Nancy Melocco from the Longmont Police Department gave a presentation on the 911 system. She kept the audience captivated much longer than planned with her personal experiences in dealing with the system. Nancy also gave a short lecture on reporting incidents and what to look for when you are a witness or involved in an incident in some sort of way. She also extended an invitation to the club to come and visit them and have a look at the system - something we will do at a later date.

This month, at the general meeting on April 21, Jim Andrews, WAØNHD will be lecturing and demonstrating Amateur TV. Jim is very knowledgeable on the subject and he gives regular presentations. It promises to be a real interesting evening.

With LARCFest now behind us, we should be able to find the time for a lot of the activities that went onto the back burner the last couple of months. Just to mention a few: The co-ax at the club station must be replaced and the antennas tuned. The next highway cleanup must be scheduled. "Solder sniffers" are starting up again and field-day is in the not too distant future.

So come and join us for the fun and we will keep you out of mischief.

73

Sebastian - KCØCQQ

Well it’s been a while since I’ve written anything for the splatter. I’d like to take a moment to update everyone as to what’s been happing and include an apology for our missing January edition.

Just prior to the beginning of the year, I had an anticipated shake up in my day job experience that was going to derive most of my free time from me. So I chose to give up my duties of being the Sunday night net coordinator as well as the Splatter editor. However, I still retained the duties of maintaining the club roster database for our treasurer. To my assistance, two volunteers took over these duties to allow me my time to get my job situation under control. Rich Blackmore, KBØULB, took over the net duties and has been doing a great job keeping the net going. I’m glad to see everyone giving him the continued support and volunteering to take the net now and again. Next, Jim Walker, NØXDA, has taken over splatter editor duties and making sure it is getting out on time.

Now, an apology for missing the January edition of the splatter: It was to be my last edition as club newsletter editor, but during the last week of December I began experiencing some minor computer problems. The end result was a mechan ically failed hard drive. Taking with it all of my data, including about 5 years worth of collecting radio related software as well as the club database, and splatter templates. I tried for almost two weeks to recover anything I could before finally givin g up. And deciding to start from scratch. By this time I was already way past deadlines and very little free time to expend anyway. So I had to forgo the last edition. I do extend an apology to everyone for the break in editions.

Since then, I have had to resurrect the club database updates from scratch. Fortunately I was able to recover some old e-mail that included that club roster. And I still had all the printouts of changes to make. Now the Club database is up to date.

As for my day life; long about March, I quit Adaptec and took up the torch with a new company called McData down in Broomfield. So with that situation finally taken care of, I am finding my free time again. And finding activities again.

And now for the fun stuff! I’m still maintaining the club roster database and making some much needed improvements so that we can generate mailing lists for LARC Fest as well as other club events. I have also volunteered to take up a new torch on the clubs behalf. I will be responding as the clubs liaison to the Longmont parks and recreation department. The position was formerly held by Pat Lambert, WØIPL, who has now taken on additional duties related to BCARES and Colorado ARES that no longer affords him time to coordinate the upcoming events. So it's my turn, and I look forward to it. Look for the calendar of events.

There are a lot of things coming that I’m looking forward to participating in. Here's just a smidgen of them:

• Highway cleanup (to be scheduled) -The recent winds have wreaked havoc across our region and our little stretch of highway. Passing by there a day ago, it was looking a pretty formidable mess. It crossed my mind that our club’s name is on the sign and this is representing us. I do hope that many people will volunteer and make light work of making it presentable again!
• Longmont Triathlon / Duathlon –June 6^th - Of course as the new Parks liaison, I'll have a hand in this. We'll need about 6 or so volunteers.
• Rhythm on the River / River Run – July 17^th – I’ve not participated in this event before, but I hear it’s great fun for all. Will need volunteers as well.

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I know that the weather was a severe factor in this year’s swap. Although I think we didn’t lose the farm on this one, it wasn’t quite as good as I wanted. The roads however didn’t seem as bad as was advertised through the TV report s. We were supposed to get an additional 4-6 inches on the day of the swap! But instead, as usual, we here in Longmont got some sun. It seems it may have been worst in the southern areas of the state, which unfortunately is where the biggest draw of folk’ s come from. We had vendors from Wisconsin, New Mexico, Wyoming, Kansas and I think Nebraska. This shows that I think we had pretty good advertising on the whole, and I think it will be even better the next time. (Weather permitting). I found a lot of fol ks heard about the swap on 40 and 80 meters. That’s the High Noon Net on 40 and the Columbine Net on 80. We also had Rich (KB ØULB) do the nets throughout the area for a couple of weeks before the swap on 2 meters and flyers were handed out at ever y swapfest from January to LARCFEST ’99.

We had plenty of door prizes to hand out and that kept the folk’s at the announcer’s table busy. I think we were still drawing for winners after the 1o’clock time frame. I was told that the VX-5R went to a gentleman in Ft. Collins and I hope he enjoys it!

I also talked with the guys over at the V. E. testing area and the turn out was very good. Many people passed in all classes of licensing which is just great! Thanks to the BARC Club VE Examiners for their effort! This allowed Earl and his team to enjoy the swap.

We will be compiling the numbers and let the club know of the outcome at the next membership meeting. I also think that we should seriously look into another form of "generator of funding" for the club, which could help relieve some of the strain of the swap. Give it some thought and come to a club meeting.

Once again a big THANK YOU for everyone's effort and dedication for LARCFEST ’99. See you at the meeting!

Jeff Davis W ØHCH

The Longmont V.E. team conducted a testing session on March 27, 1999. There were ten applicants who took 13 exams. The team issued 7 Certificates of Successful Completion of Examination. Those included 3 new Technician licenses and one Advanced class license. I hope you who know them will give congratulations to Brian Bowman of Hygiene congratulations for passing the written element of the Novice license and to Jay Carter of Firestone for also passing t he Novice written element. Mr. Bowman is a fine young student and Mr. Carter is disabled and both worked many long hours studying to pass this initial exam.

