June 1998

Greetings

Well, here it is, June, and the summer is finally getting under way. Dayton and the WPX CW contest are history and I'm really looking forward to Field Day. The sounds of CW and SSB signals bouncing off the trees in the wee hours of the morning has always thrilled me, as well as riding out the occasional thunderstorm. Anyone remember the trailer at Ellis Fischel several years ago? It felt like we were being pulled down I-70 at 70 miles an hour, due to all the wind that night. You could feel the floorboards shaking. We only stopped operating while the lightning was too close for comfort. Pretty good practice for disaster conditions Hi.

June Meeting

The next Club Meeting will be held 7:00 p.m. Tuesday June 9th, at Boone Electric Co-op. The main topic of discussion will be working on Field Day plans. There will be a VE license exam session after the meeting, providing we have enough VE's on hand and any takers.

May Meeting

The first thing one noticed on the way into the May meeting was probably Roy, AA0B, and his Field Day style QRP setup in the parking lot. He popped up a neat little vertical antenna and knocked out a couple of contacts before the meeting. It sure adds a lot to a meeting when people bring in their most recent work of art ( or technology, as the case may be.) I think Roy is probably the most prolific home brewer in the group, having brought in lots of projects in the past. For the most part, it was business as usual at the meeting. John, N0EG gave a good program on ARES / RACES.

Club Breakfast

The next Club Breakfast will be held Saturday, June 13th, at Country Kitchens Restaurant on Providence Road at 8:00 a.m. Hope to see lots of people there. As always, you don't need to be a member of the Club to attend. Bring along the family, the kid down the block that might get bit by the amateur radio bug, or anyone else who might be interested (or hungry.) There was a Fox Hunt after our May Breakfast, with 8 hunters and one hider. It was decided around the tables that we should locate the Fox anywhere in Albert Oakland Park. Dale, AE0S, did the hiding honors, while the rest of us managed another cup of coffee. I'm not sure if it was luck or careful strategy on Dale's part, but it was a bit tricky locating the Fox. It had been placed next to the perimeter fence of the pool. The fence seemed to act like an antenna, so it wasn't too hard to get in the ballpark of the pool, but narrowing it down took a little while. The pool is on a small rise, which also added to the fun. I had a blast and look forward to our next hunt, which might be held after the June Breakfast if we are fortunate enough to have cooperative weather.

Club Station

The Club station was put to use during the CW WPX contest, this past weekend. We were forced to run barefoot, partly due to low power out of the amplifier, and partly due to RFI. If we ran too much power on certain bands the rig would lock up in the transmit mode. We ended up with 449 contacts and about 300K points. We used the NA logging program on my 386 to also control keying the TS-430. It sure beat the old days of paper dupe sheets trying to see if you had already worked the station you were listening to. This was a good way to knock a little rust off the old CW skills, which will be put to use during the fourth full weekend in June. We had a nice stream of operators / visitors during the contest, including KC0BYE, N0EG, WY0B, KB0RNH, KB0BIB, N0LCW, N0MON, N0ONP, KC0DPB with Sheila and AJ Reall, and KC0BIE. My apologies if I have forgotten anyone, just chalk it up to my having been subjected to CW pileups blaring away for too many hours <grin>. I certainly enjoyed working the contest, and hope all who came by did as well.

C.M.C.P.N.

The Central Mo. Code Practice Net is still picking up steam. The Net has been moved from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., in the interest of increasing check-ins. It's pretty hard to make it into the shack if it's still light outside and the old lawn still needs mowing. We have been running at about 10 wpm lately, but will gladly adjust the speed up or down as dictated by those who check in on any given evening. The Net is held Tuesday and Thursday evenings (except for Club meeting evenings.) We even had a VE3/9 check in from Edwardsville, Il. last Tuesday.

Field Day 1998

Plans are well under way for this year's Field Day operation. The CMRA FD will be held out at Rock Bridge State Park in the Log Cabin area. There is a $25 / day usage fee, that the Park has been gracious enough to waive for us. We will try to put up between 2 and 4 stations, so we will need lots of operators this year. Part of the FD tradition has to do with contesting and having fun, but there also is the more serious tradition of working on our emergency preparedness. It is much easier to activate your station (no matter which bands we're talking about) during times of crisis, either as a club or individual, if you have been involved in a few FD's. We are planning on talking about our FD plans at the next meeting. I think it would be a great idea if the Club could add a bar-b-que to the FD activities this year. Are there any volunteers to wear the chef's hat? Another thing to think about is scheduling. There will be a sign-up sheet at the June meeting, so if you know the time you have available to operate is limited and whether you would like to run the CW, SSB, RTTY (maybe), or Novice station, I'm sure we can reserve blocks of time. I don't care much which station I am working from, as long as we keep as many stations on the air for as much of the time that we can. In the past, we have been able to put in some very respectable scores, so lets see if we can do it to it again this year.

Dayton

Fortunately, I was able to make the pilgrimage to Dayton, this year. John, N0EG, and I met up with a friend in New Haven, then met another friend in St. Louis for the trip to Dayton. The best word I know to describe it is overwhelming. I found myself reaching all these different milestones after a while; last lot this aisle, last aisle this side of the parking lot, last vendor this building, last time hiking back to the car today, etc. Dayton is the only hamfest I'm genuinely glad to leave, but I'm just as glad to get back next year. One of the funniest things I heard that weekend was one guy trying to hawk his wares. He was working some poor ham who seemed marginally interested in an item he was selling. He told the looker " Go ahead and make me an offer. I can't be insulted." I didn't quite hear what the looker offered, but the seller quickly shot back " I stand corrected, Sir" It was hilarious!

In the Mags

Among some of the treasures that followed me home from Dayton was a whole lot of new reading material. I picked up lots of recent issues of CQ, CQ Contest, CQ VHF, DX Newsletters, and QEX to name a few. After looking over the May and June CQ's, I think I'll start taking it again. Some of the May highlights were articles on the Tupenny paddle ( a keyer built from a wooden clothespin and some pennies), an automatic antenna switch for Icom rigs, a review of the MFJ-1026 Noise& Interference Filter, and a lot of contesting tips. In the June issue, reviews of the Kachina 505DSP PC controlled transceiver and the AT-11 automatic antenna tuner, and good construction articles on a monster 5 band Quad by K0SR and a smaller 2 el 80 Meter Yagi by K6UA. The Jan/Feb QEX has an interesting article describing the basic car body as a contoured ground plain and one on using surplus or dead microwave ovens as part sources for high voltage power sup-plies.The Mar/April issue has a pretty deep piece on DSP. Much more math than I can handle, but the few bits and pieces I did catch were quite informative. I also picked up a copy of W1TP's guide to collecting Telegraph keys with lots of info on some classic looking keys. I can hardly wait to get into Bill (W6SAI) Orr's HF Antenna Handbook. One of the best antenna books I've seen so far is Bill's book on beams. The only problem with all the reading material I picked up in Dayton is that I'll be lucky to get through it all by next Dayton Hi.I also saw some pretty neat stuff in this month's QST and 73, but I mislaid them in one of the stacks around the shack, so I'll go over them in a later issue.

73

That about covers things for this time around.

Hope to see you at Field Day !

73 es CUL,

de WY0B ....