeling software. It has been a work in progress for the past 25 years.

We will talk about how to study for a license, modes of operation such as FM, SSB, digital, Meshtastic, public service, drones, and types of radios. It can be a lifetime hobby full of related hobbies. And shameless promotion of the Richfield Amateur Radio Club. w0rrc.org

Speaker Bio

Paul KE0QXV passed technician and general class licenses in 2018 at Mid-winter Madness in Buffalo. He has been a tinkerer all his life, spent a career as a process and engineering technician, ending up as technician on the MetroTransit Light Rail Vehicles and enjoys speaking with people, which is handy if you are going to talk to people on the radio.

The ICS Field Observer (FOBS) Essentials program—developed jointly by Minnesota VOAD and Minnesota ARES—addresses one of the most persistent gaps identified in After‑Action Reports across Minnesota: the need for timely, accurate, and actionable field intelligence. As noted in the article, “responders need accurate, timely information to make decisions during floods, storms, and other incidents,” and trained observers fill this critical role by delivering structured, ground‑truth reporting directly to incident command. The course provides a practical, scenario‑driven pathway to operational readiness. Participants learn how the Field Observer role integrates into the Incident Command System, how to observe and document conditions using standardized ICS forms—including the ICS 213, 213RR, 214, and the modified ICS 309 CAN‑P—and how to communicate clearly using radio and message‑confirmation protocols. As emphasized in the training materials, these skills “ensure accountability and effective incident planning” while supporting accurate data flow from the field to the planning process. Safety and situational awareness form a core component of the curriculum. Observers are trained to recognize hazards, maintain awareness in dynamic environments, and apply structured checklists to reduce risk. This is essential in Minnesota, where “weather can change quickly and conditions can become dangerous.” The program also strengthens mapping and location‑accuracy capabilities, teaching USNG, GPS correlation, and structure‑side designations—competencies that emergency managers increasingly rely on during fast‑moving incidents. As described in the Future‑Proofing ARES document, modern response environments demand “verified, structured, and actionable information from the field,” and volunteers trained in FOBS skills are uniquely positioned to meet that need. Ultimately, the FOBS Essentials course builds more than technical skill—it builds capacity. It equips volunteers to serve as force multipliers, improves coordination between VOAD, ARES, and public safety partners, and strengthens Minnesota’s resilience “one trained observer at a time.”

Presenter Bio

Ryc Lyden is an experienced disaster‑response practitioner with a background spanning emergency management, military service, and public safety operations. He has served in multiple roles supporting incident coordination, field intelligence, and volunteer integration across Minnesota and the upper Midwest. His work emphasizes strengthening situational awareness, improving information flow, and building operational readiness for all‑hazards incidents. Ryc plays a central role in the development and leadership of Minnesota Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (MNVOAD) and Minnesota Amateur Radio Emergency Service (MNARES) Field Operations initiatives. He helped design and implement the ICS Field Observer (FOBS) program, a statewide effort that equips volunteers with the skills to deliver accurate, timely, and actionable field intelligence during floods, severe weather, infrastructure failures, and large public events. His contributions include curriculum development, operational standards, and the integration of ICS‑aligned documentation, communication protocols, and mapping practices. Drawing on his military and public safety background, Ryc brings a disciplined, mission‑focused approach to training and field operations. He has supported numerous real‑world responses and After‑Action improvement efforts, consistently advocating for stronger communication, better documentation, and enhanced safety practices. His work bridges the gap between volunteer organizations and official agencies, helping build a more resilient, better‑coordinated disaster‑response ecosystem. Ryc is committed to preparing the next generation of responders and volunteers, ensuring they have the tools, structure, and confidence to support communities when it matters most.

Wayne will discuss the role of the state POTA mapping representative, how parks are added, and sometimes deactivated. Wayne will discuss how this is important to the integrity of the POTA program. This is a great opportunity to ask Wayne your questions about how different park entities qualify for inclusion in the POTA program.

Presenter Bio

Wayne is the MN POTA mapping representative and is responsible for adding parks and maintenance of the current park database.

DXing from a Highrise shares N0UK’s experiences of tackling the challenges of operating from an urban apartment residence and proving it is possible to be successful in working other stations around the world. After getting his feet wet for a couple of years on HF, he focused the next 34 years playing on the weak-signal end of the VHF and UHF bands, both in his native UK and adopted homeland in Minnesota. Upon moving from a typical family house to an Uptown Minneapolis apartment, the challenge of effectively working HF with albeit limited antennas semed like a interesting experiment. The results were both pleasing and definitely unexpected!

