SARC Committees
THE AIRWAVES CALENDAR
From the President's Shack
The last few days of October have been wild with the fires down
south, the solar flare, daylight saving time change, and the strikes.
Just another reason to be an active radio amateur on the air. ARES/
RACES have been handling shelter communications and helping with
other fire related communications down south. From writing this on
Wednesday 29 October the solar flare really knocked out HF
communications. Several HF nets were put out of business starting
around 10:00 am local. Several hams around the country were listening
for solar noise and effects, so I learned on email reflectors I
subscribe to. I'm looking forward to tonight to see if we see aurora
in the northern sky as a result of the flare. These things usually
repeat in the following week (11 Days if I remember correctly), so
time will tell. Nature sure has fun things in store for us if we
pay attention. SARC does need a nominating committee since some
of the board members need to do other things soon. Please, the job
doesn't take too long. Just phone most of the membership to see if
someone is willing to take over one of the positions. If we have a
couple of folks phoning it is even less time. The positions don't
take much time either, if you just put it into your daily schedule
and do it. It takes longer if you put things off, just the same way
other things in life take longer if you don't just do it and get
it over with. The audit committee of three people will need to spend
a couple of hours looking over the treasurer's record book to see
that things match. This will need to take place in mid January on
your own schedule. Give it a shot. A once a year job that takes a
couple of hours. In the mean time have fun seeing what is on the
bands. Check into the Monday night 2 meter Emergency Net on the
translator. Sign up for one of the upcoming horse rides. They are
fun and 2 meter handheld or mobiles make it happen. We provide
service and have fun too.
Meeting Minutes Meeting was opened by President Bill, WA6QYR President Bill WA6QYR opened the meeting at 735. Visitors were John Denson, AI6A; Tom Ryan, WB8ENO; Dave Palmer, KJ6JO; John Piri, WD6CSV The Treasurer's report was in newsletter Technical Assistance Committee: Greg, WA7IRW didn't have any thing new to report. Radio Frequency Interference Committee: Bill, WA6QYR. No activity to report.
Public Relations Committee: Phelps, W6PTH
Picnic in the Park bicycle ride report was in the Airwaves and folks had a good time helping out. Jamboree-On-The-Air is coming 18 October 9-3-need some helpers in addition to Greg, Phelps and Bill. Lloyd, WA6KZV indicated that the Coso Horse ride is coming up in November. Emergency and Public Service Committee: Jerry Brooks, KK6PA talked about the 15 November training session lead by Hal KM6JM on message handling and portable packet operation. Both a Nomination committee and Audit committee are needed this month. No one volunteered to do this. VE Exam scheduled for Oct 11 at the Library at 0900. It was moved and seconded to reduce member dues from $20 to $17 if they elect to receive the "Airwaves" via email starting in January. Motion passed. Program Committee: Dennis W6DWF introduced Bob Phillips, KA6PLU who had a good talk about older radios. Bob gave some tips on where to find parts for old commercial broadcast radios and amateur radios. Bob had a nice display of 1920's to 50's radios. An Atwater Kent was playing a local AM radio station through a horn speaker. Bob had several old hobby magazines in addition to current magazines on how to fix up the older radios. Thanks Bob. Future programs planned include the weather service and windmill farms. Jerry, KK6PA won the 50-50 drawing of $6.00. Thanks to Pam Evans for bringing in the snacks.
TREASURER'S REPORT Treasurer's Report As of November 01, 2003: Draft Account $ 68.76 Share Account $ 5,632.63 TOTAL $ 5,701.39 Obligated Funds: Relocate 147.00 Repeater $ 139.90 BALANCE: $ 5,561.49Submitted by Pam Evans, KC6UUS 147 Repeater Status
During a time of frustration with other projects I checked out
Elvy's paint with a first coat to the shed. It will take a couple
more coats to get the wood sealed up. Still no word on getting the
link controllers checked out. If you have some expertise in computers,
let me know and maybe we can get the controllers figured out.
IWV Emergency Net
I'm looking for net operators for December and beyond. It is simple
to do and great practice for the real thing. Drop me a line to sign
up.
