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President's Message
It's very annoying to have writer's block, and that's what I have this month. I couldn't come up with a topic, and it's Sunday afternoon of the week before we have to mail the newsletter, so I'm going to write about what got done this past month, and hope it fills the page.
George and Jim finally got the SB-201 working! George found a broken grid resistor, and Jim swapped 572Bs until he found a pair that "matched". Then we put it all back together and connected it up with the new cables I made. As I was plugging in the cables, I noticed that neither of the SO-239s on the amp was doing a very good job of gripping the center pin. After examining them last Saturday, I decided that Heath had used some cheap connectors, and that they both needed to be replaced. Of course, this involved taking the amp apart again, and disassembling the SWR line inside the chassis, because they had mounted the connectors from behind the chassis. We finally have two good Amphenol connectors on the amp, and it's almost reassembled. Do yourself a favor, and spend the extra buck on good connectors. The stuff from Radio Shack just doesn't cut it.
The tube stash is history. Leo, WA1HAM, came over last week, and picked them all up. I hear they went to Rene, so they found a good home with someone who will use them. Given such a good start, I have been working to clean up the "General Radio" storage room, and we got rid of several boxes of trash last Saturday.
The Heath Warrior amp is out of storage, but we understand it has a power supply problem. If anyone knows exactly what that problem is, please enlighten us, so we don't have to figure it out on our own. We'd like to get the Warrior working as a backup for the SB-201. It runs about the same power, the tubes are half as expensive, and it's twice the size and weight of the 201.
The packet cluster is running in temperature regulated comfort. I went up to Martin's and checked on it, the temperature regulator is working just fine, and the recent single digit temperatures didn't cause any problems.
My K2 kit has been shipped and is supposed to arrive this week. I'll bring what I can to the meeting.
73,
Peter, KA1AXY
Note from the Treasurer, W1VIV:
by Sumner, W1VIV
The FARA board has voted to publicly thank those members who have put a little "extra" in with their annual dues. These donations are much appreciated and will be put to good use by your club. Those giving donations include --
Fred Rosebury, KA1GEN
Joe Sweeney, K1NCJ
Mark Stern, WA1R
Rick Commo, K1LOG/7
Dick Marshall, K1KTK
Some annual dues have not yet been received. Please send your checks to the FARA P.O. box, or pay at the meeting.
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