DeFOREST AMATEUR RADIO CLUB - K8GE PO Box 73 - West Union, OH 45693-0073 SERVING SOUTH CENTRAL OHIO SINCE 1974 MAY 2000 EDITOR: WB8IOW - Jerry S. Paquette http://www.qsl.net/k8ge The Presidents Shack George - KC8HFV Here we are again. Time for another Hamvention, I've got my list ready all I need now is a Brinks truck Full of cash to get it all, hi hi. Well maybe I could trim it a little. Anyway I hope you have got all your lists ready too and are looking forward to another great time in Dayton. This year promises to be good as the A.R.R.L. is having their national convention there. I hope to see all of you there. Ed is again taking our booth up and as usual we will have items for sale. Our May meeting was one of the better ones this year as we had the talk on satellites Bob K8YMI gave a great presentation. Until now my only knowledge or experience with satellites was trying to locate echostar for the TV. I really learned a lot. And this is really the point of topic of the month to share your favorite part of our hobby. If you have a friend or just someone you know by all means invite them to one of our meetings. And of course you are welcome to give a presentation yourself. Our next meeting will be at our Field Day site at Jerry and Kim's we will be having a covered dish picnic followed by a brief business meeting. This will give us all a chance to look over the area and make plans for our setup. I would like to take a moment here to thank Kim And Jerry for letting our club use their property as a Field Day site I think this will be a nice change of pace and an excellent location. So on behalf of the DeForest club; THANK YOU Kim and Jerry. Well that's about covers it for now hope to see you in Dayton, and the picnic I'll be easy to find next to the food. So fer now 73, George. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MINUTES OF May 9, 2000 MEETING Barbara Lock - N8HIA The meeting was called to order by our president, George KC8HFV, at 7:00 p.m. George led the members in the pledge of allegiance. George introduced the guest speaker for the "TOPIC OF THE MONTH," Bob Halley, K8YMI, from Terrace Park. Bob is a member of the Milford Amateur Radio Club and has an interesting topic to bring to us. Bob spoke on the subject of satellites. George had everyone introduce themselves, than gave the floor to Bob. The business part of the meeting shall be held after the program. Bob, K8YMI, began the program by introducing himself, and how he came to know different people in the club. Ed KE8FK, Barb N8HIA, Karen KB8QMV, and Stephanie KB8QOZ have known Bob through the Milford ARC. Bob gave a very interesting and easy to understand program on satellites. Bob had everyone's attention. There was a question and answer time at the end of the program. Bob gave a little history on how he became interested in the satellites. Bob has done articles for our newsletter and they have been knowledgeable and interesting. George KC8HFV asked for the minutes to be read from the previous meeting by our secretary. Kim N8YWX made the motion to accept the minutes as printed in the newsletter. Pat KC8LVE, second and motion carried. George KC8HFV asked for the treasurer's report to be read. Marlene KC8JXE read her report, balance of $2,550.11 as of April 11, 2000, with inflows' $83.50, outflows' $114.99. This made the balance of May 9, 2000, at $2,488.62. Marlene passed around the report for all the members to read. Roy KE4MZN made the motion to accept the treasurer's report as read, Lyle KC8DDY, second and the motion carried. George KC8HFV asked for the vice president report to be read. Ed KE8FK had the report of the Field Day committee. It was decided to hold Field Day at Jerry WB8IOW and Kim N8YWX place this year. We will have a covered dish supper on Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m. Breakfast will be on Sunday morning at Jerry and Kim's about 7:00 a.m. during the Field Day weekend. The June 13, 2000 meeting will be held at Jerry and Kim's place to decide were to set up the stations, and eating area. Please bring a covered dish to the meeting and we will have a picnic starting at 6:30 p.m. and then have our meeting. George KC8HFV gave his president report, remaining all of the test session June 3, 2000. George asked what we would like to do about the libraries and our putting in radio books. Jerry WB8IOW made the motion we wait until the new books are out, " Now You're Talking" and place one in each library. Barb N8HIA, second the motion and motion carried. Marlene KC8JXE had paperwork on the Dayton Hamfest, for anyone interested. The spaces are still the same ones, 1103 and 1104. Ed KE8FK will be taking the club's equipment up to set up the booth for the hamfest. Jerry WB8IOW, made a motion to donate half of split the pot to AMSAT, before it went into the treasure, which came to $14.00. Lyle KC8DDY second and motion carried. Kyle KC8OLS, won $14.00 from split the pot. Lyle KC8DDY made the motion to adjourn and Roy KE4MZN, second and motion carried, we adjourned at 8:55 p.m. 73's Barb N8HIA - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - West Union Wal-Mart now accepting used ni-cad batteries to recycle. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NEXT MEETING June 13, 2000 - 6:30 PM (Picnic starts at 6:30 PM) Covered dish dinner. Meeting to follow. Bring lawn chair if you have one. 1966 Logans Lane, West Union, OH. Talk-in on 147.00 repeater As always, PL 94.8 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - DeForest A.R.C. Birthdays & SPECIAL EVENTS 06-03 TEST SESSION - WEST UNION 9:00 AM 06-04 WB8IOW Jerry Paquette 06-06 KB8TQU Dorothy Silman 06-10 WX8B Jim Newman 06-11 KB8UAO Kelly Boone 06-13 DeForest ARC meeting at FIELD DAY site 06-17 Gladys Stultz 06-20 KB8TJT Wanda Mangus 06-21 KB8SRU Francis Cobb Jr. 06-22 K8NJO JoAnn Ramsey 06-23 KC8NHU Maxwell Moore 06-24 FIELD DAY starts 2:00 PM 06-25 FIELD DAY ends 2:00 PM - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ARRL TEST SESSION The DeForest ARC will conduct a test session Saturday, June 3, 2000 at the ABCAP Senior Nutrition Center in West Union. Registration begins at 9:00 AM. All license classes will be available for test. Any special testing needs should be communicated to KE8FK at 937 544-2585 before the day of the test. Wheel chair accessible. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Editors note: the following article was submitted for the newsletter by the author. Bob Halley was the guest speaker at the May 9th DeForest ARC meeting. GREAT JOB, BOB ! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITES K8YMI Bob Halley Two Cosmonauts arrived at MIR on April 6 to re-activate the space station after it was unoccupied for eight months. By April 16, the two Cosmonauts, Sergei Zalyotin and Alexandr Kaleri, had the amateur rigs operating again and some SSTV pictures were received here in the US and also by Hams in Australia. Some FM voice contacts were also made. They use 145.895 for simplex operation. Farrell Winder, W8ZCF, a Cincinnati area Ham, was one of the three who originally built the SSTV station for MIR. Farrell included an extended report about this new activity in the April newsletter of the Midwest VHF-UHF Society. A supply ship has since arrived and MIR has been partially restocked. Images can be viewed at http://www.qsl.net/mir-pix2.htm. Shuttle Atlantis, as STS-101, was delayed again in late April twice due to unfavorable weather in Florida and the third time due to poor weather in Spain and North Africa which serve as landing sites if problems develop before the orbiter reaches its initial orbit. The next window will occur in Mid-May. STS-101 was to install the external antennas on the International Space Station but the Russian built Zvezda (housing module) will not be launched until at least July. The STS-101 Astronauts will replace some batteries, make some repairs on the ISS, carry out a space walk and make a needed orbit correction using the thrusters on the Shuttle. NASA officials have reported that a US built component for the ISS will be ready to fly later this year if the Zvezda Service Module is delayed again. The US built Interim Control Module is designed to keep the two pieces of the ISS in orbit if the Russians miss the deadline. If it is launched in December, the Interim module would not be a permanent measure and would not serve as quarters for the 'Nauts so no Amateur operation is scheduled until the Zvezda is in place. The Hubble Space Telescope completed ten years in orbit on Monday April 24. Five new commemorative postage stamps have been issued to celebrate the event. The stamps feature certain Nebulae images taken by the telescope during those ten years. John Magliacane, KD2BD recently released a new version of his free satellite tracking and orbital prediction software..... PREDICT. Several new features have been added. It is available at this URL----http://WWW.linuxfan.com/~predict. I downloaded it some weeks ago but have not used it due to problems I have had trying to use the Linux operating system. Ernie MacLauchian, K1ELA, recently announced that the Boston VHF AMSAT net had reached a noteworthy milestone..... their 200th net operation. Over 3300 station check-ins have occurred since its' inception with a peak of 903 during 1998. Almost 500 individual stations have checked in since the net began in l996. ESA Ariane 506 (Flight 130) originally scheduled for late May has been delayed until July which likely means that Phase 3-D will not launch in July as we had hoped. Flight 130 was postponed since the ASTRA 2B was unavailable. Along with the GE built GE-7 communications, these two made up the payload scheduled for Flight 130. Since P 3-D is currently on the manifest for Flight 131, we will have to wait once again. The world's largest fully steerable radio telescope is nearing completion at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W. VA The final segment of the 100 by 110-meter dish was installed in mid-April. Overall, it stands 148 meters tall and it weighs more that 7000 metric tons. It features two novel aspects which will enhance its' collection of radio waves from the Cosmos. -73- K8YMI - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FCC: USE YOUR CALL - NOT YOUR PHONETICS The nations top ham radio cop is putting the Amateur Radio Community on notice. He says that you must use your full callsign -- not just phonetics to identify your station. And in his weekly audio column on RAINREPORT.COM, FCC Special Counsel for Enforcement, Riley Hollingsworth says that there is a proper way to identify and the FCC expects everyone to abide by the rules: "We have been getting some questions, and I think you have too about identifying with phonetics. Now I just wanted to point out that phonetics are to assist the intended operator in understanding the callsign. They are not a substitute for identifying. The identification rule is very simple, and requires that the callsign be used in English. But now phonetics are not callsigns, they are just facilitators. And it is particularly disturbing to hear signals that are 30 and 40 over and the operator is using phonetics that are repeated. Or only phonetics." Hollingsworth says that not only does identifying only with phonetics