Presenter Bio

Chris, N0UK, was first licensed in 1978 as a boy in London, England. He moved to Minnesota in the mid-1980’s and enjoys many aspects of amateur radio spanning HF through microwaves. Today, he lives in Downtown Minneapolis from where his very first QSO was on 10GHz rainscatter with VE4MA in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He holds an Extra class license and is a member of numerous amateur radio organisations, including the ARRL, Radio Society of Great Britain, Twin Cities DX Association, and Central States VHF Society.

A review of the past year in Em Comm and Events. We supported probably 20 events and exercises this past year. We will cover best practices and lessons learned.

Presenter Bio

NY9D is MN Assistant Section Emergency Coordinator for Events. He is also Med Comms lead for the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon. He is a regular contributor to QST and ARRL ARES Newsletter.

Microwave signals are easily attenuated by terrain and foliage. Operators interested in microwaves frequently have to operate portably with clear horizons. Flat farm fields over soybeans (not corn) work. Microwave signals propagate beyond line-of-sight, usually by scattering phenomena. From 3 GHz to 24 GHz, water droplets in rain (or snow) are helpful as a scattering mechanism. When rain is in vertical development, like in thunderstorms, the scattering now occurs from a figurative tower 20,000 to 50,000 feet tall. With a well-placed thunderstorm, contacts of 600-800 miles are possible and with strong signals. This presentation explains the rainscatter process. Existing software that assists is introduced. The complication of Doppler shifting is addressed. Lastly, video examples of CW, SSB, and FM contacts are displayed.

Presenter Bio

Bruce Richardson W9FZ has been intrigued by VHF, UHF, and SHF for 35 years. Long distance contacts on these higher frequencies can be quite challenging and success is quite rewarding. Locally, he is a member of the Northern Lights Radio Society and more broadly, the Central States VHF Society.

HamSci is an organization that bands together hams and scientists to learn about the ionosphere and radio propagation. It has been covered in QST, but what does it mean. We will learn how the HamSci network monitors propagation parameters, including magnetic disturbances and time-of-flight signals. Changes in these indicate that the ionosphere is active and moving. How does this affect ham radio bands.

Presenter Bio

Neil is a retired computer science and physics professor from Augsburg University. As a physics researcher, we created a world wide network of magnetic field monitors and VLF radio receiving systems. WB0VGI is an amateur extra. In his front yard are 3 different magnetic field monitoring system and on VLF receiver. His data can be seen at https://io.adafruit.com/petitnoel/dashboards. Weather data can be seen at aprs.fi and weather underground.

Amateur radio is entwined with a lot of geospatial data: countries, states, grid squares, positions, parks, and more. In some cases, the map you want to see may already be available. However, in others, the map you are looking for doesn’t exist yet. This session will cover foundational spatial data concepts and how to go about making your own maps, working with open-source geospatial tools such as QGIS and PostGIS.

Presenter Bio

Bill Mitchell has been working with cartographic data since getting involved with APRS about ten years ago. He works in the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office doing data processing, application development, and system design, and is active in the Minnesota geospatial community.

This presentation gives you a good overview of the World Radiosport Championship and what it takes to be among the top contesters who qualify to participate in the WRTC. It will also cover what it takes to put on such an event while giving you insight into the competition itself.

Presenter Bio

Bill Lippert, AC0W, is an accomplished radiosport contester finishing in the top five of many events. He has finished first in the ARRL International DX Contest, the CQ WPX Contest, the Minnesota QSO Party and the North America Sprint Contest. He has served as the contest manager for the North American QSO Party SSB contest for the past 14 years. He currently chairs the Minnesota QSO Party committee and has served on that committee for over 25 years. Bill qualified to be on a team competing at the 2022 WRTC event in Bologna, Italy. In 2026 he was invited serve as referee overseeing one of the teams. Bill is president of the Minnesota Wireless Association (MWA), a contest club serving Minnesota and the surrounding states. MWA is one of the top contesting clubs in the US and typically competes in the unlimited category. He also chairs the ARRL’s Program and Services Committee which oversees and manages the rules for all 15 ARRL contests. Beyond contest, Bill has volunteered in other areas with ham radio, serving as president of the Austin Area Amateur Radio Club and serving as the communications coordinator between Mower County Emergency Services and the Austin Area ARC. While president of the Austin Area ARC he organized communications for several fund-raising walk-a-thons and bike-a-thons. He also serves his local community, having been on the Austin City Council and currently chairs the Austin Housing and Development Board. Bill is also a licensed Professional Electrical Engineer and managed the electrical engineering team at his employer for over half his career.

