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President's Message
Don't forget to take your handy-talky (HT) on vacation with you. We just got back from Florida last Sunday following our annual visit to my in-laws who are snow-birds living half the year just south of Melbourne. Anyway, when we got to Florida on Monday, Patriots Day, one of the first things I did was check the local newspaper to see what was happening on the Space Coast. Great! A launch was scheduled for Thursday evening at Cape Canaveral between 6:50 and 7:10pm. It was a Delta 2 rocket carrying four Globalstar satellites. So, Thursday evening my mother-in-law served an early dinner so Nancy, Emily and I could head up the coast and find a nice spot to observe the launch. We left the house a little after 6pm and got over to the coast highway, A1A, and started heading north. At about 6:45pm we were up to Patrick Air Force Base so I pulled into a beach-parking lot and we got out of the car and perched ourselves on a stone wall in front of the beach to start the countdown. There were plenty of other people there doing the same thing. All eyes were staring up the coastline toward Cape Canaveral which was visible even though it was maybe twenty miles away. Several gantry towers were visible but you couldn't tell which one had the Delta 2 rocket. Here's where the HT came in handy. I put the hot-rod antenna on the HT and started punching in frequencies of the local repeaters - Cocoa Beach, Marathon, Merrit Island, -- "This is Boeing Mission Control, we are at four minutes, twenty-nine seconds and counting. All system are go." This is great. One of the local repeater clubs is rebroadcasting the countdown live. I embarrass my fifteen year old daughter, Emily, with the radio. After all, being a parent, it's my job. People are coming over to listen to the countdown on my HT. "Three minutes and counting... [pause]... Weather balloon number five has just given a RED condition and we are now on hold at two minutes and fifty seconds. The weather data will be sent to California where a new flight profile will be generated to compensate for the weather. It will be sent back to Florida then uploaded to the rocket and the launch sequence will be rolled back to the four minute mark and the countdown will resume from there." The next words out of the radio was exactly what I didn't want to hear. "The data has taken too long to upload. We have lost the launch window and the mission is scrubbed. The fuel is being offloaded, this will take about two hours and..." IT'S OVER! I retract the antenna and people come over and ask ME "is it scrubbed?". I tell them with authority that "the weather was not cooperating and the mission was scrubbed". everyone heads to their cars to leave. This is the fifth time I've tried to see either a Shuttle or rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. I'm 0 for 5. We still had fun. 73
Jim, W1EQW
Field Day Update
by Dave, K1HT
Planning for Field Day 1998 has been moving ahead. A number of the pieces have fallen into place, but already we've had some surprises.
First, ARRL has changed the rules! No bonus-point credit for packet or VHF/UHF contacts, and the packet contacts that we've made in the past will no longer count. Also, non-CW digital (e.g., RTTY) contacts will count as a separate mode, just like CW and phone on each band. As a result, we'll still plan a serious effort on VHF/UHF --- the contacts still count. We will not have a packet station. We'll treat RTTY as a "demonstration sport" and have the capability to put one of the HF stations on RTTY, in case there's enough activity to make it worthwhile. Our RTTY expert, Dave WA6ILT, has agreed to guide this effort.
Second, Warren K1BOX will soon be moving to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, and his generators will not be available! We're grateful to Warren for his generous help
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