May 98

Hello, again, Radio Afficiandos !

With the nicer temperatures lately, if you're like me, it gets harder and harder to find any time to sneak into the old shack for a little bit of fun on the air waves. Hopefully, since the Sun Spot Numbers are on the way up again, your time on the air is being rewarded with more DX.

May Meeting

The next meeting of the CMRA will be held on Tuesday, May 11th, at 7:00 p.m. in the community room of Boone Electric Co-op on Range Line Street. John. N0EG, will be giving a program on ARES / RACES that should be pretty interesting. We will also be talking a bit about this year's Field Day effort, the usual club business, and an offer TEN TEC has made to amateur radio clubs. I had intended to place the club order before now, but since I haven't gotten all the order info together, let's get together at the meeting if you would like to order a kit. Bring your checkbook, and we can get the order on it's way by the end of the week. A kit interested in is the 2 Meter transverter. This is a nice effort on Ten Tec's part to spur interest in building among our ranks.

April Meeting

A few of the things talked about at our last meeting was the Ten Tec offer, a request to cover communications for a bike race (we didn't get enough notice for the event, so were not able to help), we ap-pointed a Field Day Chairman for this year (your's truly, WY0B), and Dewey, WM0H, also gave a program on proper repeater usage that resulted in lots of good questions. Perry, N0NMC, also handed off a couple of batons, as he will be leaving the area in the summer for greener pastures down South. The Hamfest Chairman baton went to John, N0EG, and the CMRA Web Page editor baton went to WY0B. Hopefully, I'll get a handle on HTML pretty quickly, as well as how to upload to the page. Another high point of the meeting was a visit from Greg, K0GN, who has left this part of the world for 3 to 5 years in Singapore for work.

Departures

As mentioned above, Perry, N0NMC, is moving away. Perry has been a big help to the Club, stepping in as Hamfest Chairman when we really needed him, as well as creating the CMRA Web Page, which is a great way to draw attention to the Club. Perry also was Squelch Tail Editor for two years. Thanks for all your work, OM ! Jesse, WM0Y, another long time member in the Club, has also decided to move on. Jesse has taken employment in the Chicago area, recently. As happens so often, other demands on Jesse's time has limited his participation in the Club in the last couple of years, but he has always been a driving force in the Club. Jesse has held most positions in the Club, and always carried out the duties with great results. Again, thanks for all your efforts, OM !

Club Breakfast

The next Club Breakfast will be held Saturday, May 9th, 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, that kid down the block that might get bit by the amateur radio bug, etc. The more, the merrier!

Club Station

The Club Station is open Monday evenings at 7:00 p.m. Always a good time to visit, check out the HF bands, test how well your rig works with a nice antenna, ask for help with rig problems (and maybe even get an answer Hi.), or just hang out with other hams. If you haven't stopped by in a while, drop on in. We'll put on the coffee and set a spell.

C.M.C.P.N.

The Central Missouri Code Practice Net has been meeting on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7:00 p.m. We have started at 5 wpm and will be increasing speed up to 15 or 25 wpm, as interest dictates. We are encouraging check-ins via the repeater for licensed amateurs, as well as via phone and email for non-licensed participants, in order to gauge participation and gather comments on the progress of the net and signal reports. We need lots of interest in the net in order to justify tieing up the repeater for about an hour a couple of times a week. If you know anyone who would benefit from the net, see if they have receive capability on 2 meters. If not, perhaps you could lend them the needed equipment. I previously had heard of some interest in the net from "DX" stations, but haven't received any confirm-ation of same from anyone out of the Columbia area. Will report on the progress of the net in the next newsletter.

In the Mags

As usual, found some noteworthy items in this month's QST. Also, as usual, haven't gotten into the 73 yet this month (haven't even received it yet HI.) In QST we find a neat article on using a Stamp micro-controller to remote control an HF station via a portable (I'm sure it could be easily adapted to use a phone, as well), good info on building a V-Yagi that looks like an FB way to get up a decent antenna on 40 meters, an in-depth product review on the Kachina HF trans-ceiver (turn your PC into an HF rig), and an article on HF-Internet gateways. There is also a short item on taming "wall cubes", but I heard of another idea from a local ham. He just solders AC line cord to the plug on the transformer, bends the leads over, and tapes up the whole deal. The biggest gripe I have with these are that one transformer usually takes up two sockets on an outlet strip, and this seems like a simple way to free up the other outlets. The rules for 1998 ARRL Field Day are also in this issue. And finally, in the results for the 97 ARRL November Sweepstakes, I see several familiar calls in the Missouri listings, among which are N0SS, K0GN, NS0B, and K0SM. Glad to see the local contest activity.

Whoops

Sorry about the print quality the last couple of issues. My printer seems to be more of a smearer, lately, and I haven't had a chance to replace the cartridge yet. Please bear with me.

73

Well, that pretty much does it for this time around. Until next time, 73, es CUL OM/YL,

de WY0B ....

 Central Missouri Radio Association

P.O. Box 283

Columbia, Mo. 65205