DOUGLAS COUNTY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
Vol. 30, No. 11, November 2000
Articles and information for the Newsletter may
be submitted up to the 25th of the month
before the next meeting.
Ken Blair, KC0GL, Editor
1711 West 19th Terrace Phone: 843?8826
Lawrence, KS 66046 e-mail: kc0gl@arrl.net
This Newsletter is published monthly by the Douglas County Amateur
Radio Club (DCARC). Reprint permission is granted to other Amateur
Radio-oriented publications (except for copyrighted material as noted)
provided that credit is given to the author and source. Opinions
expressed
herein are not necessarily those of the club or its officers.
..............................................................................
P R O G R A M
NOVEMBER 8, 2000
What are you working on?
At this program, would each member please simply bring a piece of
equipment, a kit, or an antenna, which you're building or repairing
now. We'll talk about our projects. Last year this was well-received
so we'll probably make this another recurring program. Thanks for
joining in on this!
Jim Canaday, N6YR, Program Chair
..............................................................................
THE DCARC CHRISTMAS DINNER
The DCARC Christmas Banquet will take place Wednesday, December 13th,
at Fifi’s Banquet Connection, in North Lawrence. Reservations are
made by prepaying $18 per person to Bill Pendleton (as we did last
year). $18 per person includes meal, tax, and gratuities all; this
is less than a 30-cent increase from last year.
The buffet style service and cash bar will be nearly identical to
last year’s arrangements: two entrees (brisquet of beef and dijon
chicken);
rice Peloff, scalloped potatos; vegitable medly; and cheesecake dessert.
As in years past, we can start arriving at 6 p.m.
--Jim Canaday, N6YR program Manager
DCARC PARTICIPATES IN CROP WALK
Bob Drake, N0TFU
On Sunday afternoon, Oct. 1, several members of the club helped with
communications for the Lawrence CROP walk.
The CROP walk is a 10 km walk to raise funds to fight hunger. 25%
of the money stays in Lawrence to help local food kitchens and the
rest is distributed worldwide to fight hunger through Church World
Service facilities.
Bud Waugh (N0APJ) was net control and was stationed at the beginning
and ending point of the walk. Ken Blair (KC0GL), Will Shockley (KB0WDW),
and Reid Crowe (KC0IDI); were all assigned intersections along the
path. Bob Drake (N0TFU) was one of the walkers.
About 150 persons participated in the walk. The communications provided
by the club members assisted in reuniting a mother with her child
after the child had run ahead and became separated from his group.
They also were helpful in making sure the water stop was replenished
with water at the needed times.
The organizers of the walk appreciated the assistance provided by
the DCARC and hopes that they will be willing to help again next year.
I wish to thank Bud, Ken, Will, and Reed for their expert assistance
and help also.
..............................................................................
SATELLITE ORBITS
Bob Drake, N0TFU
Below is the URL for the website that I mentioned at the October club
meeting.
This site gives the predicted viewing times of all the satellites
over a specified area. It also gives the times when the amateur radio
satellites are available in the designated area, along with their
input and output frequencies.
The homepage of the site is: heavens-above.com
From this page you need to choose your location or enter your
coordinates.
When choosing the location, just put in the name of the town only.
Do not put in the state. It will come back with at list of names and
you choose the correct one from that list.
The coordinates for Lawrence, KS are 38.9720 N, 95.2350 W.
The URL to take you directly to the predictions for Lawrence is:
http://www.heavens-above.com/main.asp-Loc=Lawrence&Lat=38.972&Lng=-95.235&TZ=CST
..............................................................................
MINUTES OF OCTOBER 11 MEETING
The October 11 meeting began with an excellent presentation by Mike
Ackulo, a Meterologist from the NWS in Topeka. His main topic concerned
the weather alert system, it's history and how it has evolved over
the years and the equipment improvements at the Topeka Weather Bureau
that have taken place.
There were no reports from the President, Vice-President, and Secretary.
The Treasurer reported $474.65 in the General Fund, $237.90 in the
Repeater Fund for a total balance of $712.55. He has received bills
for the September Newsletter that included the regular mailing ($62.19)
plus a special mailing ($179.76) and the October issue ($45.93) for
the total amount of $287.98.
Bob Drake reported for the Program Manager. The December meeting will
be the Christmas Banquet and the January program will be on PSK31,
presented by Vince Francisco.
Bob Drake also reported for the Training Manager. The next License
Class will begin in February and met on Monday nights
Reports of the officers were accepted.
A motion was made and approved to pay the Newsletter bills for September
and October.
