Greetings, one and all. It's hard to believe that there could possibly be anyplace more beautiful in the whole wide world than Georgia in the springtime, isn't it? (as long as you don't mind having to shovel the pollen, that is!) Thanks to all of you who took the time out to let me know that you've been enjoying these newsletters.. and that they're not "too long". Except my buddy and yours, Sandy Donahue, W4RU, who said that he'd gotten a call from Leo Tolstoy, complaining that my last newsletter was longer than War and Peace . and there WAS that one fella at the hamfest who rolled his eyes and grinned at me when I stood up to speak at the ARES forum. seems he was a-feared that I'd talk too long or something. Anyhow, March was an active month for Georgia hams, and it looks like April will be, too.
Kennehoochee Hamfest: Under the leadership of hamfest chairman Bob Butler, W4RBB, the Kennehoochee ARC provided visitors with a look at a number of emergency response vehicles, teams, and organizations, and offered some interesting forums, as well. This added an interesting dimension to the usual fare found at a hamfest. Although the weather threatened to be uncooperative, the sunshine prevailed in the end, and those of you who didn't venture out missed a good time with a lot of good people. Most of my time was spent at the ARRL booth or in the ARES forum, but I heard that there was even an HF station set up, with its antenna soaring high, hoisted up by a helium balloon. pretty neat, huh? Thanks to one of our favorite hams, Bill Prince, KT4ED, who gamely offered to load an amazing boat anchor of a transmitter into his truck to haul home for my better half. who, unbelievably, ended up NOT accepting the offer. He never met a boat anchor that he didn't like. and this one was pretty terrific! (True, we might have needed a very large shoe horn to get another one into this house.) It made for some fun discussion, though. Jim Miller Park in Marietta is a terrific location for a hamfest, and if you missed this one, there will be another opportunity in June, when the Atlanta ARC will be holding its annual hamfest there.
GARS Techfest: The Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society (GARS) held its fifth annual techfest on March 23, and it was a rousing success. Chairman Barry Zoll, N1TOQ, and a whole team of volunteers, managed to set up displays on such things as PSK-31, APRS, DFing, ATV, Homebrew antennas, "Free TV" (foreign broadcast), radio programming via computer, scanners, and antique radio. Mike Swiderski, K4HBI, wowed visitors young and old with his demonstration on AM modulation of a laser light, using a simple laser pointer. Victor Gann, N2VG, provided inexpensive shortwave crystal kits for kids to buy, and then supervised their building. Last I heard, there were 16 enthusiastic youngsters who took advantage of this fun opportunity. Ever heard of a "left foot key"? It's a HUGE morse code key that you actually use your left foot to operate. (That was fun!) That was set up as part of the display on morse code. Besides all of the great displays and great fellowship, there was lots and lots of food. Pots and pots of chili, hamburgers, hotdogs, all kinds of fixings, and desserts galore. What's more, all of this was free to anyone who chose to participate. This is one way that GARS club members stretch out the hand of friendship to other hams and to the community, and once again, a good time was had by all.
Last month, I told you that I'd fill you in on a new group in South Georgia called SOAR (Supporters of Amateur Radio). The primary aims of SOAR are to (a) hold/sponsor special events; (b) "do" unique events on islands and at lighthouses in Georgia; (c) hold classes for those that have never had the opportunity to become a ham; and (d) promote amateur radio actively and very publicly. This may sound like somewhat lofty goals, but they have already been accomplishing them. They are in the midst now of teaching amateur radio classes to a bunch of inner city kids in Savannah, and plan to test them for technician licenses on April 13th. This is also the same group of folks who spearheaded the special event station K4S in Savannah, in conjunction with the St. Paddy's day parade, and who've paved the way for operations at the Tybee Island lighthouse. Although there are a number of hams involved in these endeavors, I'm gonna single out Larry Lowe, AF4MI, because this has all been his brain child, and he's truly been the moving force behind it all. (Can you say. Bulldozer?)