Amongst all available wire-antenna options, the vertical full-wave loop (vFWL) has established itself as an excellent performer in terms of efficiency, gain, and take-off angle (TOA). However, full realization of these considerable advantages are accompanied by size, geometry, and height requirements that become increasingly daunting as we progress to lower frequencies. Accordingly, in hopes of extending the vFWL concept to 160-meters, we consider a loaded-loop design (vFWLL) of a size amenable to a standard suburban or even city lot deployment. As will be seen, this antenna has proven a quite effective DX performer.

The described antenna is a culmination of some four years of work involving a series of loop antenna designs that have proven both compact and DX-capable. My work with electrically ‘large’ loops began at 20m and progressed incrementally to longer wavelengths; 30m, 40m, and 60m, all without need for loading-coils or resonators of any type. These antennas were very effective, resulting in several DXCC awards, all of which were obtained while running 50 Watts or less. However, at the point I envisioned extending these results to 80-meters or even 160meters, it was immediately apparent I simply didn’t have the real estate. This is what has motivated consideration of so-called ‘loaded-loop’ designs.

In this presentation, we consider application of inductive loading to a specific full-wave loop structure, and in doing so, we discover degrees of freedom enabling design trade-offs whereby efficiency and gain may be exchanged for a DX-favorable TOA. A previous design for 80m has already proven quite effective, resulting in successful completion of DXCC and well beyond. Here, we push the concept to a substantially more difficult objective – design, simulation, and test of a vFWLL design for 160-meters. Despite a reduced efficiency due to what is essentially a 1/16-sized physical footprint, we discover this antenna to be quite DX-capable. We then take a close look at the less-than-obvious roles of polarization cancellation and ground-reflection in realization of what is an extraordinary performance level for a reduced-size antenna.

Presenter Bio

JB is a cientist and engineer specializing in electromagnetics, RF design, and scientific computation (ex. Chief Scientist/EF Johnson, Hardware/Software Architect/Silicon Valley. CTO of Dimension, Inc. (retired))

This manufacturer lead class will teach users (new or experienced) about Yaesu System Fusion. Beginning at the start of Yaesu System Fusion in 2013 through the current product line today users will learn all about C4FM?FDMA. This class is also a hands on class where students will learn while doing the functions and operations of Fusion.

This class will run from 9am – 1pm.

Class size is limited to this session, and a separate registration will be sent out prior to the convention to sign up for this class.

We spend countless hours comparing radios, antennas, coax, tuners, and accessories. But how much attention do we give to the one thing that makes all of it work: power?

Your radio may say 100 watts on the box, but is your power system actually allowing it to deliver 100 watts? In this session, we’ll explore the often-overlooked role power plays in station performance. We’ll look at power supplies, batteries, voltage drop, wire sizing, connectors, current requirements, and what really happens to your radio as voltage falls under load.

Presenter Bio

Dale Henninger was first licensed in 2017. His ham radio passions include POTA park activations, building high-performance portable rigs, and bringing new hams into the hobby. Dale is a Senior Director at CHS, Inc., where he leads the IT Global Infrastructure team. Dale is the treasurer for the Minnesota Amateur Radio Consortium and the Program Manager for the North Star Radio Convention.

Determining what kind of POTA equipment to use can be challenging. In this session, several kinds of POTA operations will be covered, and what kind of gear can be found to help in the operation and assist operators in getting started or in finding new tools for their setups! Great for everyone from newcomers to POTA veterans.

Presenter Bio

Collin O’Connor has been a licensed operator for 10 years and a part of the Stillwater Amateur Radio Association. When not working as a medical device engineer or assisting in SARA’s radio operations he can be found tinkering with computers, in his crafting workshop, gardening, or tending to his gardens.

Come and learn about Wavelog, the next generation of logging software for amateur radio that can be hosted in the cloud and give access anywhere!