Both repeaters seem to be working well. It was mentioned that an antenna
on the tower at the Law Enforcement Center was dangling (not one
of ours).
The Emergency Coordinator had no report. The Program Manager and
Activities
Managers were not present so no reports were available. The Newsletter
Editor mentioned the Special Events Station at Nowhere, KS would be
on October 21 and invited all to participate.
Bob Drake, N0TFU, said that our meeting place will be remodeled
beginning
in July of 2001 and that time we will need to find another meeting
place for around 6 months.
The Nominating Committee was unable to meet during the month due to
several unforeseen circumstances so no report was available.
As there was no further business, the meeting was adjourned. --KC0GL
and N2PRC
..............................................................................
THE RIGHT TOOLS
Ron Hashiro, AH6RH
Scotty, the engineer on the original Star Trek series, was always
fond of saying “How many times do I have to tell you...use the right
tool for the right job” As an amateur radio operator involved in
emergency communications, do you know what are some of the right tools
of the trade? Let’s take a look.
Mobile Radios--While we like the convenience of a 3 or 5 watt walkie,
nothing beats the transmitting distance and the receiver qualities
of a 50 watt VHF mobile or a solid HF transceiver. A rubber ducky
and a handie talkie really won’t cut it for most emergencies that
rely on direct simplex communications on level terrain over distances
greater than about two to three miles. And a mobile radio has better
intermod rejection than a handie. Living and working in Honolulu,
we know what a miserable, frustrating time we get from intermod signals.
Antennas--If you’re insisting on using a rubber duck antenna, you’re
in big trouble. A rubber duck is really a rubber coated dummy load.
To get better performance, you’ll need something you can attach to
a coax cable and get the antenna closer to a window (if you’re inside
a sealed air conditioned building) or outdoors to radiate your signal
better while you’re safe and comfortable inside.
For walkies, a collapsible quarter wave or half?wave “hot-rod” antenna
is a start. You can also use a ribbon j-pole antenna. But for mobile
radios, you need something that will dissipate 50 watts continuous
and many of the commercial walkie antennas are designed for about
5 watts. A regular quarter wave ground plane, mobile magnetic mount
antennas -- these are good, portable antennas that are small enough
to be used to radiate through a window in a office building or school
cafeteria being used as an evacuation shelter.
If you are using a fixed based station, do not be so quick in getting
the highest gain vertical antenna you find. Gain is obtained by
sacrificing
the antenna’s radiation pattern. Rather than choosing a 7 dB vertical
that slams your signal 100 feet into the building next door, selecting
a 3 dB vertical gives an omni?directional antenna with a boost in
gain but still allows sufficient radiation from the side lobes to
rise over mountains, condo buildings or bend around other obstructions.
A handy item is a portable three or four element beam. A 6 dB gain
is worth a four times increase in transmitter power. More importantly,
the four times increase in received signal is very handy for pulling
out marginal signals. As an example, check out the 146-4 “Back Pack”
beam from Arrow Antennas (Members.aol.com/Arrow146/146-4bp.html).
Coaxial Cable--Let’s face it. Without feed line, it’s mighty hard to
get a signal from your radio to the antenna. You would like to position
the antenna near a window if you’re high above the surroundings, or
at least higher than the surrounding obstructions to get the signal
out.
If you had a chance, hauling 50 or 100 feet of RG-8U would be an ideal
medium loss HF, VHF and UHF feed line cable, but it’s mighty bulky
and heavy. Using RG?58U is smaller and lighter, but the losses at
VHF and UHF starts to cut into your operations.
A compromise is RG?8X, which has the bulk of 58U but has loss
characteristics
close to that of 8U. The only “drawback” is that the reducers used
with PL?259 coax connectors are the UG?176 variety (for 75 ohm RG-59U)
rather than the standard 50 ohm UG?175 for RG-58U but that’s a small
inconvenience.
Headphones and Other Accessories--Little things make a big difference.
Using headphones and a boom mike will cut out the background noise
in a busy, cluttered environment and will also keep your audio from
blasting around an already noisy room.
To speed operations, you may want to also include a foot switch to
key your radio with your foot to leave your hands free for writing
messages and adjust the radio.
Something as simple as a clipboard ensures you’ll have a smooth hard
surface to write down messages clearly and legibly no matter where
you are.
So, there you have it. A quick run through some simple things that
make a big difference in responding to emergencies. Now, it’s your
turn to be like Scotty and say: “Use the right tool for the right
job!”
--With permission from the EARC Wireless Dispatch, O'ahu, Hawaii ARC
..............................................................................