| April 13: | The Statesboro ARC will be holding a hamfest from 8 AM until 2 PM at Ogeechee Tech College, south of Statesboro, on Hwy. 301. Cost: $5 per person, or $10 per whole family. VE testing at noon. There will be card-checkers available to check your cards for DXCC, WAS, and VUCC. Talk-in on 147.105(+) |
| April 13: | GA Single Sideband Association picnic at Reed Bingham State Park between Adel and Moultrie. Bring a side dish and join the fun at shelter #4. |
| April 20: | Blue Ridge Mountain Adventure Race, a running, hiking event in a beautiful setting, that requires amateur radio operators to provide the communications. If you're interested in helping, contact John Mullinax at [email protected]. |
| April 20-21: | The Georgia Orienteering Club will be hosting the U.S. DFing Championships at FDR State Park in Pine Mountain, GA. 2M competition on Saturday, and 80M competition on Sunday. Last day to register for the competition is April 6th. For more information, go to http://www.mindspring.com/~sam.smith/gaoc/Radio-O/Radio.htm |
| April 26-27: | The Southern VHF Society's 6th annual conference at the Garden Plaza hotel in Oak Ridge, TN For more info, check out www.svhfs.org |
| April 27: | It's time for the Calhoun hamfest 8AM to 2 PM at the Sugar Valley Community Center, 4 miles NW of Calhoun on Hwy. 138 connector. Admission $5; under 16, free. VE testing at 11 AM. Tailgating free with paid admission. Talk-in 145.230(-) |
Co-sponsored by the Lanierland ARC, GA 14c, and the Chattahoochee Baptist Association, there will be a 2-day class offered on April 13 and April 20 at the Chattahoochee Baptist Association office , at 1220 McEver Road Extension in Gainesville. The $35 fee covers the cost of the Now You're Talking book, as well as the VE test session, and other expenses. Registration will be on Thursday, April 11, at 7 PM at the same location. Class begins at 8 AM, April 13, followed by a week of self-study, then the follow-up review class and test, beginning at 8 AM on the 20th. Contact Ed Cravey, at [email protected] by April 4th.
Wyndell Hogan, WA4NGG, of Adairsville
William Molloy, K4ZOD, of Macon, an 88-year-old retired Army Lt. Col. Who served in both WWII and Korea
Ron Jones, K4YN (ex-KC4GR) an avid DXer and casual contester, member of the SEDX club
Located in Atlanta, the MATPARC ATV repeater has inputs on 434.0 MHz AM and on 1253 MHz FM, both vertically polarized. The output is 421.25 MHz AM (Cable channel 57). It can be received using a cable-ready TV set connected to an outside vertically polarized antenna. Tune the TV to cable (not broadcast) channel 57. Low loss coax and a pre-amp are recommended. There is a weekly net on Thursday evenings at 9 PM. For more info, check with Jeff Pahl, at [email protected].
As of March 27, there are a total of 14,724 hams in Georgia. This breaks down to 621 Novices, 5071 Technicians, 1772 Tech Plus, 3023 Generals, 2004 Advanced, and 2233 Extras. And yet, only 3458 of them are members of the ARRL. Looks like I need to do some serious recruiting, huh?
We did sign up some new League members at the Kennehoochee hamfest. Welcome to new ARRL members Noel Crosby, WA4SGB; Tom Kocourek, N4FWD and his wife Vivian, KF4BUZ; Michael Gray, KR4RZ; and Michael Amos, KG4NDS. A reminder to all who belong to an ARRL affiliated club: new memberships paid through your club will earn a rebate of $15 for the club coffers. (not renewals. just new memberships)
I receive mailing labels every month for all of the new hams in Georgia, and there were 44 in this latest batch. Of them, 18 were YLs. Most interesting was a family affair. Mother Rebecca Gallagher, KG4RNJ, and her two teenaged daughters Heather, KG4RNH and Megan, KG4RNI. They are from Alpharetta, and all are involved with the CAP.
As reported by STM Jim Hanna, Af4NS, for February
Net Activity:
GCN Georgia Cracker Net: QNI-1226, QTC-8, 28 sessions N4BD/NM
GSSBA Georgia Single Sideband Assn: QNI- 2226, QTC-52, 28 sessions K4WKW/NM
GA ARES: QNI-367, QTC-0, 4 sessions AA4P/NM
GBH Georgia Baptist Hams: QNI-106, QTC-0, 4 sessions AA4P/NM
STARS Statesboro Amateur Radio Society: QNI-64, QTC-0, 4 sessions KF4MLT/NM
6-Meter Ragchew Net: QNI-22, QTC-0, 4 sessions KF4MLT/NM
GTN Georgia Traffic Net (SSB): QNI-192, QTC-0, 24 sessions WU4C/NM
GTN Georgia CW Traffic Handling Training Net: QNI-166, QTC-99, QND-830 min 28 sessions KG4FXG/NM
GSN Georgia State CW Traffic Net: QNI-464, QTC-120, QND-886 min 56 sessions AF4NS/NM
Public Service Honor Roll, PSHR Points:
KG4FXG (200) AF4NS (148)
WB4GGS (121) K4WKT (115)
K4BEH (114) WB4BIK (107)
W4WXA (107) KA4HHE (103)
K4ZC (81)
SAR Station Activity Report. Traffic handled
KG4FXG (208) WB4BIK (46)
WB4GGS (189) KA4HHE (44)
W4WXA (164) K4ZC (24)
AF4NS (148) K4WKT (23)
K4BEH (53)
Last May, 18 hams from Georgia visited with hams in Russia as part of the Friendship Force exchange. Now, twenty Russian hams are eagerly planning a trip to Atlanta. They will be arriving on May 31st and staying until June 8th. The Friendship Force is looking for several local hams to host one or two of these Russian hams in their homes. (They do speak English.) There will be numerous planned activities for the group, but host homes are badly needed. If you think you can help, please contact Guy Shields, K4GBU at [email protected], or call him at (770) 981-3625.
