The Illuminator
The monthly newsletter of the Carbon Amateur Radio Club
September
Meeting
The next regular
meeting of the Carbon Amateur Radio Club will be held on Thursday, September
20, at 7:30 p.m. at the EOC in Nesquehoning.
New Officers
At the August meeting, new officers were elected for the
2001-2002 year. Our new officers are:
President |
– |
Goody, K3NG |
Vice-President |
– |
Rob, KB3BYT |
Secretary |
– |
Larry, N3CR |
Treasurer |
– |
John, W3MF |
At-large
Directors |
– |
Bob, K3PH John, K3CT Bert, W3OWP |
From the President’s Desk
By Goody, K3NG
This month we welcome in a new set of officers to
lead the club in the coming year. I’d
like to thank our outgoing officers, especially Larry, N3CR, and Bob, K3PH, for
their hard work.
The Club has a long history of service to the
community and brotherhood within the amateur community. I want to continue this tradition and
strengthen the club in the coming months.
In recent years, attendance at the meetings has dwindled. We’ve been in the typical club Catch 22, you
can’t get the members out unless you have a good program and you can’t have a
good program if there aren’t members attending. We also have a lot of members or former members who occasionally
attend operating events, but don’t attend meetings.
Things are different today. People work longer hours, or so it
seems. Free time just isn’t as
plentiful as it was in the past. Family
should always come first and work comes second. Hobbies, like ham radio, come in third. We all have limited time for doing what we enjoy as hobbies. Clubs are meant to enhance your ham radio
experience, teach you new things, and enable you to meet new people. When a club fails to provide these things,
it not longer makes sense to devote what limited time you have to something
that isn’t providing a return on your time investment.
I have identified several issues with the club and
how I think we should address each one in the coming months.
1. Increase
Meeting Attendance. There are
two simple solutions to this. The first
one is continue the “meal and meeting” events that Larry started. These have proven to bring people out. The second is programs, programs,
programs. Again, we have the Catch 22
to contend with, but we have to work with what we have.
2. Advertise
and “Sell” the Club. We have
several local media outlets to let people know what we’re doing. Cable classifieds come to mind. We need to continue newspaper coverage of
events. Also, we should take advantage
of free newspaper classified advertising where available. Last, every free bulletin board in Carbon
County at a restaurant should have a CARC flyer on it. Get the word out.
3. Operating
Events. Members love to
operate. Instead of talking about what
you do in the shack, just do it and do it with other members. Show others what events and activities you
like to do, get the new members interested and involved. This doesn’t just have to be limited to
contesting? Do you like
satellites? PSK31? Invite the club to your QTH for an event!
4. Volunteer. Do whatever you can, no matter how small
your contribution is. What you put into
this club will be returned to you tenfold in enjoyment of this great hobby. I’d like to open or re-open several
positions to encourage this.
Operating Events Chairman – This person will be in
charge of identifying things like contests, shack visits, and anything ham
radio related that club members could participate in, as a team in competition,
or a casual social event.
Communications Chairman – This
position, which we’ve had in the past, will be “reinitialized.” The Communications Chairman will be
responsible for all media, flyers, and other communications to the public.
Meeting Program Chairman – This chairman would
identify and arrange meeting programs.
Public Service Chairman – The Public Service
Chairman will be tasked with coordinating events such as the annual March of
Dimes Walkathon we participate in.
5. New
“Excited” Members. There are
potential members lurking out there.
They are subscribed to our email reflector. They’re listening in to the net, but don’t check in. There are check-ins who we haven’t heard
from in a long time. There are non-hams
who are interested and just need to find out about CARC. All of the items I describe above are the
key to this. We should not, however,
strive to make this a large club. We
just need new blood and interested people who want to volunteer. The more people we get, the less everyone
has to volunteer. The more volunteers,
the more we can do and attract and keep new members. Once we reach a certain number of volunteering active members, we
will no longer need to actively pursue new members – the Club will be
self-sustaining.
Neither I, nor the officers, can do this alone – we
need your ideas and help. Let’s roll up
our sleeves and have some fun.
Goody K3NG
Brandenberg Amateur Radio Operator Scholarship
By Rob, KB3BYT
Amateur radio operators
learn some hard-core basic training in electronics and communications and
computers just to get a ticket into the hobby.
This early training is recognized as the exact type of person that
colleges want to fill engineering classes and will go as far as paying for FULL
scholarships. Check out the Texas
Instruments training ground college and their scholarship package.