WB0AUQ’s WEB PICKS OF THE MONTH
Bob Rainbolt, WB0AUQ
Here are a few new sites. The Radio Netherlands site is great, the
other night during a thunderstorm I was able to listen to short wave
with no static via streaming audio over the internet. (With streaming
audio so popular now, the old-fashioned method of listening to short
wave with a real radio is now known as "live streaming".)
This month’s picks:
A few applications for your computer and
soundblaster card:
http://www.muenster.de/~welp/sb.htm
If you are an SWLer, a visit to this site is a must:
http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/index.html
Radio Netherlands has a downloadable archive of
interesting communications broadcasts:
http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/html/soundstore.html
Another great QRP site:
http://www.g3ycc.karoo.net/
With winter just around the corner the very low
bands will be more interesting:
http://www.lwca.org/
Need a great recording of a military march?
Go here and click on “audio”:
http://www.af.mil/
Remember the ZN414 radio?on?a?chip a couple
decades ago? It is still available, here’s more info:
http://www.g3ycc.karoo.net/zn414.htm
A newly-discovered Old Time Radio site:
http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/agirard/VINTAGE.HTM
--de WB0AUQ
..............................................................................
TOP TEN REASONS WHY THE RADIO WON’T TRANSMIT
10. The first time I noticed it wasn't working was when I
tried to radio in that my antenna got hit by lightning.
9. It seems to happen every time I drive into a tunnel.
8. The little transmit light on my handheld made a dandy
flashlight when I spent a few hours looking for my
keys.
7. Well I did wire it to the battery backwards but it was
only for a minute.
6. What on--off switch?
5. The mic cord is a little frayed but that shouldn't matter
'cause I talk real loud.
4. Rather than blow a lot of money on an amplifier, I
figured I could get more power by wiring it to 24
volts instead of just 12.
3. I just made 3 or 4 dandy splices in my antenna coax.
2. The wind kept blowing my antenna over so I put an
old copper pipe over it for support.
1. Why run all over town looking for a fuse when you
got a perfectly good wad of tinfoil in your lunchbag?
--From The Newmar News Vol LM393 Roger KA8FCL via Amateur Radio Horizons
and ARNS Bulletin
..............................................................................
THE END
DCARC OCT 2000 NEWSLETTER
DOUGLAS COUNTY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB NEWSLETTER
Vol. 30, No. 11, November 2000
Articles and information for the Newsletter may
be submitted up to the 25th of the month
before the next meeting.
Ken Blair, KC0GL, Editor
1711 West 19th Terrace
Lawrence, KS 66046
Phone: 843-8826
e-mail: kc0gl@arrl.net
This Newsletter is published monthly by the Douglas County Amateur
Radio Club (DCARC). Reprint permission is granted to other Amateur
Radio-oriented publications (expept for copyrighted material as noted)
provided that credit is given to the author and source. Opinions
expressed herein are not necessarily those of the club or its officers.
..............................................................................
P R O G R A M
NOVEMBER 8, 2000
What are you working on?
At this program, would each member please simply bring a piece of
equipment, a kit, or an antenna, which you're building or repairing
now. We'll talk about our projects. Last year this was well-received
so we'll probably make this another recurring program. Thanks for
joining in on this!
Jim Canaday, N6YR, Program Chair
..............................................................................
THE DCARC CHRISTMAS DINNER
The DCARC Christmas Banquet will take place Wednesday, December 13th,
at Fifi’s Banquet Connection, in North Lawrence. Reservations are
made by prepaying $18 per person to Bill Pendleton (as we did last
year). $18 per person includes meal, tax, and gratuities all; this
is less than a 30-cent increase from last year.
The buffet style service and cash bar will be nearly identical to
last year’s arrangements: two entrees (brisquet of beef and dijon
chicken); rice Peloff, scalloped potatos; vegitable medly; and cheesecake dessert.
As in years past, we can start arriving at 6 p.m.
--Jim Canaday, N6YR program Manager
..............................................................................
DCARC PARTICIPATES IN CROP WALK
Bob Drake, N0TFU
On Sunday afternoon, Oct. 1, several members of the club helped with
communications for the Lawrence CROP walk.
The CROP walk is a 10 km walk to raise funds to fight hunger. 25%
of the money stays in Lawrence to help local food kitchens and the
rest is distributed worldwide to fight hunger through Church World
Service facilities.
Bud Waugh (N0APJ) was net control and was stationed at the beginning
and ending point of the walk. Ken Blair (KC0GL), Will Shockley (KB0WDW), and Reid Crowe (KC0IDI); were all assigned intersections along the
path. Bob Drake (N0TFU) was one of the walkers.