Some of you have probably read about the various states that have been passing their own state versions of the PRB-1 legislation. fifteen have done so thus far, and others are working on it. Bob Fuss, W4OWY, asked me if anything was in the works for Georgia. He'd had some experience helping with local ordinances in Cobb, Fulton, and the city of Atlanta, but was curious about the status of activity on a state-wide level. So, I turned to Jim Altman, W4UCK our ASM/legal. This was his response:
"This seems to pop up every few years. A state PRB-1 is not possible in Georgia. Georgia has an unusual constitutional set-up for zoning. The legislature is barred by the constitution from passing substantive zoning laws. It can only pass laws concerning the procedures used by local governments to enact local zoning laws. The substantive zoning power is a self-executing home rule power not subject to the regulation of the state legislature. The bottom line is, I am sorry to say, is that it would violate the Georgia constitution to pass such a law in this state."
That's the BAD news, but the GOOD news, is that the ARRL is working to press this issue at the Federal level. In fact, meetings between ARRL representatives and several members of Congress have been rather encouraging concerning the possible introduction of legislation that would actually extend the PRB-1 exemption to include CC+Rs. (those nasty "covenants, conditions, and restrictions" within some communities that have made it next to impossible for hams to get some decent aluminum up in the air)
An interesting new concept to be introduced later this year by the ARRL is the Logbook of the World , an electronic verification program, with which participants will be able to qualify for awards like DXCC and WAS without having to wait to receive the hard-copy QSL cards. It is NOT a means of getting QSLs, either traditional or e-QSLs, and the electronic QSLs still are unacceptable for awards purposes, but it WILL be a huge repository of constantly updated log data provided by individual DXers and DXpeditions, maintained by the ARRL, and accessible to all. Registration and uploading will be free. The only charges will be incurred when a ham wants to apply those contact "credits" towards an award. This new program should be launched in a couple of months.
It's likely that I made more errors in last month's newsletter than the following, but these are the only ones that were brought to my attention:
First, my apologies to Ron McDaniel, W4ALJ. He's a recent retiree, and I managed to booger up his callsign. Sorry about that. My better half Mike pointed it out to me, and when I sent Ron an email to apologize, he said something along the lines of."No problem..Suzanne.."
Talking about my better half, I managed to mess up on his article about K1MAN, too. I think our friend John Bunting, W4NET, got a real kick out of yanking on our chain a little bit over it, too. But honest-to-goodness, folks, Mike did NOT use the word "persecute" in his original text to me. The work he used was "prosecute" so he's not advocating any kind of vigilante-ism here. it was a simple case of Freudian slippage on the keyboard on my part.
Carroll Norton ("Ace") W4WTA wrote to tell me that not ALL VUCC card checkers can also check for WAS. Hmmmm, learn something new every day.
Also, last month I mentioned about how the members of the North GA QRP Club had generously bought, built, and donated a K-2 radio to the STARS station at the SciTrek museum in downtown Atlanta. They did, but I've recently learned that the Atlanta ARC and MATPARC also contributed towards the efforts. Sincere thanks to all of these folks for their generosity and caring.
A few people have asked me where they can find sample ham radio tests on the internet. These three sites are supposed to have tests for all three levels of licensing:
www.hamtest.comLots of clubs all over are bubbling with the excitement of planning for this year's Field Day. Let me know where your club will be setting up this year, and I'll spread the word. Mike and I plan to visit a number of sites this year, so we'd appreciate directions, too. We obviously can't visit everyone, but we'll make the rounds as best as we can. Afterwards, if you have anything notable to report about your Field Day experience, please let me know. I challenge you to top a most extraordinary happening from last year's Alford Memorial Radio Club's Field Day at Briscoe Field in Snellville. Member Gene Blackburn, N4UJ, brought an older tube-type radio to do a little show and tell operating. When a resistor blew, would you believe that they replaced it with.. ready for this??. a piece of watermelon!! The resistance was just about right, and they were able to continue making contacts on this rather unusual "fix".
