S.O.A.R.C. NEXT CLUB MEETING: 1900 (7:00 PM), Tuesday's March 21 and April 17, 2006 Senior Center, 3RD & B STREETS, GRANTS PASS.

Calling All Ladies: Western Belles is a women's ham radio group that gets together regularly for lunch and all female hams are invited to attend. The next luncheon will be on Saturday April 1st. At the China Buffet, 7th and G St. At 11:30 AM

73's, Anita, kc7mgh

Antenna Class: (Series Part 2 of 2) Make your own yagi for $5 for upcoming club Foxhunting. Meeting March 17, 2006. Contact Galen Kelm (KE7LM) Tel. 582-2267

Johnny Jones Campout & American Red Cross Communication fund raising. Events at Joseph Stewart State Park May 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 2006. If you like people & like to have a lot of fun, come join us. We will be in A loop # 16. Some of the events we have planned are to put up H.F.radio station,a vhf/uhf radio station. We plan a short trip to a mountain where a repeater will be set up and operating. We also plan to give away numerous prizes for kids & adults. If you have problems finding the park we will be listening to (Flounce Rock 145.410 - Tone 100.0) (King 147.340 + tone 136.5) and (Elk 444.825 + tone 100.0). Reserve your spot or for more info contact Johnny Jones (wa6rhk) Home 541-535-3838, Cell 541-890-3838. Email wa6rhk@charter.net (Put the words "Camp out" in the subject line of your email or else it will be deleted by the filter.)

Coos County Radio Club Hamfest and Swap Meet. Bandon, Oregon, July 22, 2006, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Talk-in on 146.610 (no tone) and 146.52 Simplex. Contact Ron W7VU at (541) 572 5546, w7vu@arrl.net or CCRC, http://www.coosradioclub.org/ Ron W7VU, w7vu@arrl.net, Tel. 541 572 5546

QSO party on the first weekend in May this year. It will be a part of the new 7th Area QSO Party. See the rules at http://www.7qp.org there are 259 possible counties for the non-7s to work. The organizing committee is very dedicated and we expect to get all of them on the air. Put May 6/7 on your calendars now. Thanks and 73, Dick - k4xu

(Remember you can list your "for sale or trade" or "wanted" items in the newsletter. Please limit them to ham or computer-related merchandise or services.)

LAST MONTH! DUES ARE DUE NOW FOR 2006!

Dues by March 31st. Please pay your dues at this time, for those due. Individual dues are $15.00 and additional amateur family members are $7.50 each. This is a very important part of our clubs revenue, to operate & carry out our goals.

Change of Meeting Locating In the Future

The Senior Center will need to be vacated by all current agencies and users by July 1st. The Senior Center, 4th and C St. Grants Pass, OR. The club has already secured a new place for our meetings, the Fruitdale Grange, 1440 Parkdale Dr & US 99, Grants Pass OR. Contact us for the date of our first meeting there.

Membership Roster:

Membership Roster will now be printed Quarterly (or bi-yearly, I have to check with the VIP's) to save cost, but an updated copy will be available on the web at the URL: http://www.qsl.net/soar/SOARC/Roster.html

If you do not have Internet access you can call to find out when your club membership due's are due: CALL Secretary: Jim Woods, W7PUP, Tel. 956-5287 or Treasurer: John Stubbe, K7VSU, Tel. 479-3718

SOARC Repeaters, K7LIX with autopatch on 146.640- and on 147.300+.

SOARC ARES/NTS Net - Monday Evening, 1930 Local on 147.300+

(Check to verify this is still valid) WA6OTP Code Class - Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun. Evening 2000 Local on 147.220 MHz

ORCA Swapnet - Wednesday Evening, 2000 Local on the ORCA system.

Western Belles - 1st & 3rd Thursday Evening, 1930 Local on 147.300+ MHz.

2006 Complete ARRL/SOARC Licensing Exams (REVISED COPY). The VE's are offering the 2006 exam schedule with the first two sessions taking place in the Senior Center on 3rd and C Streets, Grants Pass OR.

March 31, 2006 @ 6 PM VE's assemble, 6:30 PM Test Session.

June 22, 2006 @ 6 PM VE's assemble, 6:30 PM Test Session.

The last two sessions will be held in the new SOARC meeting facility - the Fruitdale Grange, 1440 Parkdale Dr & US 99, Grants Pass OR.

Sept. 22, 2006 @ 6 PM VE's assemble, 6:30 PM Test Session

Dec. 9, 2006 @ 6 PM VE's assemble, 6:30 PM Test Session

As everyone can see we will serve up quarterly sessions once again. And as in the old days, they are on Fridays except of the last one, which is a Saturday due to room scheduling convenience. Everyone, remember to visit the ARRL.org website to get the latest information about testing, requirements, new changes that are coming down the pike. Here is the website address for Grants Pass exam schedules. If you will notice the right hand side contains lots of hyperlinks covering most of the questions about exam sessions.

http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/examsearch.phtml a copy of this completed schedule has been sent to the VEC and should appear at this site very soon.

