Nominations for club offices and board postitions will be presented at the November meeting with the election to be held in January. Once again, there will be several openings available and please consider filling one of them.

Our annual Christmas party/potluck/gift exchange will be held on our regular meeting night in December. More details on this next month.

Call someone who hasn't been to club for a while and give them a ride.

See you at the meeting.

73, Jim, WA6OTP 

I'm still seeing lots of ham radio license plates around town with calls that don't appear on our roster or come to our meetings. At last count, there were about 500 hams in this area and only about 100 of them are members of SOARC. I keep hearing stories from our members about how they are approaching some of these people, which is great, but we need to do something to help motivate them to get involved in our club. Any suggestions?

Invite someone to the club meeting. They might hear or see something that sparks an interest in our hobby. Don't forget to pay for their coffee and donuts.

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

73, Mike, N7GEI

At the next SOARC meeting, Galen Kelm, KE7LM, will report on last month's transmitter hunt at Riverside Park in Grants Pass.

Also, we will continue the discussion about the wire antenna-building class and the parts necessary for the construction.

Another topic to be covered is the growing 2 meter SSB activity in the area.

Coming up is the SwapToberfest starting at 9:00 AM on October 23rd at the Polk County Fairgrounds in Rickreall, Oregon. It's on old hwy 99, 10 miles west of Salem. This is usually bigger than the February version each year.

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, November 6th, at Elmer's Restaurant, 175 NE Agness Ave., Grants Pass.

The Belles will be providing homemade cookies at the next meeting instead of the donuts.

(For those who have missed the cookies in the past, they are great! Don't miss them! – Editor)

The last SOARC VE test session of the year will be held on November 26th.

The exams will be conducted at 1830 on the last Friday of the month in the Senior Center cafeteria (our regular meeting place). Volunteer examiners should be there at 1800.

The exam costs $12.00 and is available to all, first come, first served, with no reservation necessary.

73, Bill Tyner, WX7U, VE Liaison

Propagation, solar, and space links:

W1AW Propagation Bulletin
http://www.arrl.org/wiaw/prop

HF radio:
http://prop.hfradio.org

Space weather:
http://spaceweather.com

Beacons:
http://www.ncdxf.org/beacons.html

Satellite visibility and tracking:
http://heavens-above.com

Real time gray line:
http://www.worldtime.com/cgi-bin/wt.cgi

Thanks again to Elmer Seutter, W6IGK

The Amateur Radio Newsline Inc., a Federally chartered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation has announced the creation of the "Roy Neal, K6DUE, Amateur Radio Mentoring Project."  This is a program designed to take newly-licensed radio amateurs and place them one-on-one with veteran hams so that they may learn the traditions and operating skills that no classroom or home-study environment can teach.

Roy Neal, K6DUE, was a driving force within the structure of Amateur Radio Newsline.  He passed away on Friday, August 15, 2003, from complications arising from heart valve replacement surgery a few days earlier.

In addition to serving as Amateur Radio Newsline's Vice President, he was also our teacher, advisor and friend.  Those of us who had the honor of knowing Roy were keenly aware of his willingness to help anyone better themselves.  He was always willing to share his lifetime of knowledge in many areas including science, space exploration and Amateur Radio.  With this in mind the Amateur Radio Newsline Board of Directors at its annual meeting on December 13, 2003 voted unanimously to honor Roy's memory by creating a program to carry on his vision.

What we have named "The Roy Neal, K6DUE, Amateur Radio Mentoring Project" is loosely based on a similar program created by Broadway performer Ann Reinking.  Reinking was a student of and performer with the legendary choreographer/director Bob Fosse.  She is now carrying on the "mentoring" tradition in the art of dance through her own educational foundation,  the Broadway Theater Project. This is a Florida-based training program connecting students with seasoned theater professionals.  If we may quote Ms. Reinking: "Its sort of an unwritten law or rule in the world of dance that you pass on what you know.  This particular craft is at its best when it's passed from one person's hands to the next."

