The monthly newsletter of the Carbon Amateur Radio Club

January 1999

A J Spitzer WB2VBR

Andrew Roomberg KB3CWH

As we start a new year, let us all pull together to make the Carbon Amateur Radio Club a club for all to be proud to be a member of. To do this, the board of officers will try to become better organized by putting a Club Constitution together to give all members better direction and to make the club more visible in the community and to attract new members into this great hobby of ours. This will be done successfully if all members pull together to get the job done. The ones that sit back and do nothing but criticize the ones that put forth the effort are the ones that should ask themselves what positive effort they have done to enhance the clubs growth. If you haven't put forth positive energy to help the club lately, why not ask the officers how you can help make being a member of CARC more fun. Grouches and complainers who do nothing need not apply. See you at the January 21, 1999, meeting, and lets have fun and grow together.

Bob Fulton, Jr., President

N3NOP

The December hunt was held on December 19, 1998 and it ended up being a great hunt although close in. The main purpose of the hunt was to give the hounds some additional practice detecting a beam generated signal. The hunt lasted a little over an hour and the trophies were handed out at the end. Bob(N3NOP) & Carol(N3PEK) were the winners of the December hunt. They found the fox in 41 minutes. As in the past the time was the determining factor.

THE TROPHIES HANDED OUT ARE:

Bob/Carol for first place in the mobile hunt of November. Mike/AJ for the hounds of the year. Gene for the most creative hunts in 1998 Amy & Rob/Andrew for using the most unusual devices during the fox hunts.

The next hunt will be in the new year and will be held on January 16, 1999. No knowledge as to what kind of hunt it will be. Maybe it will end up to be another mystery hunt. It will start at 9am and breakfast will be 7:30am at the 443 diner. We will use the repeater on Friday night to determine if there will be a hunt depending on the weather. We will meet at the usual time of 7:30pm on 147.255. With the conditions as they usually are in the winter months the hunts will be short and require very little walking etc.

HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL AT THE HUNT.

WISHING EVERYONE A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR AND ONE BLESSED WITH HEALTH, HAPPINESS AND A PILE OF JOY.

de AJ WB2VBR

Robert KB3BYT, our webmaster, has created a webpage for posting late-breaking news related to the club and ham radio. The page can be seen at http://www.cpals.com/~elitehom/carc/

Mike N3XYU has accepted the position of Skywarn Coordinator for Carbon County. Please give Mike your support. Congratulations, Mike !

Lamar N3AT has recently been under the weather. Get well soon, Lamar !

The Kelley Family (Bill KA3UKL) recently had their fifteen minutes of fame. They were featured on a local TV newscast report detailing their pickup truck equipped with a real Christmas tree in the back. Bill explained the difficulties in having a mobile Christmas tree and showed the specially engineered guy lines and tree mount constructed of welded exhaust pipes which were necessary to support the tree. An extensive inventory of spare lights was kept in the glove compartment to replace burnt-out bulbs which were a frequent occurrence.

The Kelley "Christmas Mobile" can be seen spreading Christmas cheer in the Lehighton area.

December’s issue was the first attempt at doing an electronic distribution of the newsletter in addition to the traditional snail mail mailing. I hope everyone was able to view either the Word or HTML formats. In the future I will include a text file also, although all the snazzy formatting and pictures are lost in text format.

Some concerns were raised regarding macro viruses which can occur in Word documents. Just for your piece of mind (and mine), I run virus protection software on all of my machines which will detect any known Word macro viruses. Also, if you have a later version of Word or an older version which is "patched", Word will automatically ask you if macros should be disabled when you open a Word document that has a macro in it. I will never intentionally include a macro in the newsletter file, so if your machine detects a macro upon opening the Illuminator please select "Disable macros". You can view the newsletter safely if this happens, but please contact me so that the source of the macro can be determined. If you receive this newsletter secondhand (not through the CARC reflector) as a Word document, I cannot guarantee that a macro virus is not present in it.

The December newsletter was not infected and it should be noted that macro viruses cannot exist in the text and HTML (web) versions of The Illuminator. Typically Word macro viruses are quite harmless and can be cleaned up quite easily, although they are definitely a nuisance.

Happy Holidays !