73, Bill (WX7U), VE and Liaison.

QSO party on the first weekend in May this year. It will be a part of the new 7th Area QSO Party. See the rules at http://www.7qp.org. There are 259 possible counties for the non-7s to work. The organizing committee is very dedicated and we expect to get all of them on the air.

Put May 6/7 on your calendars now. Thanks and 73, Dick - k4xu

CONTESTS

Keep in mind that contests and special events are an excellent opportunity to get the contacts you need to Work All States, get DXCC or collect any number or other certificates and awards. Contests in particular are a good way to improve your operating skills.

EVENTS

-Three Mile Island Incident Special Event by KV3T 4/1 & 4/2 1300Z to 2300Z 21.42, 14.240 & 7.240

-64th Anniversary of the Infamous Bataan Death March by AB5BG 10,15, 20 & 40 meters

- 25th Anniversary of the first Space Shuttle Launch from the Kennedy Space Center by N4S

4/9 thru 4/15 1700Z to 2400Z daily 21.350, 18.150. 14.250 & 7.250

- International Marconi Day 4/22 1300Z to 2000Z by W2RC/IMD 14.270, 14.050, 7.270 & 7.030.

That's it for March. See you on the airwaves. 73 W6IGK Elmer

Wow, it's March already. I sure want to thank everyone who took over in my absence last meeting. I may have to miss more meeting, as it seems a number of things did get accomplished. We have a new meeting place, and everyone knows how to build up his or her 2-meter fox hunt antenna. I was in New Orleans, that week.

It is still a disaster area, communications is better, but most of the buildings are water damaged. Almost every house on the South side of the lake have a trailer parked in front, where the family is living while they work at putting their water damaged house back in order. The center of the boulevard was covered with refrigerators, bedding, and all the large items that could not be picked up by the trash trucks.

I talked with KZ7T Randy Stimpson our Oregon ARRL Section Manager today. He is from up in Beaverton and will be dropping by our club meeting on the 21 st. Randy has been traveling around the state visiting the other clubs, and said he had not been here in awhile and wanted to stop in and say hello. We can ask Randy about what's happening at ARRL headquarters, and pass on our comments that any of you might have.

I also got an E-mail from Dick Frey K4XU, reminding me that the annual Oregon QSO Party now called 7QP will run on May 6/7. I have participated in the past, and as a club we will once again join the activities as K7LIX. This is our warm up party for the June Field day activity. A chance to practice, and see what works for us and what doesn't work. We can chat a bit about that at the meeting, and start getting things organized. If you are interested in participating with the club, please let us know. If you want to participate and help us and others make more contacts, visit the web site http://www.7qp.org for more information.

See you all at the meeting, 73, Dennis Wa5KTC

Newsletter Submissions.

1. All email concerning the newsletter be directed to the following email address: "SOARC Newsletter Editor" soarc.newsletter.editor@gmail.com
2. All final submissions for the newsletter if at all possible are made no later than 8 days before the next S.O.A.R.C. club meeting date. If no meeting is to take place in a month then no later than 8 days before the 3rd Tuesday of the month.
3. If you are going to submit a column or a feature, such as story, I would like to urge you to write out a full column, instead of only a few words and less of pointing people to other web addresses, except in quotes to sources. I would like to keep people focused on our newsletters and not the other parts of the Internet; it is good for building our clubs moral and PR. I printed a few extra last month and posted them in heavy traffic boards as in the post office, (DO GET PROPER PERMISSIONS BEFORE PLACING THE NEWSLETTER). Take a subject from one or so of these web site, BOOKS, MAGAZINES and your own experience, and give a detailed write up, (put some meat in the column not just web addresses.), on the subject. Try to keep it to less than 500 words, per submissions, (but there can be exceptions).
4. If your submission does not get used in one issue submit it again for other issues. Make sure to properly give credit to the sources of the information you use.
5. I would to start a special column in our newsletter, BOOK of the month club, based on HAM information. I would like to ask the club leaders to ask some one in the club, (or a different person each month to commit at each meeting), to volunteer in our group to read and submit a column for the newsletter based upon that book for the month after the current meeting. One can also split the book up into maybe a few newsletters if the club is interested.

73's, "SOARC Newsletter Editor" (KD7WHY)

Elmer's Corner:

Contributing Reporter: Elmer Seutter

Do you have a concern about the worthiness of UHF connectors at VHF and up; John W0UN contributed a link that debunks some of the myths of UHF connectors. It's a tech note on UHF connectors by K2RIW on the Roadrunners Microwave Group web site: http://www.k5rmg.org/UHF-con.html Great reading!