Now, if  you think about it, what Ann Reinking says about "dance" applies equally to our world of Amateur Radio.  Maybe more so, because, for decades the knowledge and tradition of our hobby/service was passed down from seasoned operators to newcomers, one to one.

Unfortunately, in the ham radio of today, this art of mentoring that we call "Elmering" seems to be disappearing.  It is being replaced by "weekend cram class training" and/or the more tedious world of "home study."  Both provide lots of technologically trained hams, but they do not turn out skilled operators or hams who really appreciate the art of amateur radio. Only one-on-one "mentoring" or "Elmering" can do that.

"The Roy Neal, K6DUE, Amateur Radio Mentoring Project" is to be a similarly structured program that fosters those one-on-one relationships that go well beyond the knowledge necessary to pass a ham radio exam. It will put an emphasis on our traditional ham radio values by placing new hams into contact with skilled operators who are willing to teach them such radio art-forms as how to work DX, or run a contest, build and operate a repeater, talk by bouncing signals off the moon, kit construction, and anything else that makes a ham a ham. In essence, to pass along the living traditions that make ham radio what it is to all of us old timers.

To make this work, two groups of hams are needed.  First, we need skilled operators who are willing to donate time to assist those in need of training.  We also need new hams to come forward and say: "I want to learn more."  We will do our part by matching the mentors to those in need of Elmering.

To get the project underway we have asked Joe Eisenberg, K0NEB, to create the necessary databases and begin the process of matching volunteer mentors to those wishing instruction.  We are also asking both groups to send us an e-mail at mentor@arnewsline.org.  In your note please state if you are offering to be a mentor or are in need of training.  Please include your name, call, address, e-mail address with zipcode, phone number, best time of day to call, and any other pertinent information.

It is our hope that the nation's Amateur Radio community will join with us to make "The Roy Neal, K6DUE, Amateur Radio Mentoring Project" a part of the traditions of the hobby, and that it will become a lasting memorial to the radio amateur who gave so much of his life to making Amateur Radio the best hobby and service in the universe.

Amateur Radio Newsline™ is a free service to the amateur radio community. It is entirely supported by voluntary donations from individual amateurs and amateur radio clubs. All participants in the Amateur Radio Newsline™ operation are professionals in the news media who have volunteered their time and skills to help prepare each weekly bulletin. There is no paid staff and all funds go directly to the defraying of operating costs. Since recording facilities are largely donated, the majority of expenses relate to telephone charges, tape stock procurement and transportation and equipment maintenance. Your support is welcomed and greatly needed. For more info:

http://www.arnewsline.org/

1. To easily remove burnt-on food from your skillet, simply add a drop or two of dish soap, and enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, and bring it to a boil on the stovetop.
2. Spray your Tupperware with nonstick cooking spray before pouring in tomato-based sauces and there won't be any stains. (key word: Tupperware)
3. When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the outside of the cake.
4. Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in the refrigerator and it will keep for weeks.
5. When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar to help bring out the corn's natural sweetness.
6. Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.
7. Don't throw out all that leftover wine: freeze it into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.
8. To get rid of the itch from mosquito bites, try applying soap on the area and you will experience instant relief.
9. Ants, ants, ants everywhere...well, they are said to never cross a chalk line, so get your chalk out and draw a line on the floor or wherever ants tend to march. See for yourself.
10. Use air-freshener to clean mirrors. It does a good job and, better still, leaves a lovely smell to the shine.
11. When you get a splinter, reach for the scotch tape before resorting to tweezers or a needle. Simply put the scotch tape over the splinter, then pull it off. Scotch tape removes most splinters painlessly and easily.
12. Now look what you can do with Alka Seltzer: clean a toilet--drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets, wait twenty minutes, brush, and flush. The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous China. Clean a vase--to remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or cruet, fill with water and drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets. Polish jewelry--drop two Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the jewelry for two minutes. Clean a thermos bottle--fill the bottle with water, drop in four Alka Seltzer tablets, and let soak for an hour (or longer, if necessary). Unclog a drain--clear the sink drain by dropping three Alka Seltzer tablets down the drain followed by a cup of Heinz White Vinegar. Wait a few minutes, then run the hot water.