73 de Goody ka3ngh

Well, HF fans, things are really beginning to look up ! While October was generally a down month, numbers-wise, it was only a minor setback to a steady rise in ropagation. The average solar flux for December was over 151. The previous 90 day average was 134 which indicates a continuing rise in solar flux. But this is only one indicator.

Sunspots have gone wild. The average for November is 96. For December, the mean is over 135 SSN (sunspot numbers). The best news is that the A and K indexes have been low enough to propagate some good signals. We have had high A index numbers on Dec 1st, 6th, and 11th ( 12, 13, 14). The K index has normally run from 1 to 3. With the lower index numbers, we will hear stronger signals and more of them. Seasonal changes also play into the whole picture and the lower atmospheric noise is making DX open game well after dark.

On the bands, 20 meters has SSB DX pileups continuing up to 8 PM local time before thinning out. Spanish speaking DX has been heard frequently at 7 AM on 20 m and 10m with New Zealand and Asia making early appearances. 10 meters has peaked around 10 AM to 11 AM but often yielding DX until dark with the DX stations with the big antennas the last to fade (12 ele on 20m?). Those are some nasty monobanders but there are a few in Europe and Japan. The quad beams and loop antennas are not far behind. I have also heard several more vertical antennas in use than I have expected, especially on 15 meters. 15 meters has been holding its own with decent

signals and DX.

The big news is being found on 80 m and 160 m mainly due to the lack of the summer white noise. DX appears before sundown and only gets better with time. 40 meter DX has steadily improved for the barefoot operator. As the numbers continue rising, DX hours will increase past the current 8 to 9 PM on the DX bands , 20m - 15m - 10 meters. The WARC bands are equally busy and should not be passed up. The DX clusters show lots of DX visiting the WARC bands as conditions favor these bands. Keep in mind the MUF, maximum useable frequency, as this all becomes related to all the numbers and indexes above. The greatest news is, it will only get

better for at least the next three years. Now is the time for the Novices and Tech Plus operators ( as well as the Old Timers) to get up on 10 meters and become experienced 10m HF DX operators.

We can look for solar flux numbers to be above 135 on a regular basis and many more sunspot numbers above 100 in the days to come. Keep in mind, solar flares can easily wipe out a band for a few days as the sun becomes more active. This sure beats a year ago when we saw all thenumbers below 100 at times. Listen to WWV at 18 minutes after the hour or your favorite DX Cluster. Not sure what is going on? Drop me a line at [email protected]....

73s de LARRY N3CR

It is really great to hear so much DX on the bands again. Since I haven't been able to support my tribander above 20 ft just yet, I have settled for the "other" options, mainly wire antennas. A firm believer that if you can put up a dipole you can put up a loop antenna, I have a horizontal mounted DELTA LOOP on 40 meters, which I use on several bands. It replaced a 20m DELTA LOOP which worked well on 20m and 15m. I have a 10m QUAD LOOP mounted vertically over my garage for southeast action. Basically, the loops are less noisy and broad banded than a dipole. They are a full wavelength but don't let that scare you. They need not be mounted square or triangular to work. The shape can be quite distorted and still outperform a dipole. My favorite height seems to be 20 ft but the higher the better!! What a difference when you get an antenna in the clear. With less noise, I was able to hear more stations with the loop antennas. If I could hear them with earphones on, I could work them.

Getting thru a pileup may be another problem, but the loop does offer some gain over a dipole. Putting up 2 or more elements and you have an antenna of some size and gain. I have found that the Quad Beams are

the last ones to fade on the bands. Besides they work the verticals as easy as they do yagis and often notice less of the deep fading. These are important factors if you are going after the DX on the less than ideal

conditions. The antenna can easily decide whether you are able to work a station or not. It takes a lot more power to replace a good antenna.

My goal this year has been to work 100 countries, many of them on 10 meters. I enjoy chasing islands so this was also important. With the changes in propagation, I have almost worked 100 countries since I changed my call in October using the wire antennas!! In twenty years I have never heard or worked so many new callsigns at one sitting. Now if I could only get a Qsl from places like Croatia, Tunisia, Cyprus, Bosnia, or Ceuta ( N Africa) !! If they all return a Qsl then I will have a wall full just from this years activity.

The triband antenna was slightly better than a dipole at 20 ft. The high swr (over 2 to 1) and lack of height made the antenna a victum to nearby powerline noise. Besides the lack of gain and front to back ratio, the antenna made a little more than a dummy load over my garage. The 20m loop, then the 40 meter loop replacement, were steady improvements to the situation. Depending how you feed the loop, you can control how much vertical or horizontal polarization the antenna will display. This way I could set the polarization for the most dx in the desired direction. The addition of the 10 m Quad loop (8 ft on a side) in place of the tribander really improved my 10m totals!! I worked stations I only heard before and got thru pileups to boot. The moral to the story is, don't be afraid to try ANYTHING. Though barefoot at 100 watt out, I miss the gain of the triband when at 40 ft where qso's seemed easy. But I enjoy the challenge of beating the odds with a less than perfect antenna system. The saga continues.

QST will no longer be carrying the propagation charts so here are a couple of sites to get reports updated every hour and 27 day forecasts. The charts will be on www.arrl.org/ if one wants to download them.

Updated every hour: solar.uleth.ca/solar/www/hourly.html

Updated for a 27 day projection:

gopher://proton.sel.noaa.gov/00/weekly/27DO.txt

Rare DXpedition starting January 10, 1999

CAMPBELL ISLAND IOTA OC037. CALL SIGN ZL9CI and will be active on all bands. This maybe the last expedition to the island since New Zeland is restricting access. They will have 6 stations and cover all the bands. They will have a WEB page www.qsl.net/zl9ci/. You will be able to confirm contacts and get further info on the expedition. More complete details (frequencies & times) in January QST page 73.

XT BURKINA FASO 2/7 - 3/1 as XT2OW & XT2DM. They will be both CW and SSB 20-10 beam and G5RV. QSL via F5RLE

YU-SV Mount Athos. Stations are active until March 31, 1999. They will be active on all bands and modes. QSL YU0SRJ(P.O.

BOX 48, 11000 BEOGRAD) GREECE

FT5ZH, AMSTERDAM ISLAND DXPEDITION. Still active on all bands. See article in the DECEMBER QST. However, they are in the process of shutting down. Carful listening will get you a contact over the next several days.

VP8/ Falkland Islands will be on the low bands from 12/26 to 1/16/99. Not too much info but thay have a web page for further info... www5.palmnet.net/~k4qd.

VK9C/VK9X - Cocos-Keeling and Christmas islands, will be active from 2/6 - 2/20/99. They will be on the low bands. Very little info at this time. Will have further info if you are interested contact me.

For all who need QSL info there are several sources on the NET. Buckmasters has a web page which you can find via a search. There are several others that you can use to find callsign information via the search engines. If no results let me know and I can supply the bookmark addresses.

HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY SEASON

de AJ WB2VBR

January 1 – Happy New Year !!!

January 2 – ARRL RTTY Roundup

January 8 – Japan International DX Contest

January 9 – Midwinter Contest - CW, North American QSO Party - CW

January 10 – Midwinter Contest – Phone

January 16 – ** Foxhunt **, Hamfest – East Bangor Fire Hall (call 717-897-0208 or 610-588-1979 for details), North American QSO Party – Phone

January 23 – ARRL VHF Sweepstakes

January 29 – CQ 160 Meter Contest - CW

February 6 – New Hampshire QSO Party, Delaware QSO Party

** denotes CARC supported or sponsored events

bold indicates items of local interest

President - Robert Fulton N3NOP [email protected]

Vice Pres/Treasurer - A J Spitzer WB2VBR [email protected]

Secretary - Andrew Roomberg KB3CWH

Repeater Trustee – Bill Dale WY3K

Public Information Officer – Bill Kelley KA3UKL

Editor – Goody KA3NGH [email protected]

Contesting – Glenn K3PP [email protected]

DX – AJ WB2VBR [email protected]

Foxhunting – AJ WB2VBR [email protected]

Propagation – Larry N3CR [email protected]

QRP – Lamar N3AT [email protected]

Skywarn – Mike N3XYU [email protected]

CARC Website : http://www.cpals.com/~elitehom/carc/

Webmaster – Robert KB3BYT [email protected]