April SAARC Meeting

The next SAARC meeting will be on Tuesday April 18. The meeting will be held in room 106 at Petoskey High School and will start at 7:30 pm. This month Russ will give a demonstration of EZNEC, an antenna modeling program. If you have ever read any articles about building your own antennas or read reviews of commercially constructed antennas and wondered where they got the fancy diagrams and statistics showing how the antenna performs, then you will definitely find this demonstration interesting. It is also great if you experiment with your own antenna designs.

SAARC Meetings 2006

SAARC VEC Exam Dates

We had five new hams get their tickets at our last VE session. Congratulations to all of you who passed and welcome to the world of amateur radio. Jack's class was very successful and we hope to have another class offered soon. If you know anyone who has been thinking about becoming a ham, let us know so we can inform them when the next class will take place. Jack is also considering running a class for those who want to upgrade so be sure to mention it when you see him at the next meeting. In the meantime, hit the books so you can be ready for one of the following test sessions.

April 1 - June 3 - July 8* -October 7 - December 2

All sessions are located at the Red Cross Building and scheduled times are 10:00AM.
*SAARC Swap session at 1:00 pm

Remember to bring a photo ID, a copy of your license and, if applicable, a copy of your "Certificate of Successful Completion of Element" you received at your last session. You will also need $14, a pen and pencil, and a calculator if you think you'll need it.

National Incident Management System (NIMS)

HLS/FEMA has made it a requirement that all First Responders complete a National Incident Management System (NIMS) training course in order to be allowed to respond to a disaster. That's all first responders: Police, Fire, DPW, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Health Department, etc; you get the Idea. Amateur Radio operators that respond to disaster incidents are included in this requirement. These requirements must be met by10-01-06, the Federal Government Fiscal year.

IS100 is a short course that can be taken on the Internet.

IS700 is a long course that can be taken on the Internet, however there will be some classes offered locally (see below)

NIMS establishes standardized incident management processes, protocols, and procedures that all responders -- Federal, state, tribal, and local -- will use to coordinate and conduct response actions. With responders using the same standardized procedures, they will all share a common focus, and will be able to place full emphasis on incident management when a homeland security incident occurs -- whether terrorism or natural disaster. In addition, national preparedness and readiness in responding to and recovering from an incident is enhanced since all of the Nation's emergency teams and authorities are using a common language and set of procedures.

As part of the NIMS are required to take the IS-100 & IS700 classes required by HLS and FEMA. The IS700 class will be offered on the following dates:

 

Monday 4/24/06 Charlevoix Fire Hall 210 State St., Charlevoix Time 7:00 PM

Thursday 4/27/06 Location: Boyne City EMS building 1050 Division St Time: 6:00PM

Thursday May 25 Petoskey High School Cafeteria 1500 Hill St. Time 7:00 PM

 

Upcoming Hamfests

5/6/2006 Wexaukee ARC - Cadillac, MI

5/19-21/2006 Dayton ARA - Dayton, MI

Michigan QSO Party

Just a last minute reminder that if you are going to be around an HF radio over Easter weekend, be sure to get on the air and make a few contacts with all the stations that will be operating the Michigan QSO party. Be sure to look around the frequencies of 3.850, 7.225, and 14.250 (you could try 10 and 15 meters too). The exchange will be your call sign, contact number starting with 001, and Michigan county. Our counties up north are rare ones so you should be able to make quite a few contacts in a short period of time. The contest takes place on Saturday April 15 from noon to midnight local time so get your taxes done in the morning so you can get on they air after an early lunch. Be sure to check out the official MIQP website for the complete rules at http://www.miqp.org/

SAARC Area Nets

MONDAY 08:00 pm EST The Bill DeMay Memorial Two Meter Social Net
146.680 MHZ - Net Control - Rotating

TUESDAY 09:00 pm EST The Michigan Link-Up Net
146.680 MHZ - Local Net Control - N8DNX

WEDNESDAY 08:00 pm EST The Chain - O - Lakes Net
147.280 MHZ w/Pl 103.5 - Net Control - Rotating

THURSDAY 01:00 GMT The RACES Net
146.680 MHZ - Net Control - Rotating

SATURDAY 08:30 pm EST The Dip Net
146.680 MHZ - Net Control - Cliff Rosebohm KC8NVI

The Land of the Freeware

If you have a computer then you are sure to have programs that you run in order to do the daily tasks that you encounter whether it be for work or for pleasure. Most computers come set up with programs that allow you to do email, write letters, make photo albums, etc. However, if you are like me and have scrounged all the parts for you computer, you are on your own to find the programs you need. You can go to your local office store and purchase the programs or you can head to the internet and download what you need. If you don't want to pay more for the programs than you did for the computer you may want to consider freeware.

Freeware is exactly what it says, programs that are free. There are freeware programs out there that can do just about anything you want. I am currently writing this edition of �The Static� with �OpenOffice,� a program that works just like the popular �Office� suite and can open all the same file types including �doc� files and power point presentations.. There are programs for email, and web browsing as well. I use �Foxmail�for my email and �Firefox� and �Opera� for web browsing, all of which are freeware. You can even download complete operating systems for free, Linux being one of the most popular.

Besides the price, another advantage of using freeware is the lower security threat. Since most people purchase their computer preloaded with software, hackers tend to concentrate their efforts on viruses and spyware that will effect these preinstalled programs, thus effecting the greatest number of computers. I can't guarantee you won't get any viruses if you use freeware, so be sure to download a freeware virus protection program while you are on the net.

http://www.qsl.net/k4adl/

  The SAARC Officers

73 KG8JK