About 150 persons participated in the walk. The communications provided
by the club members assisted in reuniting a mother with her child
after the child had run ahead and became separated from his group.
They also were helpful in making sure the water stop was replenished
with water at the needed times.
The organizers of the walk appreciated the assistance provided by
the DCARC and hopes that they will be willing to help again next year.
I wish to thank Bud, Ken, Will, and Reed for their expert assistance
and help also.
..............................................................................
SATELLITE ORBITS
Bob Drake, N0TFU
Below is the URL for the website that I mentioned at the October club
meeting.
This site gives the predicted viewing times of all the satellites
over a specified area. It also gives the times when the amateur radio
satellites are available in the designated area, along with their
input and output frequencies.
The homepage of the site is: heavens-above.com
From this page you need to choose your location or enter your
coordinates.
When choosing the location, just put in the name of the town only.
Do not put in the state. It will come back with at list of names and
you choose the correct one from that list.
The coordinates for Lawrence, KS are 38.9720 N, 95.2350 W.
The URL to take you directly to the predictions for Lawrence is:
http://www.heavens-above.com/main.asp-Loc=Lawrence&Lat=38.972&Lng=-95.235&TZ=CST
..............................................................................
MINUTES OF OCTOBER 11 MEETING
The October 11 meeting began with an excellent presentation by Mike
Ackulo, a Meterologist from the NWS in Topeka. His main topic concerned
the weather alert system, it's history and how it has evolved over
the years and the equipment improvements at the Topeka Weather Bureau
that have taken place.
There were no reports from the President, Vice-President, and Secretary.
The Treasurer reported $474.65 in the General Fund, $237.90 in the
Repeater Fund for a total balance of $712.55. He has received bills
for the September Newsletter that included the regular mailing ($62.19)
plus a special mailing ($179.76) and the October issue ($45.93) for
the total amount of $287.98.
Bob Drake reported for the Program Manager. The December meeting will
be the Christmas Banquet and the January program will be on PSK31,
presented by Vince Francisco.
Bob Drake also reported for the Training Manager. The next License
Class will begin in February and met on Monday nights
Reports of the officers were accepted.
A motion was made and approved to pay the Newsletter bills for September
and October.
Both repeaters seem to be working well. It was mentioned that an antenna
on the tower at the Law Enforcement Center was dangling (not one
of ours).
The Emergency Coordinator had no report. The Program Manager and
Activities Managers were not present so no reports were available. The Newsletter
Editor mentioned the Special Events Station at Nowhere, KS would be
on October 21 and invited all to participate.
Bob Drake, N0TFU, said that our meeting place will be remodeled
beginning in July of 2001 and that time we will need to find another meeting
place for around 6 months.
The Nominating Committee was unable to meet during the month due to
several unforeseen circumstances so no report was available.
As there was no further business, the meeting was adjourned. --KC0GL
and N2PRC
..............................................................................
THE RIGHT TOOLS
Ron Hashiro, AH6RH
Scotty, the engineer on the original Star Trek series, was always
fond of saying "How many times do I have to tell you...use the right
tool for the right job" As an amateur radio operator involved in
emergency communications, do you know what are some of the right tools
of the trade? Let’s take a look.
Mobile Radios--While we like the convenience of a 3 or 5 watt walkie,
nothing beats the transmitting distance and the receiver qualities
of a 50 watt VHF mobile or a solid HF transceiver. A rubber ducky
and a handie talkie really won’t cut it for most emergencies that
rely on direct simplex communications on level terrain over distances
greater than about two to three miles. And a mobile radio has better
intermod rejection than a handie. Living and working in Honolulu,
we know what a miserable, frustrating time we get from intermod signals.
Antennas--If you’re insisting on using a rubber duck antenna, you’re
in big trouble. A rubber duck is really a rubber coated dummy load.
To get better performance, you’ll need something you can attach to
a coax cable and get the antenna closer to a window (if you’re inside
a sealed air conditioned building) or outdoors to radiate your signal
better while you’re safe and comfortable inside.
For walkies, a collapsible quarter wave or half-wave "hot-rod" antenna
is a start. You can also use a ribbon j-pole antenna. But for mobile
radios, you need something that will dissipate 50 watts continuous
and many of the commercial walkie antennas are designed for about
5 watts. A regular quarter wave ground plane, mobile magnetic mount
antennas -- these are good, portable antennas that are small enough
to be used to radiate through a window in a office building or school
cafeteria being used as an evacuation shelter.
