Wayne Williams, K4MOB, will be our speaker for the April meeting. Wayne will speak about the Southeastern Repeater Association (SERA) which he has been actively involved with for years.
At our March meeting, Chris Horne, W4CKH, gave us a program on “The Practice and History of OP-Amps”.
A lot of our members have been sick in the last few months. I don’t know about you, but I for one am sick and tired of being sick and tired. If we can just hold out for summer. . .
Bring your kleenex, aspirin and any drugs you wish to share and we’ll see you at the April meeting. After all, misery loves company. Hope to see you there.

The FCC’s top Amateur Radio enforcer, Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, will put in an appearance at this year’s Dayton Hamvention. Hollingsworth is scheduled to address enforcement issues at FCC forums on Friday and Sunday at this year’s event, scheduled for May 14-16. He’ll also address the 3865 Drake and Antique Radio Tube Net Group forum Saturday morning (10:45-11:45 AM, Room 3), moderated by Don Spillman, W8NS. (Other speakers at the Drake forum include Sindre Torp, LA6OP, and Drake Service Manager Bill Frost, WD8DFP).--thanks to Steve Morgan, K8FFO
--The ARRL Letter Online, Volume 18, Number 9 (February 26, 1999)

Hopefully by the time you read this, there will be a new addition to the Carmichael family. Rose is due to go the the hospital on Tuesday, March 30 to induce labor. As late as this baby is, he will probably be at our next club meeting demanding a steak. Congratulations, Rose and Scotty.

The March meeting of the High Point Amateur Radio Club was called to order by Vice President, Sam Hall, K4AME. The meeting drew 15 members and no visitors.
President Scott Carmicheal was a little under the weather with a knee injury and could not make the meeting. It was reported that Myron Buser had pneumonia and Judy Walker’s foot is almost healed.
The minutes were read by Chris Horne, W4CKH, and approved by the club. Mark McMahan read the treasurer’s report and noted an ending balance of $1,270.77. There was no old business. Under new business it was brought to our attention that Sky Warn Training is upon us and to see Judy or Mike Walker for more information. Rogers Albertson reported there were no new members.
Sam Hall presented the “Tech Minute” for the meeting. Sam explained the reason why grounding your Amateur Radio station is so important. Theory and practice says there needs to be a good conductive path to earth ground in the event of a lightning hit to your tower or a fault and even to suppress unwanted noise on your cables in the shack. Sam described a piece of equipment that you can build inexpensively that will measure the ground conductivity of your soil. The equipment is quite simple and includes a 120V transformer whose secondary side is connected to a 15.6 Ohm (5W) resistor and four (1 foot) metal stakes. The stakes are lined up in a row and two voltage readings are taken across the resistor and across the middle two stakes. The ratio of the middle voltage to the resistor voltage, multiplied by 21 gives you the ground conductivity in Mhos (reciprocal of Ohms) A good ground conductivity is 4 to 5 milliMhos .
The program for the March meeting was on the History and Practice of Operational Amplifiers (Op-Amps). Chris Horne, W4CKH, began his presentation by noting the history of electronics and that the Op-Amp IC became commercially available around 1973. Two IC “chips” were passed around to illustrate both the size and simplicity of Op-Amp chips which replaced the many discrete components that were formally needed prior to the chip’s inception. Then Chris began to explain how to design an Op-Amp circuit that might be used to amplify a signal in a radio circuit. The design of Op-amps requires the understanding of three primary facts: the input impedance is infinite, the input voltages are practically equal, and how to manipulate algebraic expressions like voltage and current ratios. Chris went on to show the members how to find the correct resistor values to design an Op-Amp to amplify a signal 10-fold.
The next club meeting promises to be a good one with another Tech Minute and interesting program. Hope to see you there and bring a friend to enjoy the fellowship and our great hobby of Amateur Radio.
-- Submitted by Chris Horne, W4CKH, HPARC Secretary