not comply with the Amateur Service Rules, but excessive use of phonetics is entirely unnecessary. This is not the first time that Hollingsworth has brought the matter of proper identification to the attention of the nations ham community. Last year a number of DX net operators became openly agitated after Hollingsworth told them that partial callsign recognition was OK -- but only if all stations identified properly according to the FCC's rules. Thanks to Radio Amateur Information Network enforcement news report (http://www.rainreport.com) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Is my face red? FCC Special Counsel for Amateur Radio Enforcement Riley Hollingsworth says he was just trying to see if the amateur community was paying attention when he suggested on his recent Radio Amateur Information Network enforcement news report (http://www.rainreport.com) that the use of phonetics during station identification was contrary to the amateur rules. As Hollingsworth has since conceded, after being challenged from several quarters, the applicable FCC station ID rule-- 97.119(b)(2) -- specifically encourages "use of a standard phonetic alphabet as an aid for correct station identification" "I plead temporary insanity," Hollingsworth told the ARRL. "I was working too close to my antennas the evening before." THANKS: The ARRL Letter ARRL National Convention 2000 Edition Vol. 19, No. 20 for previous & next articles - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FCC AFFIRMS $8000 FINES FOR TWO TEXAS AMATEURS The FCC has affirmed $8000 fines levied on two Texas hams for allegedly causing malicious interference with communications on a local repeater and with failing to identify. General licensee Paul E. Holcombe, K4TOF, and Technician licensee Robert L. Meyers, N5WLY, both of Houston, each received a Forfeiture Order earlier this month from the FCC's Houston office. The fines followed an FCC investigation last year that involved the use of direction-finding equipment. The FCC has said the interference "was allegedly caused by stations transmitting unidentified tones, inflammatory or derogatory remarks, and unmodulated signals, none of which were identified with an FCC-assigned call sign." Last year, the FCC had sent first a Notice of Violation and then a Notice of Apparent Liability to each licensee. Each responded both times by denying the allegations. The FCC was unconvinced by their assertions, and said their denials were contradicted by the observations of the FCC agent. The FCC noted that an FCC agent on separate occasions used direction-finding equipment to track interfering signals to Holcolmbe's and Meyers' vehicles. The agent surreptitiously observed each vehicle while the Memorial Emergency Repeater Association's 145.47 machine in Houston was being interfered with. In its Forfeiture Order to Meyers, the FCC indicated that Holcombe and Meyers had acted in concert to interfere with the MERA repeater. Both men were given 30 days from the May 3 release of each order to pay. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FCC AUDITS ARRL-VEC EXAM SESSION The FCC is looking into possible irregularities at an ARRL-VEC examination session held last July in North Carolina. On April 26, the Commission wrote Advanced licensee Leo C. Mallard Jr, W4KEM, Extra licensee Ronald J. Knapp, W9EF, and Advanced licensee Edward Gunter, N2VEA, all of Kinston, and Robert E. Jones, KQ4PK, of Dover, North Carolina. All are listed as participating Volunteer Examiners in the July 30, 1999, session in Washington, North Carolina. The ARRL-VEC alerted the FCC to possible discrepancies at the session. The audit focuses on Form 610 packages submitted for Technician licensees James L. Smith Jr, KB4EIA; Frances B. Freck, KB4EIB; and Charles R. Collins, KG4EIC. The FCC asked the VEs for specific information involving erasure marks, check marks--some o f which appeared to have been erased-and circles drawn around correct answers on answer sheets for one or more applicants. The FCC also asked each VE to state if he was present for the July 30 session; if the Form 610 was initialed or signed by him, and if not, whether he authorized anyone to apply the signature; and his involvement, if any, in the session. FCC Special Counsel for Amateur Radio Enforcement Riley Hollingsworth reminded the four about penalties for willfully false or misleading responses to inquiries of this type, and he invited them to contact him with any questions. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - WEEKLY NET The DeForest A.R.C. weekly net is held Thursday evening, 9:00 PM, all year, on the 147.00 MHz+ repeater. All check-ins welcome. 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MANCHESTER STREET WEST UNION, OH (937) 544-3325 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CUSTOM ELECTRONICS PEEBLES, OH 937 587-5122 OWNED AND OPERATED BY W8ZFO SALES AND INSTALLATION OF DISH NETWORK SATELLITE SYSTEMS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - J.D.'s AUTO REPAIR NAPA AUTO CARE CENTER - ASE CERTIFIED MECHANIC 4685 CHAPPARAL ROAD - WEST UNION (937) 544-8586 MONDAY - FRIDAY 8AM - 5 PM, CLOSED NOON HOUR CLOSED SATURDAY & SUNDAY OWNERS: JD - KB8VLF & DEE - KB8VBH - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SOUTHERN OHIO DRIVING SCHOOL PEEBLES, OHIO (937) 587-3194 or (937) 587-3837 First-Time Drivers Adults and Students Remedial for Adults and Students Owners: Lyle Lambert (KC8DDY) Jayne Lambert (KC8LUH) and Karen Lambert (KC8LIA) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - EDITOR E-MAIL: wb8iow@arrl.net - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -