The holiday season is here and the end of this year is coming fast!  I want to wish you all the best this festive season and I hope that your new year is happy and rewarding in all ways.

66 to all and to all a good night!

Jim, WA6OTP

Don’t miss the Christmas Potluck and Gift Exchange! It will be on the regular meeting night, December 16th , at 6:00 at the Redwood Grange, Redwood Avenue, Grants Pass. Bring a covered dish (there will be turkey and ham), a gift worth $5.00 or more for each person in your party, and your table service(s). Once again, Santa will be there to facilitate the gifting.

I’ve changed internet providers again. My new e-mail address is n7gei@msn.com. I got faster DSL service for less money through Qwest. Anybody who hasn’t reported their new e-mail address due to the Internet CDS change can do so by contacting me.

As we near the first of a new year, don’t forget to pay your 2004 dues.

If you have anything to submit for publication in the Gnus, see the contact information below the masthead.

73, Mike, N7GEI

Our next meeting will be the annual SOARC Christmas Potluck and Gift Exchange. We will gather at 6:00 at the Redwood Grange on Redwood Avenue in Grant Pass. There will be lots of great food and fun for all!

The January meeting will include the election of officers and board members for next year.

73, Bill, WX7U

Western Belles is a women’s ham radio chat group that meets at 7:30 PM on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month on the 147.300 repeater. Please check in!

The ladies get together regularly for lunch and all female hams are invited to attend.

Our next luncheon will be at 11:30 on Saturday, January 3rd, at The Royal Barge, 120 SW H Street in Grants Pass.

The Question Pool Committee (QPC) of the National Conference of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators has released a revised and expanded Amateur Radio General class (Element 3) question pool into the public domain. The new question pool becomes effective July 1, 2004, and must be used to generate all General written examinations administered on or after that date.

"The pool has been expanded to 432 questions," said ARRL VEC Manager Bart Jahnke, W9JJ, a member of the Question Pool Committee, who notes that all subelements grew slightly. "The largest increase in questions this time around was in our Operating Procedures and Amateur Radio Practices subelements," he said. The General class question pool does not contain any diagrams or symbols.

The new Element 3 question pool is available on the ARRL Amateur Exam Question Pools Web page at http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/pools.html in Adobe PDF and ASCII text format. It includes all questions and answers relating to Element 3.

The Question Pool Committee now is turning its attention to developing an outline for an updated Amateur Extra class (Element 4) question pool, which will be revised over the next 24 months, Jahnke said. It will go into effect July 1, 2006. The deadline to submit input to the Amateur Extra question pool syllabus is May 1, 2004.

Commenters may address specific Element 3 questions as well as inputs to the Element 3 syllabus and question pool to the Question Pool Committee via e-mail at, qpc@arrl.org.

When you stop believing in Santa Claus, you get underwear for Christmas.

Buy your kid a set of batteries for Christmas and include a note saying “Toys not included”.

Just before Christmas, an honest politician, a generous lawyer, and Santa Claus were riding in the elevator of a posh hotel. Just before the doors opened, they all noticed a $20 bill lying on the floor. Which one picked it up? Santa, of course. The other two don’t exist.

Christmas is the only holiday when we sit around looking at a dead tree and eating candy out of our socks.

A mother decided that her 10-year-old daughter, Cathy, should get something practical for Christmas. ”Suppose we open a savings account for you?” the mother suggested. Cathy liked the idea.

“It’s your account, darling,” the mother said as they arrived at the bank, “so you fill out the application.”

Cathy had no problems until she came to the space marked “Name of your former bank.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she wrote, “Piggy.”

Dear Ma and Pa:

Merry Christmas! There’s not a speck of snow in sight here! I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before maybe all of the places are filled. I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there's warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food. But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you till noon when you get fed again. It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on "route" marches, which the Platoon Sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different. A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice, but awful flat.

The Sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags some. The Captain is like the school board. Majors and Colonels just ride around and frown. They don't bother you none. This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don't know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don't move. And it ain't shooting at you, like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes. Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home. I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. He joined up the same time as me. But I'm only 5'6" and 130  pounds and he's 6'8" and weighs near 300 pounds dry. Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Gail

True transceivers for one band, one sideband operation
PTT and VOX circuits built in
Provision for operation with linear amplifier
2KC dial calibration--6" of bandspread

Pick a band...new 80, 40 and 20 meter SSB transceivers from Heathkit! These single band transceivers have more features and better performance ... at one third the cost of three-band units. Buy only the bands you need. Employs a crystal filter type SSB generator for clean operation. Features include Automatic Level Control (ALC) and low frequency VFO (1.5--1.7 mc) for greater stability than comparable units. Vernier tuning assures smooth and accurate frequency location.

These transceivers are designed for easy assembly and include a heavy-duty circuit board, rugged steel chassis and wiring harness, a welded and braced one-piece steel chassis & cabinet, and gimbal mounting bracket. Provision has been made to accept a Heathkit HRA-10-1 100 KC Crystal Calibrator as a plug-in accessory. The transceivers use the GH-12 push-to-talk microphone and operate with the HP-13 (DC) or HP-23 (AC) power supplies or the Heathkit HP-10 (DC) or HP-20 (AC) power supplies.

SPECIFICATIONS

RF Input: 200 watts PEP.

Tube Complement: Fourteen tube heterodyne circuit; (3) 6EA8 mic. amp., VOX relay amp., IF amp., RF amp., Rcvr. mixer; (5) 6AU6's, VFO, VOX amp., IF amps., Xmtr. mixer; (1) 6BE6, VFO isolator (HW-12), Het. osc. and mixer (HW-22 & HW-32); (1) 12BY7, Driver; (1) 12AU7, Xtal osc., product det.; (1) 6EB8, Audio amp. and output; (2) 6GE5 R.F. output.

Sideband Generation: Crystal lattice bandpass filter method. Stability: 100 cps overall after warm-up.

Carrier & Unwanted Sideband Suppression: 45 db.

Frequency Coverage: HW-12, 3.8-4.0 mc; HW-22, 7.2-7.3 mc; HW-32, 14.2-14.35 mc.

Receiver Sensitivity: 1 uv for 15 db S+N/N ratio.

Receiver Selectivity: 2.1 kc @ 6 db, 6.0 kc @ 50 db.

Output: 50 ohm fixed (unbalanced).

Operation: HW-12 & HW-22, LSB; HW-32 USB.

Audio output: 1 watt @ 8 ohms.

Mike Input: Hi-Z.