RADIOACTIVITIES Newsletter of the Argonne Amateur Radio Club
Volume XLIV, Number 3	March, 2003

In a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) late last fall, the FCC proposed on behalf of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to vastly increase the size of the geographical area in New Mexico and western Texas where amateurs in the 70 cm band would be limited to 50 W PEP to protect military radiolocation service operations.

The proposed region has 67 affected repeaters. ARRL said the proposed area is “in most respects far beyond line-of-sight paths to any military facilities.”

The ARRL asked the FCC and NTIA to cooperatively evaluate the restriction, which could also affect weak-signal operations, to determine whether it is overly broad.

Concerning the wind profilers, the League said it had understood that the National Weather Service, which operates the radars, would notify ARRL of their locations as selected. “Ideally,” the League said, “since the amateur repeaters are incumbent in the band now, the National Weather Service should select sites that minimize the effect on those repeaters.”

The complete text of the ARRL’s comments is available on the FCC Web site.

HR 713 is aimed at ensuring the availability of spectrum to Amateur Radio operators. It would protect existing Amateur Radio spectrum against reallocations to or sharing with other services unless the FCC provides “equivalent replacement spectrum” elsewhere.

The previous version of the Spectrum Protection Act attracted more than 50 cosponsors. An effort will be made to encourage additional House members to sign onto HR 713 as cosponsors.

The presentation was excellent as always and even contained some new video, one of a guy in a mobile home who kept filming right up to the minute when the window behind him blew in and knocked him out. That is just TOO close!

Bruce has arranged the annual SkyWarn presentation with the Chicago Weather Service Office. A meteorologist will give the presentation on Monday, February 24 starting at 7:00 pm at the Argonne Clubhouse. This session provides the training required to obtain or maintain an individual’s weatherspotter status. We will also hold a regular club meeting on March 4.

Bruce reported that we have an opportunity to purchase an S-COM 7K Repeater Controller for about $300. The unit is about 10 years old but has been updated. He has a copy of the manual. Bruce will review the manual and if it supplies the functions we desire and is easily programmed to do so, we agreed to go ahead and purchase it.

We continued last month’s discussion about the 2 meter FM repeater situation. The current proposal is to move the repeater from its current location to the packet repeater’s location and it would be connected to the current packet repeater’s antenna. We expect a less directional effect since this antenna is at the top of the tower, not on the side as the current one is. The packet repeater would then of course have to be disconnected. However, Bruce is looking into a second site that might be available for packet and a possible new 440 MHz repeater. There was some discussion about how much the packet repeater is actually used. Bruce will provide more information and we will continue the discussion at our next meeting.

The deadline to submit items to Bruce to be printed in the February newsletter is February 20.

Five persons onboard the two aircraft were killed, and seven on the ground were treated for minor injuries. One plane came down near an apartment complex occupied mostly by retired older adults. The other landed in a backyard. The Salvation Army’s Emergency Disaster Services (EDS) Metro Denver team was called in to provide canteen services. Metro Denver EDS Supervisor Mike Gelski, KB0PVD, contacted team volunteers to prepare two canteens.

Gelski reports that during the response, nine members of the Denver Radio Club provided Amateur Radio communication between two feeding stations as well as with the Denver command post and the Salvation Army command post.

Canteen services were concluded the following evening after aircraft debris was removed from both crash locations.

Under normal circumstances, a shuttle mission next month would have brought a fresh crew to the ISS and returned Bowersox and his crewmates to Earth. With a Progress 10 cargo rocket delivery February 4, the Expedition 6 team now has sufficient supplies to sustain the crew until late June or early July if necessary, NASA said this week.

What happens beyond that remains up in the air, although NASA has said it would not mothball the ISS and leave the spacecraft without a crew. The extended stay could have an unintended consequence for Amateur Radio, however, since the temporarily stranded crew would be likely to have more spare time on its hands.

NA1SS onboard the ISS represents the first permanent Amateur Radio station in space. The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) International Team recently announced plans to expand NA1SS to include, among other things, separate stations for 2 meters and 70 cm and SSTV capabilities. ARISS is an international program with participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.

An ARISS contact set for February 6 with students at a high school in Germany was postponed, although the ARISS contact schedule is expected to resume later this month. “The German school QSO was postponed because of the Columbia accident and the re-planning taking place for ISS,” said ARISS International Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO. Bauer said the crew’s having to unload a ton of equipment from the Progress rocket also was a factor. He said he’s expecting further clarification from NASA regarding future ARISS school QSOs.

NASA reports that Bowersox, Budarin and Pettit paid a private tribute February 4 to Columbia’s astronauts. NASA ISS flight controllers radioed the crew an audio feed from the memorial ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Additional information on the crew’s activities aboard the ISS is available on NASA’s Human Spaceflight Web site http://spaceflight.nasa.gov.

The crippling of the US shuttle fleet has shifted formerly unanticipated demands on Russia and its meagerly funded space program, since Russian supplies the Soyuz capsules that now serve as emergency escape vehicles for the ISS crew.

“If we have the money, we can build new [Soyuz] capsules,” Russian space official and former cosmonaut Valery Ryumin assured this week. But, more money or no, Soyuz vehicles cannot carry cargo or experiments. The Russians also have temporarily scrapped their “space tourist” program, which they had been promoting to raise much-needed additional funds. Businessmen Dennis Tito, KG6FZX, and Mark Shuttleworth each paid an estimated $20 million to fill the third Soyuz seat and spend a week aboard the ISS. ’N Sync pop singer Lance Bass, KG4UYY, had been considered a possible candidate for an April Soyuz taxi flight.

Now, the Soyuz could become the principal crew transport vehicle for the ISS, although no decision has been made on whether the April taxi flight now will be used to carry out the crew change.

01		N9JFW		Robert		Plainfield, IL
03		WD9GOL		Robert		New Lenox, IL
05		WA9KPI		Robert		Lockport, IL
13		KA9BUL		Scott		New Lenox, IL
15		W9SKD		Dick		Plainfield, IL
16		WD9AGR		Jeanne		Plainfield, IL
17		W9TIE		Bob		Glen Ellyn, IL
28		KA9H		Bruce		Downers Grove, IL
29				Ken		Wheaton, IL
30		WA9ZBW		John		Dwight, IL

PLEASE NOTE THE LOCATION:

• No one fails a class anymore, he’s merely “passing impaired.”
• You don’t have detention, you’re just one of the“exit delayed.”
• Your bedroom isn’t cluttered, it’s just “passage restrictive.”
• These days, a student isn’t lazy. He’s “energetically declined.”
• Your locker isn’t overflowing with junk, it’s just “closure prohibitive.”
• Kids don’t get grounded anymore. They merely hit “social speed bumps.”
• Your homework isn’t missing, its just having an “out-of-notebook experience.”
• You’re not sleeping in class, you’re “rationing consciousness.”
• You’re not late, you just have a “rescheduled arrival time.”
• You’re not having a bad hair day, you’re suffering from “rebellious follicle syndrome.”
• You don’t have smelly gym socks, you have “odor-retentive athletic footwear.”
• No one’s tall anymore. He’s “vertically enhanced.”
• You’re not shy. You’re “conversationally selective.”
• You don’t talk a lot.. You’re just “abundantly verbal.”
• You weren’t passing notes in class. You were “participating in the discreet exchange of penned meditations.”
• You’re not being sent to the principals office. You’re “going on a mandatory field trip to the administrative building.”
• It’s not called gossip anymore. It’s “the speedy transmission of near-factual information.”
• The food at the school cafeteria isn’t awful. It’s “digestively challenged.”