The next test session will be given on Saturday, April 24, 1999 at 10:00 A.M. in the Boulder County Fairgrounds Office Building 9595 Nelson Road in Longmont, CO. We require that you have two forms of identification to take a test. If yo u have a CSCE that has not had a license issued persuant to it them we must see the original and have a copy to send in with your test papers. Also, if you have a license, we must see the original license and have a copy of it to send in with your test pa pers. The fee for 1999 is $6.45 for testing above the Novice level exams.

Good Luck,

Earle, N ØISB

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Saturday April 10^th, Bob Dornan, WA2EKU, gave the solder sniffers who gathered at the Fairgrounds headquarters building, an impromptu, but very thorough, chalk talk on battery theory. After B ob defined what primary and secondary cells were, the group concentrated mostly on the secondary cells used in our hobby. (Primary cells are meant to be used up and then disposed of, while secondary cells can be charged and discharged a number of times.)

Discussion of lead/acid, nickel cadmium, and nickel metal hydride construction, charge and discharge rates, and voltage characteristics were the main topics of the day. The highpoints for those of you missing the meeting were:

1. Cells may not reach a full charge even if they look fully charged.
2. Wait an hour; measure the voltage again and charge some more if necessary.
3. Do not charge too fast. A charge rate of 1/10 C or slower is recommended. ("C" is the amp/hour rating of the battery.)
4. Nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride batteries should not be discharged below 1 volt per cell. (The typical "battery" contains several cells. These cells are rated at a charged voltage of approximately 1.2 volts. A typical 8.4 volt handi-talkie battery would, therefore, contain 7 cells (7 x 1.2 = 8.4.) You can figure out the number of cells in your HT's battery by dividing the rated voltage of the battery by 1.2.
5. Nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride batteries like to be discharged and then immediately recharged. If it is necessary to store them, they should be stored charged, and should be checked periodically.

Bob has a circuit that some of us may build for a battery rejuvenator! It reportedly can make lead acid batteries last up to twice as long. Similar results can be obtained with "gel cells." The effects on nickel metal hydride and nickel cadmium were not discussed. The circuit apparently works by alternately charging and discharging the battery at a high rate of speed. 400 times per second was mentioned.

The next Sniffers get together will be held, April 24 at 1 P.M. We will be opening up dead rebuildable battery packs to see what we need to order to rebuild them. We have found a very reasonable, reliable battery supplier in Denver. We will also work on chargers and other battery related items. Solder Sniffers is open to all comers. We charge only for the material you use. If you are interested in being more than an appliance operator ham, bring you soldering iron, you r dead HT batteries, etc. and come on down!

Future projects may include a two-meter CW adapter for HT's. This project was started once but was put on the back burner when problems developed in getting circuit boards produced. Also building our own test gear has been discussed. Do not despair of being a novice at "techy" stuff. There are excellent mentors led by, but not limited to, Bob Dornan, Randy Stevens, NØNMD, Richard Blackmore, KBØULB, John West, KBØONB, and others.

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The meeting thanked Jeff & his helpers for the effort they put into Larcfest. Since the weather was a bit of a handicap, it was a little bit down on previous years, but it was still a success.

There will be an antenna party at the Club station on Saturday, April 17 after the breakfast to assess the repairs that must be done to the antenna systems. This will be followed up two weeks later to finalize the repairs.

The club decided in principle to raffle an ATV to raise funds for a new repeater. Jim Walker will contact Pete Lagerman to get the details on raffle licenses. Brandon Shoemake will get the details about the cost / discounts that we can get on the ATV and will try to solicit help for the actual sales of tickets. Everybody will report back by the next meeting when the final decision will be made.

Brandon will appoint a committee to look into the changing of the constitution to allow memberships to run from signup for a year and not have all the renewals in October. Troy will add the membership expiration dates to the Splatter labels.

The meeting adjourned at 8:30.

Sebastian Wessels for Dean Rupert.

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 The following codes are from Longmont Police Communications Manual dated January, 1998

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Code 1 - Arrival

Code 2 - Contact with car or person

Code 3 - Stop transmitting on Channel (channel traffic is restricted to ONE incident)

Code 4 - Unit is OK

Code 5 - In Custody

Code 6 - Mental Subject (also used for Under Influence)

Code 7 - Meal Break

Code 8 - In Service

Code 9 - Wanted Person/Stolen Property

Code 9-MARY - Misdemeanor Warrant

Code 9-FRANK - Felony Warrant

Code 9-GEORGE - Gang Affiliation

Code 9-IDA - Sensitive Information (or officer info.)

Code 10 - Emergency Request for Cover Unit

Code 11 - Routine Request for Cover Unit

Code 0 - Use Caution

______________________________________

A - ADAM - Unable to locate or GOA

B - BOY - Unfounded

C - CHARLES - Civil problem or situation

D - DAVID - General assistance provided

E - EDWARD - Referred to another agency

F - FRANK - Warning given

G - GEORGE - Report taken

H - HENRY - Arrest made

I - IDA - Follow up

J - JOHN - ALARM - Working on alarm

K - KING - ALARM - Employee error

L - LINCOLN - ALARM - Equipment

M - MARY - ALARM - Intentional

N - NORA - ALARM - Valid

O - OCEAN - ALARM - Power Outage

P - PAUL - ALARM - Unknown

Q - QUEEN - ALARM - Weather

R - ROBERT - Needs follow-up or recontact

S - SAM - Summons issued

T - TOM - Car Alarm

U - UNION - Utilities

X - X-RAY - Canceled

Y - YOUNG - Handled by Communications