The cost of applying for an Amateur vanity call sign is expected to rise slightly this fall. In a just-released Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC has proposed increasing the vanity fee to $1.42 per year or $14.20 for the 10-year term.
The current vanity fee is $13. The FCC projects 6800 vanity applications in 1999 for a total revenue figure of more than $96,000.
The vanity call sign fee dropped from its high of $50 to $13 last September. The FCC reports it received a total of 12,152 vanity applications during 1998--slightly more than 1000 a month. That trend continued in January and February. The FCC got more than 1400 applications in each of those two months.
--The ARRL Letter Online, Volume 18, Number 13 (March 26, 1999)

Simple but reasonably accurate method of checking the ground conductivity at your shack.
Drive four 5/8-inch metal rods one foot into the ground in a row 18 inches apart in an area where you wish to measure the conductivity. Connect one side of a 12 volt AC source to the rod at one end of the row. Connect the other terminal of the 12 volt AC source to one end of a 14.5 ohm 5-watt resistor and the other end of the resistor to the rod at the other end of the row. This leaves the two rods in the center with no terminations at this time. Turn on the AC source and measure the voltage across the 14.5 ohm resistor and call it V1. Now measure the voltage across the two rods in the center of the row and call it V2. Calculate the ground conductivity using the following formula. Ground conductivity in milli-mhos = 21 times V1 divided by V2. Remember that conductivity ( G ) is the reciprocal of resistance ( R ). If the conductivity is 30 or more milli-mhos, grounding your station and tower with a couple of 8 to 12 foot ground rods may be reasonable. If conductivity is in the order of 5 or 10 milli-mhos you need to use a considerable number of rods and connecting wire.
--Sam Hall, K4AME

The Amateur Radio antenna system that the late Sen Barry Goldwater, K7UGA, used to complete thousands of phone patch messages for troops during the Vietnam War now is history. Five members of Goldwater’s club, the Central Arizona DX Association, recently dismantled the K7UGA antenna system. “It took us about five hours to remove them from the 77-foot rotating mast,” said club member Mike Bill, N7MB. Bill said the antennas have been sold.
Goldwater died last May 29. Bill says Goldwater’s widow, Susan, recently asked the club members for assistance in taking down the antennas at the Goldwaters’ Paradise Valley, Arizona, home. Goldwater used a Hy-Gain RP-75H rotating pole assembly turned by a 1/4-HP electric motor. The antennas were Hy-Gain LongJohns for 10, 15, and 20 meters as well as a 3-element 40-meter array, “very big and very heavy,” Bill said. The system had been installed in the mid-1960s to support Goldwater’s extensive phone-patch activities on MARS.
Others on the antenna-removal crew included Paul Nyland, K7PN, Paul Playford, W8AEF, Rod O’Connor, W7EKV, and Mike Fulcher, KC7V. Bill says the buyer of the K7UGA antennas wishes to remain anonymous. The sale price was not revealed. For more information, visit http://www.azhub.com/goldwater/listings.html
--The ARRL Letter Online, Volume 18, Number 12 (March 19, 1999)

If you are learning Morse code, or just brushing up on your verbal skills, this is for you. Morse teachers have long recognized that people who succeed with code can “hear the music” of its characters. Educational psychologists have identified the most-used words in the English language. Once you learn the sound of these most-common words in Morse, you may find yourself “hearing the music” of whole words as well.
To develop this ability, you can use the lists below with your Morse computer program. Here are the most common 100 words in English:
GROUP A
Just 12 words account for 25 percent of typical text: a, and, he, I, in, is, it, of, that, the, to, was.
GROUP B
The next-most common twenty words are: all, are, as, at, be, but, for, had, have, him, his, not, no, on, one, said, so, they, we, with, you.
GROUP C
To bring the total to 100, here are the 68 next-most common: about, an, back, been, before, big, call, came, can, come, could, first, from, get, go, has, her, here, like, little, look, made, make, must, my, new, no, now, off, only, over, right, see, she, some, there, this, two, up, want, what, when, where, which, who, will.
--Rob, VE3FLB, Lakehead ARC, (March 1996), ARNS, (June 1996)