Erik Jonsson School of
Engineering and Computer Science Scholarship Award. The Brandenburg Amateur Radio Operator Scholarship is being
offered as a renewable four (4) year scholarship. The scholarship amount will be $6,500 a year payable at $3,250 a
semester. The first use of this scholarship will be to pay all tuition and
fees. Any remaining money will be issued as a cash award to cover the cost of
books, room and board.
Applicant must be a
licensed Amateur Radio Operator.
Applicant must be intending to enroll or currently enrolled in one of
the following major fields of study: Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications
Engineering or Computer Science.
More info can be found
at /www.utdallas.edu/dept/eecs/scholarship.html
Congratulations to…
Larry, N3CR, on becoming
a grandpa again (they know what causes that now!).
Glenn, K3PP, who came in
9th place in the 2000 CQ Worldwide DX Phone Contest Single Op Assisted.
Bob, K3PH, who came in
10th place in the ARRL DX CW Contest Single Op Low Power.
Another
Tool for Your DXing Tool Belt
By Goody, K3NG
HF beacons enable you to
tell exactly what propagation is like across the globe in minutes. The Northern California DX Foundation has
deployed a network of beacons throughout the world that are synchronized via
GPS. Each transmits into a vertical
antenna on five bands. The callsign is
transmitted, and then four dahs are transmitted, each with different power
levels. The first dah is 100 watts, the
second is 10 watts, the third 1 W, and the fourth is 100 mW. This allows you to determine the quality of
the propagation.
Each beacon is synchronized to UTC. The schedule below shows what beacon
transmits at what time; the times are in minutes and seconds. The cycle is continuous; there are no gaps
(other than W6WX on 18 and 24 MHz).
Country |
Call |
Frequency |
||||
14100 |
18110 |
21150 |
24930 |
28200 |
||
U.N. New York |
4U1UN |
00:00 |
00:10 |
00:20 |
00:30 |
00:40 |
Northern Canada |
VE8AT |
00:10 |
00:20 |
00:30 |
00:40 |
00:50 |
USA CA |
W6WX |
00:20 |
– |
00:40 |
– |
01:00 |
Hawaii |
KH6WO |
00:30 |
00:40 |
00:50 |
01:00 |
01:10 |
New Zealand |
ZL6B |
00:40 |
00:50 |
01:00 |
01:10 |
01:20 |
West Australia |
VK6RBP |
00:50 |
01:00 |
01:10 |
01:20 |
01:30 |
Japan |
JA2IGY |
01:00 |
01:10 |
01:20 |
01:30 |
01:40 |
Siberia |
RR9O |
01:10 |
01:20 |
01:30 |
01:40 |
01:50 |
China |
BR2HK |
01:20 |
01:30 |
01:40 |
01:50 |
02:00 |
Sri Lanka |
4S7B |
01:30 |
01:40 |
01:50 |
02:00 |
02:10 |
South Africa |
ZS6DN |
01:40 |
01:50 |
02:00 |
02:10 |
02:20 |
Kenya |
5Z4B |
01:50 |
02:00 |
02:10 |
02:20 |
02:30 |
Israel |
RX6TU |
02:00 |
02:10 |
02:20 |
02:30 |
02:40 |
Finland |
OH2B |
02:10 |
02:20 |
02:30 |
02:40 |
02:50 |
Madeira |
CS3B |
02:20 |
02:30 |
02:40 |
02:50 |
03:00 |
Argentina |
LU4AA |
02:30 |
02:40 |
02:50 |
03:00 |
03:10 |
Peru |
OA4B |
02:40 |
02:50 |
03:00 |
03:10 |
03:20 |
Venezuela |
YV5B |
02:50 |
03:00 |
03:10 |
03:20 |
03:30 |
A great
program I use to track the beacons is DX Monitor available at http://www.benlo.com/dxmon.html. It synchronizes your computer clock to any
time server on the Internet and provides a graphical view of what beacon is
transmitting at any given moment on an azimuthal or mercator projection map. It also can be used to retrieve and collect
DX spots and graphical display them.
For more information on the NCDXF beacons, checkout http://www.ncdxf.org.
ARRL
Propagation Forecast Bulletin
Propagation Forecast
Bulletin 37 ARLP037
From Tad Cook,
K7VVV
Seattle, WA September 7,
2001
To all radio amateurs
Compared to the previous seven days,
average solar flux rose Nearly ten points this week, but average sunspot
numbers dropped about the same amount.