As technology has become more and more a part of our lives and hobbies, more and more devices are being used to log radio contacts. Exporting, importing, massaging data, syncing, it can all get very tedious. Enter Wavelog – the next generation cloud logging software. Packed full of useful features for every type of operator from casual to major DXer or contester, find out what this amazing software is capable of and take your logging to the next level!

Presenter Bio

Collin O’Connor has been a licensed operator for 10 years and a part of the Stillwater Amateur Radio Association. When not working as a medical device engineer or assisting in SARA’s radio operations he can be found tinkering with computers, in his crafting workshop, gardening, or tending to his gardens.

Kylee will be present on the involvement of youth in ham radio and her recent involvement with a YOTA camp.

Presenter Bio

Kylee is a 19 year old ham, she has been around ham radio her whole life. She officially got her license in 2019 and upgraded in 2020. She is also the Dakota Division Youth Section Coordinator and the Youth Advisor for the Minnesota Wireless Association.

This presentation will cover the VarAC digital mode for ham radio. We will explore how it combines the VARA modem for effective communication, even in poor conditions, with a modern keyboard-to-keyboard interface. Learn the features in VarAC, proper hardware configuration, and how to make your first contacts. Whether you are a digital mode veteran or brand new to data, come see how VarAC is modernizing the ham radio digital modes.

Presenter Bio

Licensed back in the 1990s, Brent Petit, WG0A, has been happily bouncing signals off the atmosphere for many years. While he loves the thrill of a radio contest, his tech-loving heart belongs to digital formats, including bizarre HF digital modes, packet radio, Winlink, and APRS. When he isn’t hunting down rare HF contacts, he is usually tweaking his station or waiting for the solar cycle to work its magic. He basically speaks fluent binary, just with a little more static.

Join AC0W – Bill Lippert for a Q&A session about DX’ing and Contesting. Bring your questions and join the discussion.

Presenter Bio

Bill Lippert, AC0W, is an accomplished radiosport contester finishing in the top five of many events. He has finished first in the ARRL International DX Contest, the CQ WPX Contest, the Minnesota QSO Party and the North America Sprint Contest. He has served as the contest manager for the North American QSO Party SSB contest for the past 14 years. He currently chairs the Minnesota QSO Party committee and has served on that committee for over 25 years. Bill qualified to be on a team competing at the 2022 WRTC event in Bologna, Italy. In 2026 he was invited serve as referee overseeing one of the teams. Bill is president of the Minnesota Wireless Association (MWA), a contest club serving Minnesota and the surrounding states. MWA is one of the top contesting clubs in the US and typically competes in the unlimited category. He also chairs the ARRL’s Program and Services Committee which oversees and manages the rules for all 15 ARRL contests. Beyond contest, Bill has volunteered in other areas with ham radio, serving as president of the Austin Area Amateur Radio Club and serving as the communications coordinator between Mower County Emergency Services and the Austin Area ARC. While president of the Austin Area ARC he organized communications for several fund-raising walk-a-thons and bike-a-thons. He also serves his local community, having been on the Austin City Council and currently chairs the Austin Housing and Development Board. Bill is also a licensed Professional Electrical Engineer and managed the electrical engineering team at his employer for over half his career.

If you only had $100, how would you get on the air?

Presenter Bio

Bill was originally licensed in 1991 as N0NYH as a no-code Technician. He was active in the 1990s, but put ham radio on the back burner for his career and raising a family. In 2018, he upgraded to Extra Class and changed his call sign to WF0B. Now retired, he enjoys building antennas and is active in Parks on the Air (POTA).

This session is for club leaders who want to learn more about the Minnesota Amateur Radio Consortium. Come tell the MN-ARC board members how they can help your club succeed.

Dave and Colin present basics on Meshtastic and Meshcore – How to use them, what they’re best used for, and how two competing systems can complement each other to serve users in nearly any situation.

Meshtastic and Meshcore are two similar-yet-different LoRa mesh networking platforms that share a hardware ecosystem and use the 33cm ISM band to transport data across vast distances using very low-wattage transmission. In this session, Dave and Colin will present technical basics, hardware examples, and explain use cases for both of the popular license-free mesh network technologies from a user’s perspective — and from the perspective of more advanced infrastructure building, planning, and deploying. Q&A will follow the presentations.

Presenter Bio

Dave is a founding member of the MSP Mesh group (mspmesh.org). He is a 30 year freelance web developer and a non-licensed radio enthusiast.