Talking about Gene Blackburn, he presented a program for the Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society a couple of months ago about the old "Atlanta Teenage Radio Club". Talk about nostalgia!! And I'll tell you what, he gave me a copy of "Zero Beat", the club's newsletter volume 1, number 1, from 1959. Those kids could write!! See if any of these names ring a bell with you Richard Benton, Doug Siler, Johnny Moore, Don Nahser, Alvin Avery, Lamar Ellis, Roy Chapman, Charles Vaughan, and Johnny Fearon. Johnny Fearon, a long-time member of GARS, enjoyed the program so much that he broke into song.sharing a song that the boys sang in the wee hours at Field Day back in 1959 or '60 or so, when the contacts were slowing down, and so were they. This was in the days when the Confederate Signal Corps ARC used to hold a huge hamfest at Lakewood fairgrounds. and they gave away a CAR one year??? ( Last year, the club was honored for having had 50 years as an affiliated club. Time truly flies when you're having fun..)
Our section Technical Coordinator, Fred Runkle, K4KAZ, thought it would be a good idea to let folks know who the Technical Specialists are here in GA. The position of TS has been grossly underutilized, but you folks can't "use" them if you don't know who they are, can you? What these guys can do for you is offer their services as a technical advisor, especially in cases involving RFI. Many of them are willing to speak at clubs on a variety of technical topics, as well. So, who are they?
BEDGOOD, BILLY KD4NZ COLUMBUS BEHRENS, EUGENE N9VRO SHARPSBURG BIGBIE, EDGAR W4MMQ RICHMOND HILL BOATRIGHT, MIKE KO4WX DECATUR CANTRELL, TERRY W4WTC LILBURN CRAWFORD, JOHN W4QK EVANS DALE, HAROLD WB4AEG ADAIRSVILLE FELIG, MARK WA6NGC SNELLVILLE FUSS, ROBERT W4OWY MURRAYVILLE HYLTON, KEITH KE4TEG DUNWOODY KOSOBUCKI, EDDIE K4JNL COLUMBUS LEAR, BOB K4SZ DAHLONEGA PIPER, JIMMY W4HON WARNER ROBINS POWELL, THOMAS K4TNP MILLEDGEVILLE ROBINSON, ROY K4EDU AUGUSTA RONAY, WILLIAM KM4LS BUCKHEAD RUNKLE, FRED K4KAZ BUFORD RUSS, HARVEY WD4RXH CANTON RUTLAND, TERRY KD4FPT JONESBORO SEGAR, CLIFF KF4DZV KENNESAW STEVEN, RICHARD AK4T COLUMBUS STRONG, STEVE KS4EL NORCROSS SWIDERSKI, MIKE K4HBI NORCROSS WOMACK, FRANKIE W4BJT EAST POINT WORSHAM, JIM W4KXY BUFORD WRIGHT, BARRY K4WWY CALHOUNSo, there ya have it. So go ahead and pick their brains!!
Like I mentioned in last month's newsletter, there are some folks in south Georgia who are working on building a DX club. If you are interested in the joys of DXing, or if you've achieved DXCC, how about getting in touch with these guys and see how you can help them get this club off the ground? If they can get a membership of at least 25 hams with DXCC, they'll be allowed to appoint a DXCC card checker. Mike and I will join how about you?? Contact either Larry Lowe, AF4MI, at [email protected], or Marshall Thigpen, W4IS, at [email protected] to support this new group as a charter member.
This whole thing is already pretty doggoned long, but there's one last thing I want to share with you. Some of you may have already seen it, but it's worth reading again. Also, a thank you to Mary Ahls, W4NZJ, for sharing some of the puns that've graced the newsletter this month. This last piece is called.
"Geezers" (slang for an old man) are easy to spot at sporting events. During the playing of the national anthem, Old Geezers hold their caps over their hearts and sing without embarrassment. They know the words, and believe in them. Old Geezers remember World War I, the Depression, WWII, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Hitler. They remember the Atomic Age, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Jet Age, and the moon landing, not to mention Vietnam. If you bump into an Old Geezer on the sidewalk, he will apologize. If you pass an Old Geezer on the street, he will nod or tip his hat to a lady. Old Geezers trust strangers and are courtly to women. Old Geezers hold the door for the next person and always, when walking, make certain the lady is on the inside for protection. Old Geezers get embarrassed if someone curses in front of women and children, and they don't like filth in TV or in movies. Old Geezers have moral courage. They seldom brag, unless it's about their grandchildren. It's the Old Geezers who know our great country is protected, not by politicians or police, but by the young men and women in the military serving their country. This country needs Old Geezers with their decent values. We need them now more than ever. Thank God for Old Geezers.
That's about it for now (I know, I know it's about time) Until next month, this is AF4FO, signing clear. Take care of yourselves. And each other.
73, Susan [email protected]