There seems to be quite a bit of new activity emerging. Earth is exiting a solar wind, which brought
planetary A indices to 17 and 20 on Monday and Tuesday. There were nine 3-hour periods out of the
two days which had a planetary K index of four.
A new sunspot group
number 9608 is emerging on the southeastern limb of the solar disk, and this
could bring more flare activity and coronal mass ejections. The current outlook calls for solar flux to rise
over the next few days, to 225 on Friday, and around 230 on Saturday through
Tuesday. This would be a big change,
because flux values have not been above this value since April 1. This could be an exiting fall DX season, and
since solar activity will be declining, perhaps the best for years to come.
The
current forecast shows a planetary A index around ten for the next ten days,
but of course this could change.
Shel Shallon has a new version 2.02
of W6ELprop, and you can download it for free from http://www.qsl.net/w6elprop/. The new version has added some nice features,
such as continuous scrolling (the spreadsheet doesn't stop at 0000 UTC, but you
can now scroll backward and forward continuously).
Sunspot numbers
for August 30 through September 5 were 138, 142, 153, 141, 168, 168 and 175
with a mean of 155. 10.7 cm flux was 199.2, 188.7, 184.1, 182.5, 198.7, 218.4
and 218.3, with a mean of 198.6, and estimated planetary A indices were 13, 16,
8, 7, 17, 20 and 10 with a mean of 13.
Carbon Amateur
Radio Club
Regular
Meeting Minutes
August 16,
2001
President,
Larry Lilly, N3CR, called a regular meeting of the Carbon Amateur Radio Club to
order at 7:36 p.m. on Thursday, August 16, 2001 at the Emergency Operations
Center in Nesquehoning. Ten people
attended.
The
minutes were read by Bob, K3PH, and approved by the members in attendance.
Larry,
N3CR, read the treasurer’s report in John, W3MF’s absence. At the last meeting, we had a balance of
$804.94. We had receipts of $30.00 and
disbursements of $4.76 for mailing the newsletter, $57.95 for a hardcover ARRL
Handbook, plus $98.15 in expenses from our pizza party at Caruso’s in July,
leaving a total of $674.08. The members
in attendance approved the Treasurer’s report.
The
ARRL Handbook that we are donating to the Slatington library in memory of Nancy
Marsh, KF4TAA, has arrived. Glenn,
K3PP, is doing an insert for the inside front cover, which should be available
soon. When it becomes available, we
will contact the library, as well as Patti Mihalik, as this should provide a
good “photo op” for the club.
Larry,
N3CR, reported on the issue of cell towers in Carbon County, noting that there
is currently a moratorium on new towers in Jim Thorpe. Goody, K3NG noted that they should try to
collocate services as much as possible to minimize the number of towers needed.
Election
of officers followed. The following
were nominated:
·
Goody, K3NG, for
President,
·
Rob, KB3BYT, for
Vice-President,
·
Larry, N3CR, for
Secretary,
·
John, W3MF, for
Treasurer, and
·
Bob, K3PH, for
At-large Director.
In
addition, Bruce, N3RXJ, was nominated for Secretary, but he declined the
nomination.
Andy,
KB3FSV, moved that the nominees be elected by acclamation. The motion passed.
Goody,
K3NG, reported on the Wednesday night net.
Last week’s net had about 5 check-ins, which is normal. Most nets last 30 to 35 minutes, with a
trivia quiz to add fun to the proceedings.
Scott
Forster, EMA Coordinator, gave a report.
He expects there to be a HAZMAT drill at some time in the future,
possibly about a spillage of waste water in Bowmanstown, but no date has been
set. He also expects a weather exercise
sometime in March. Goody, K3NG,
suggested that we could use a presentation to the club on EMA procedures. Everyone agreed this was a good idea. Scott also requested a list of the new club
officers, as well as a list of whom to contact in what order in emergencies.
It
was noted that Carbon County really, really needs a Radio Officer.
Rob,
KB3BYT, mentioned that we might consider putting a voice module on the repeater
to advertise the net and/or club meetings, or make other important
announcements. We could put the voice
module on a timer and have it come on at prescribed times of the day and
evening. The whole thing could actually
be external to the repeater, say, using a 300 mW HT. The membership agreed that this was a good idea that should be
investigated further.
The
meeting adjourned at 8:30 p.m.
DX Bulletin 36 ARLD036
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington
CT September 6, 2001
To all radio
amateurs
This week's bulletin was made possible with information
provided by Tedd, KB8NW, the OPDX Bulletin, 425DX News, The Daily DX, DXNL, TF8GX
and Contest Corral from QST. Thanks to
all.