If you are using a fixed based station, do not be so quick in getting
the highest gain vertical antenna you find. Gain is obtained by
sacrificing the antenna’s radiation pattern. Rather than choosing a 7 dB vertical
that slams your signal 100 feet into the building next door, selecting
a 3 dB vertical gives an omni?directional antenna with a boost in
gain but still allows sufficient radiation from the side lobes to
rise over mountains, condo buildings or bend around other obstructions.
A handy item is a portable three or four element beam. A 6 dB gain
is worth a four times increase in transmitter power. More importantly,
the four times increase in received signal is very handy for pulling
out marginal signals. As an example, check out the 146-4 "Back Pack"
beam from Arrow Antennas (Members.aol.com/Arrow146/146-4bp.html).
Coaxial Cable--Let’s face it. Without feed line, it’s mighty hard to
get a signal from your radio to the antenna. You would like to position
the antenna near a window if you’re high above the surroundings, or
at least higher than the surrounding obstructions to get the signal
out.
If you had a chance, hauling 50 or 100 feet of RG-8U would be an ideal
medium loss HF, VHF and UHF feed line cable, but it’s mighty bulky
and heavy. Using RG?58U is smaller and lighter, but the losses at
VHF and UHF starts to cut into your operations.
A compromise is RG?8X, which has the bulk of 58U but has loss
characteristics close to that of 8U. The only "drawback" is that the reducers used
with PL?259 coax connectors are the UG?176 variety (for 75 ohm RG-59U)
rather than the standard 50 ohm UG?175 for RG-58U but that’s a small
inconvenience.
Headphones and Other Accessories--Little things make a big difference.
Using headphones and a boom mike will cut out the background noise
in a busy, cluttered environment and will also keep your audio from
blasting around an already noisy room.
To speed operations, you may want to also include a foot switch to
key your radio with your foot to leave your hands free for writing
messages and adjust the radio.
Something as simple as a clipboard ensures you’ll have a smooth hard
surface to write down messages clearly and legibly no matter where
you are.
So, there you have it. A quick run through some simple things that
make a big difference in responding to emergencies. Now, it’s your
turn to be like Scotty and say: "Use the right tool for the right
job!"
--With permission from the EARC Wireless Dispatch, O'ahu, Hawaii ARC
..............................................................................
WB0AUQ’s WEB PICKS OF THE MONTH
Bob Rainbolt, WB0AUQ
Here are a few new sites. The Radio Netherlands site is great, the
other night during a thunderstorm I was able to listen to short wave
with no static via streaming audio over the internet. (With streaming
audio so popular now, the old-fashioned method of listening to short
wave with a real radio is now known as "live streaming".)
This month’s picks:
A few applications for your computer and soundblaster card:
http://www.muenster.de/~welp/sb.htm
If you are an SWLer, a visit to this site is a must:
http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/index.html
Radio Netherlands has a downloadable archive of interesting communications broadcasts:
http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/html/soundstore.html
Another great QRP site:
http://www.g3ycc.karoo.net/
With winter just around the corner the very low bands will be more interesting:
http://www.lwca.org/
Need a great recording of a military march?
Go here and click on 'audio':
http://www.af.mil/
Remember the ZN414 radio-on-a-chip a couple decades ago? It is still available, here’s more info:
http://www.g3ycc.karoo.net/zn414.htm
A newly-discovered Old Time Radio site:
http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/agirard/VINTAGE.HTM
--de WB0AUQ
..............................................................................
TOP TEN REASONS WHY THE RADIO WON’T TRANSMIT
10. The first time I noticed it wasn't working was when I
tried to radio in that my antenna got hit by lightning.
9. It seems to happen every time I drive into a tunnel.
8. The little transmit light on my handheld made a dandy
flashlight when I spent a few hours looking for my
keys.
7. Well I did wire it to the battery backwards but it was
only for a minute.
6. What on--off switch?
5. The mic cord is a little frayed but that shouldn't matter
'cause I talk real loud.
4. Rather than blow a lot of money on an amplifier, I
figured I could get more power by wiring it to 24
volts instead of just 12.
3. I just made 3 or 4 dandy splices in my antenna coax.
2. The wind kept blowing my antenna over so I put an
old copper pipe over it for support.
1. Why run all over town looking for a fuse when you
got a perfectly good wad of tinfoil in your lunchbag?
--From The Newmar News Vol LM393 Roger KA8FCL via Amateur Radio Horizons and ARNS Bulletin
..............................................................................
THE END