Dave K8CC contributes a not-so-well-known transmission-line trick - the 1/12th wavelength transformer. Dave's station uses surplus 75-ohm CATV hardline, matching the antennas to 75 ohms, then matching the transmission lines to the rig's preferred 50 ohms with the transformer. Place a 1/12th wavelength section of 75-ohm impedance in series with another 1/12th wavelength section of 50-ohm cable. Connect the 50-ohm section to the 75-ohm load and you'll see a 50-ohm at the output of the 75-ohm section. It looks like this: 50 ohms in ===75===[]===50=== 75-ohm load.

Here's another piece of software to perform analysis on contest logs. It's called SH5 and was written by UA4WLI. The software is available at http://rescab.nm.ru. (Thanks, Bob N6TV and Howie N4AF)

Here's a great evening project - a circular SWR, Gain, Loss and Return Loss chart by F5BU. Download the pieces in PDF format from http://tk5ep.free.fr/tech/abaqueROS/gainchart.php, print them out and attach them - voila! (Thanks, Scott KB0FHP)

Jim WA7KYI recently found this page while perusing the AC6V Website. He suggests that it's a great tutorial for those new hams you're Elmering on how to make a CW contact and the procedures normally used during the contact. Send your protégées to http://www.netwalk.com/~fsv/CWguide.htm.

Those of you working with long Beverage runs, elevated radials, or the like may be interested in the following article on working with "hi-tensile wire" from the University of California Farm Extension program. http://www.foothill.net/~ringram/hitensle.htm (Thanks, Bob K0RC)

More on Beverages - "Memorandum on the Beverage Wave Antenna for Reception of Frequencies in the 550 - 1500 Kilocycle Band" by Benjamin Wolf and Adolph Anderson. Original Article, http://www.akdart.com/bev/bev.html Converted to HTML for better Legibility: http://www.akdart.com/bev/bev2a.html (Thanks, John W0UN)

For those of us who wear glasses, headphones can be a pain, literally. Airline pilots have a solution with David Clark "Stop-Gap" eyeglass frame cushions. (http://davidclark.com/PDFFiles/TwoWayBrochure.pdf) Placed on eyeglass frame temples, Stopgaps provide added comfort and stop noise from leaking through the ear seal. These are available from many aviation supply shops. (Thanks, Bob N6TV and John VE3EJ)

Speaking of headphones, so to speak, their foam earphone pads can take a beating over a contest season, degenerating into grubby, foam-shedding gunk. Radio Shack has several replacement foam pad sets and I've found model number 33-380 to be a good fit for the Heil BM boom sets, for example. Heil's prices and service for replacements are quite good, but if you find yourself needing new ones on contest day, the local Radio Shack may have them on the rack.

Icom owners have several third-party options for band decoders that operate from the Icom CI-V data interface: - micro Ham's band decoder (http://www.microham.com/band%20decoder.html ) - Bob K6XX has a homebrew design at (http://www.k6xx.com/radio/icbsciv.html ) Elecraft's KRC2 is very flexible (http://www.elecraft.com ) (Thanks, Risto W6RK and Rick K6VVA)

There is a very nice summary of several types of basic transistor circuits, "An introduction to analog circuits part 1: transistors and more" by Reno Rossetti on the Planet Analog Web site: http://www.planetanalog.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163702498.

Visited the Heil Sound Web site lately? There is a useful page of topics of interest to all at http://heilsound.com/amateur/harmonics.htm#DC. This issue includes notes about setting your DSP properly, getting rid of RFI to your mike, and other things.

I am in awe of the inventiveness of the amateur antenna erector. For a good time, browse through the archives of the Tower Talk reflector at http://dayton.akorn.net/pipermail/towertalk, then select "Thread" and search for "EZ". Oiling one's line, indeed! Supplemented by K0WA's maxim, "If you don't have any Common Sense - get some and use it. If you can't find any common sense, ask for help from somebody who has some common sense."

If you run out of "Coax Seal" on your next antenna project, you could try "Duct Seal" that is found at places like Lowes and Home Depot. It's soft pliable putty that doesn't harden. Self-vulcanizing tape is also available at hardware-type stores and has the added advantage of being a lot easier to remove than putty. The old stand-by is three carefully wrapped layers of Scotch 33+ or 88+ tapes. When your editor was preparing for the K7C trip, Kimo KH7U demonstrated that a piece of mastic (a flexible material not unlike putty) at significant diameter transitions, such as at the back of the PL-259 outer shell, make the tape wrap behave much better. (Thanks, Rick KC8AON, Larry N8LP, and George K5TR)

One of my trade magazine subscriptions, Design News, has a pair of columns that any ham-tinkerer would love. The first, The Gadget Freak Files, features a nifty invention or creation by a Design News reader. The 15 December issue's column is "You Can Get Scrooged Opening a Trap Door" about a better way to open those attic stairs. The second column, Calamities, is a case study in some kind of product or device failure and the method by which the root cause is discovered. Read them both at http://www.designnews.com - scroll halfway down the page to find the links in the "Design News Today" section.

At the risk of invoking another Plastic Owl uproar, here is a great way to determine True North, even if you have no compass and are lost in the woods. All it takes is the sun...

1. Jab a double-pointed stick into the ground
2. Mark shadow of stick point on ground (with a pebble or twig)
3. Wait a while
4. Mark point shadow, again
5. Line between shadow marks is E-W
6. Construct perpendicular for N-S
7. For better accuracy use a longer stick and wait longer

(Thanks, Russell W4NI)

73 W6IGK Elmer

2006-5 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 6, 2006

BOULDER the next sunspot cycle will be 30-50% stronger than the last one and begin as much as a year late, according to a breakthrough forecast using a computer model of solar dynamics developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Predicting the Sun's cycles accurately, years in advance, will help societies plan for active bouts of solar storms, which can slow satellite orbits, disrupt communications, and bring down power systems.

The scientists have confidence in the forecast because, in a series of test runs, the newly developed model simulated the strength of the past eight solar cycles with more than 98% accuracy. The forecasts are generated, in part, by tracking the subsurface movements of the sunspot remnants of the previous two solar cycles. The team is publishing its forecast in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

Our model has demonstrated the necessary skill to be used as a forecasting tool, says NCAR scientist Mausumi Dikpati, the leader of the forecast team at NCAR's High Altitude Observatory that also includes Peter Gilman and Giuliana de Toma.

-----Understanding the cycles -----

The Sun goes through approximately 11-year cycles, from peak storm activity to quiet and back again. Solar scientists have tracked them for some time without being able to predict their relative intensity or timing.

Forecasting the cycle may help society anticipate solar storms, which can disrupt communications and power systems and affect the orbits of satellites. The storms are linked to twisted magnetic fields in the Sun that suddenly snap and release tremendous amounts of energy. They tend to occur near dark regions of concentrated magnetic fields, known as sunspots.

The NCAR team's computer model, known as the Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model, draws on research by NCAR scientists indicating that the evolution of sunspots is caused by a current of plasma, or electrified gas, that circulates between the Sun's equator and its poles over a period of 17 to 22 years. This current acts like a conveyor belt of sunspots.

The sunspot process begins with tightly concentrated magnetic field lines in the solar convection zone (the outermost layer of the Sun's interior). The field lines rise to the surface at low latitudes and form bipolar sunspots, which are regions of concentrated magnetic fields. When these sunspots decay, they imprint the moving plasma with a type of magnetic signature. As the plasma nears the poles, it sinks about 200,000 kilometers (124,000 miles) back into the convection zone and starts returning toward the equator at a speed of about one meter (three feet) per second or slower. The increasingly concentrated fields become stretched and twisted by the internal rotation of the Sun as they near the equator, gradually becoming less stable than the surrounding plasma. This eventually causes coiled-up magnetic field lines to rise up, tear through the Sun's surface, and create new sunspots.

The subsurface plasma flow used in the model has been verified with the relatively new technique of helioseismology, based on observations from both NSF and NASA supported instruments. This technique tracks sound waves reverberating inside the Sun to reveal details about the interior, much as a doctor might use an ultrasound to see inside a patient.

-----Predicting Cycles 24 and 25 -----

The Predictive Flux-transport Dynamo Model is enabling NCAR scientists to predict that the next solar cycle, known as Cycle 24, will produce sunspots across an area slightly larger than 2.5% of the visible surface of the Sun. The scientists expect the cycle to begin in late 2007 or early 2008, which is about 6 to 12 months later than a cycle would normally start. Cycle 24 is likely to reach its peak about 2012.

By analyzing recent solar cycles, the scientists also hope to forecast sunspot activity two solar cycles, or 22 years, into the future. The NCAR team is planning in the next year to issue a forecast of Cycle 25, which will peak in the early 2020s.

This is a significant breakthrough with important applications, especially for satellite-dependent sectors of society, explains NCAR scientist Peter Gilman.

The NCAR team received funding from the National Science Foundation and NASA's Living with a Star program. NCAR'S primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation. Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

(Source: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases )

Paul, N0JAA.

(This list is subject to update.)

None this month, check back next month, or report some to the SOARC newsletter editor.