RACES and ARES As a reminder, in support of the ARRL Simulated Emergency Test, the Eastern Kern County RACES and ARES will conduct a FUNCTIONAL DRILL on Saturday, November 15th. The location of the functional drill will be at the Salvation Army on North Downs. The drill will start at 0900 and should be over by 1200. The functional drill will focus on sending and receiving ARRL Radiograms via voice and packet. Future training exercises and SETs will build on this basic foundation. All registered Eastern Kern County ARES and RACES members are strongly encouraged to attend this Functional Drill on November 15th. Having a well trained communications team BEFORE a disaster occurs is vital. Just like it is a bit late to learn how to swim after falling into the river, there is not going to be much time to train Hams how to pass traffic immediately after the disaster strikes. If you are not a registered Eastern Kern County ARES or RACES member and you would like to participate in this drill, please contact Jerry/KK6PA. No Code / Know Code Update The move towards (or away) from the code requirement for licensing is continuing. A multitude of proposals have been made to the FCC. The time to comment on the first batch has closed and nearly for the second set. Go to the ARRL web site to look at the proposals and how to comment on them Jamboree-On-The Air! The Ridgecrest Jamboree-On-The-Air (JOTA) was operated from Pearson Park during Saturday 18 October 2003. It was the same day, as several other large events in Ridgecrest so didn't draw all the Scouts it could have but we did have 23 Cub and Boy Scouts come by with their families. The Sierra Amateur Radio Club (SARC) members helped the operation, some of which are both Scouters and radio amateurs. The operation began with the setting up of the tower trailer to place a tri-band antenna up in the air for communicating with other JOTA units around the country. Dennis W6DWF, Phelps Ter Huen, W6PTH, Greg Roush, WA7IRW and Bill Burns, WA6QYR did the work of getting the antenna up and then setting up two shade areas under which to operate. Phelps handled the HF station with solar power to operate on 15 meters most of the time. He had the youth and a few parents talk over the radio to others in Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. The boys had fun sharing what kinds of sports and video games they played with youth on the other end of the radio communication. Each boy received a participation card and patch. There was a table with a display of past JOTA operations along with QSL cards received from previous years contacts over the radio. Greg and Sam Ghaleb, KG6EMT set up operation under his shade to show the people a 120-year-old telegraph set with keys and sounder where the boys had fun sending messages to one another. There were examples of World War II Morse code instruction equipment and 1950 youth telegraph sending toy. There was another table with a current memory keyer and iambic key with which to operate and practice receiving Morse code. The third interest area was soldering a few connections on a computer based chip code practice machine that the got to finish and to take home with them. SARC had provided the parts to construct the instruments and Greg, Sam, and Bill partially assembled them for the scouts. The boys had fun sending code to each other with their new machines. For Further information on Scouting or Amateur radio please contact Bill at 760-375-8566 or bburns@ridgenet.net. Book Review
Experimental Methods in RD Design
This the follow on to Solid State Design by Wes Hayward W7ZOI and Doug DeMaw W1FB. The original Solid State Design is considered a classic. Unfortunately, Solid State Design has become somewhat dated and a more modern version was needed. Experimental Methods in RD Design fits that need. This is the book for the ham that wants to either start out in homebrewing gear or for the experienced one looking for fresh ideas. The writing is clear and helpful; however, don't expect set by step instructions on projects. Rather you will find a wealth of ideas and concepts and their application to real working radios and accessories. The authors, Wes Hayward, Rick Campbell, and Bob Larkin, are widely known for their unique construction projects and innovation. In the book you will find a number of project that have been written up in QST with expanded information and updates. Anyone wanting to experiment with building radios, or just wants to learn a little more about how radios work should get Experimental Methods in RD Design. I would also encourage you to get the earlier Solid State Design. The pair makes a dynamite addition to any amateur radio bookshelf. Both can be found at www.arrl.org ARRL Audio News Every Monday night, just prior to the IWV Emergency net, Mike, WA6ARA, broadcasts the ARRL Audio News on 146.64 simplex. This is a great source of amateur radio news and a good warm up for the net. So check it out, at 1910 local time (7:10 p.m.) on 146.64 MHz. This is transmitted on the SARC translator output frequency but in simplex. Done so that we don't have to worry about timing out the repeater. I'm are also looking for other Amateurs who would be willing to share the job of re-transmitting the news. It is simple enough, just need to download the news from the ARRL web site, and, with a simple to build interface, re-transmit it at the appropriate time. If you want to volunteer please contact Mike, WA6ARA at herr@ridgenet.net Looking for News!
I'm always looking for local news for and about the IWV amateur
radio community. Also, if you have something for sale or are looking
for something else, drop me a line and I'll put it in the Airwaves.
SARC Newletter via Email
The SARC Newsletter is available in TWO formats, Adobe Acrobat PDF
and in plain text. The PDF version is complete, and in color, but
you will need Acrobat Reader to view it. Most have it and it is
available free to both PC and Mac users. The plain text version can
be read by just about anything! ...but you lose the graphics. If
you want the newsletter via Email just drop me an email and say
which version you want and if you want to drop receiving the paper
version. If you are receiving it via Email and want off the list,
please do the same.
Updated Sat Nov 15 22:38:29 PST 2003 |