CROATIA, 9A.
Mario, DJ2MX, will be active as 9A/N0MX from Brac Island and other
Croatian islands on 80 through 10 meters, using CW and SSB, until September
15. QSL only via his German call,
DJ2MX, through the DARC Bureau or direct.
MALTA, 9H. A group of Dutch amateurs will be active as
9H0VRZ, from September 14 through October 6.
Operations will be on 40 to 2 meters including the newer bands. QSL via
PA7DX.
FUTUNA ISLAND, FW.
Guy, FW5ZL, will be QRV from September 6 to 21, using 100 watts and a
dipole.
GUATEMALA, TG.
Ramon, XE1KK, will be active as TG/XE1KK, from September 6 to 9. Look for him mainly on satellite UO-14 and
AO-27. He will also try to be active on HF and 50 MHz as his schedule permits.
VIETNAM,
XV. Sam, JA1EUI, expects to operate
from September 21 to 28 on all bands from 80 to 6 meters, mainly on SSB. He is hoping to obtain either XV3Z or
XV3ZZ. He will have a regular schedule
on 21230 kHz at 2130z every day with JA1TAA or JA1BQ. QSL via home call.
TURKEY, YM. Look for Mill, LX1CC, to be active September
16 to October 6, signing YM3CC. Operation
will be mainly on SSB on all bands, including the newer bands. QSL via home call.
U.K. SOV.
BASES AREAS ON CYPRUS, ZC4. Steve,
ZC4BS, is expected to be active for the next 13 months on all modes from 160 to
10 meters, but mostly on 15 and 20 meters.
CHATHAM ISLANDS, ZL7. Nigel, ZL7/G3TXF, and Roger, ZL7/G3SXW, are expected
to be active from Chatham Islands, on CW only, from September 13 to 23. Suggested frequencies are 3503, 7003, 10103,
14023, 18073, 21023, 24893 and 28023 kHz listening up 1-3 kHz. QSL via their home calls, direct or via the
bureau.
ICELAND, TF.
Tiny, ON4CAT, Gulli, TF8GX, Fred, DL8DXL and Norby, LX1NO, will be
active from Flatey Island, EU-168, in the Breydjafjodur from September 12 to
19, on 80 through 10 meters, using SSB, CW and maybe some digital modes. Call signs will be TF4RX, QSL via K1WY, and
TF4/LX9EG, QSL to LX1NO.
BARBADOS, 8P. Mario, K2ZD, is active as 8P9JM through September
9. He is active on 40 through 6 meters, as time permits.
Check
out http://incolor.inetnebr.com/n0ujr for other cartoons and to purchase
N0UJR’s book, “N0UJR and His Friends.”
The club needs an EC/RO for the ARES and RACES
activities. Contact Larry, N3CR, for
details.
Carbon Amateur Radio Club – 2000-2001 Officers
President:
Anthony “Goody” Good, K3NG, [email protected]
Vice
President: Rob Roomberg, KB3BYT, [email protected]
Secretary:
Larry Lilly, N3CR, [email protected]
Treasurer:
John Schreibmaier, W3MF, [email protected]
W3HA Callsign
Trustee: Bill Dale, WY3K
W3HA Repeater
Trustee: John Bednar, K3CT
Public
Information Officer: Bill Kelley, KA3UKL
Directors
Bob Schreibmaier, K3PH, John Bednar, K3CT,
Bert Rex, W3OWP
Illuminator Staff
Editor: Bob,
K3PH [email protected]
DX: Bob, K3PH
Foxhunting:
open
Propagation
and Commentary: Larry, N3CR [email protected]
Newsletter
Printing, Folding, and Mailing: Bob, K3PH
Services
W3HA Repeater:
147.255 Mhz + PL 131.8
CARC Website: http://www.cpals.com/~elitehom/carc/
Webmaster:
Rob, KB3BYT [email protected]
CARC Email
Reflector: see www.qth.net CarbonARC list for
details
CARC Membership Information
Regular
Membership is $15.00, which includes autopatch privileges.
All amateur radio operators are invited to join the CARC
ARES / RACES net held 21:00 local time every Wednesday on the W3HA repeater at
147.255 MHz + offset, PL 131.8. Any
amateur radio operator or anyone with an interest in ham radio is welcome to
attend our monthly meetings which occur the third Thursday of each month at
7:30 PM at the Carbon County EMA Center on Route 93 in Nesquehoning.