HUNTSVILLE AMATEUR RADIO CLUB

Transcription

1 Huntsville, Alabama Volume 41, Number 10 November, 2001 Huntsville Amateur Radio Club Information Club Officers: President, Chris Reed, KF4MMF Vice President, Tom Duncan, KG4CUY Secretary, Scott Worsham, W4SSW Treasurer, Heath Thorson, KC4HRX, HUNTSVILLE AMATEUR RADIO CLUB The club's address is Box 423, Huntsville, Ala Meetings are held each Friday night at 7:30 P.M. at the American Red Cross Building, 1101 Washington Street. Dues are $12.00 per year, family memberships are $15.00 per year. The club maintains a Web Site at The North Alabama Repeater Association operates repeaters on / , / , / and / NARA dues are $16.00 per year and may be sent to NARA at P.O. Box Huntsville, AL The club's packet radio interest group, HUNTSPAC, maintains an extensive packet network for the Huntsville area. Dues for use of this network are $15.00 per year, and can be paid through the HARC Secretary-Treasurer listed above. The club's ATV special interest group, TVATV operates an ATV repeater. It's input frequency is MHz and its output is MHz. A voice coordination repeater is operated with output frequency of MHz, input 600 khz down. The Vox is published the third Friday of each month except for August. Editor of the Vox is Frank Emens, W4HFU, 3714 Lakewood Circle, Huntsville, Ala or femens@hiwaay.net. Material of interest to the HARC membership should be submitted to the editor by the second Friday of the month of publication. Vox, Vol 41, Nr 10, November 01 A Newsletter published monthly except for August by the Huntsville Amateur Radio Club, P.O. Box 423, Huntsville, AL Chris Reed and Ernie Blair present HARC and Hamfest Checks to Red Cross Representatives Left to Right: Chris Reed, Kaye McFarlen, Lois Arney and Ernie Blair From The Prez This past month has been a great one for HARC. During the October 5th meeting, our members voted to donate five hundred dollars on behalf of HARC to the Madison-Marshall County Chapter Local Disaster Relief Fund. These funds go towards our local chapter s disaster relief efforts. In the wake of the events of September 11th, local funding donations have taken a back seat to the national fund. Meanwhile, local disasters still occur, and the Red Cross continues to need our support. Our local chapter is one of a handful of chapters across the United States that respond to fires as a local disaster. Often, insurance claims can take weeks to settle following a fire, flood, or other disaster. These funds help families who are in need of food, clothing and shelter. This is just one example of how the funds we donated will be utilized to help the community. Huntsville Hamfest matched HARC s donation of five hundred dollars. That s a thousand dollars that the amateur community has given to the Red Cross local fund. Yours truly, KF4MMF along with Ernie Blair, WA4BPS representing Huntsville Hamfest, presented both checks to Kaye McFarlen, Director of Emergency Services of the Madi- CAVEC Amateur Radio License Exams Exam sessions are held the first Saturday of each month unless a holiday causes the session to be delayed for one week. Upcoming sessions are: Saturday, Nov. 3 Saturday, Dec. 1 For information contact: Larry Frost, KR4GU, KR4GU@bellsouth.net Or Don Tunstill, W4NO, dtunstil@hiwaay.net Page 1

2 November, 2001 son-marshall County Chapter of the American Red Cross on October 12th. Our editor, Frank Emens, W4HFU was on hand to capture the presentation on film. The Red Cross expressed thanks for all of the assistance that HARC has given over the years with severe weather information through K4BFT and security for their annual Hoop Mania fund raiser. In times of severe weather and at their request, we need to continue to support the Red Cross by manning K4BFT. HARC has been very fortunate to have a home for K4BFT and we need to work to keep it in organized and working condition. As we have learned, events can occur at a moments notice that may require our support. ARES can play an active role in this mission. I encourage you to register with our local ARES EC Tom Hatter, K4AKC at k4akc@arrl.net. Jamboree on the Air was held the third week of October. Tim Cunningham, N8DEU helped a couple of local scout troops participate Saturday, October 20 at a station located at Gigaparts on University Drive. Thanks to both Tim and Gigaparts for helping the event get off the ground and help our local scouts get involved with amateur radio. A lot of fun was had by all. Also this past month, Tim accepted the award for first place award for K4BFT from AMSAT for the efforts of our field day satellite station. Thanks to Tim and all those amateurs who helped to man the satellite station. We currently are forging ahead with plans for a much needed repair of our 40 and 80 meter dipole antenna at the Red Cross. A work party is scheduled at Saturday, November 3rd at 9 a.m. Thanks to Scotty Neustadter, W4WW for helping with the measurements of the dipole. Steve Bell, KD4TFN helped to round up materials for the antenna during a fall cleaning of the club shack. Coincidentally, license examinations will also take place at 9 a.m. This would be a great opportunity for those who are just breaking into the hobby to see the installation of a dipole which is frequently an amateurs first HF antenna. Hope to see you there! November is a month usually remembered for eating too much turkey. It is also a month in which we honor our veterans. As our nation is currently engaged in a war against terrorism, we must not forget those who served to protect our freedom. One of these freedoms we often take for granted is licensed radio communication that we know and enjoy as the amateur radio service of today. The actor Tom Hanks Vox said it best, It is time we remembered, it is time to say Thank You. 73, KF4MMF Web Tools It seemed a bit strange searching for all things tube on the web. Looking for recent translations of the Dead Sea scrolls using a modern search engine would hardly be out of the ordinary, but applying tools having kinship with the topic in question (I ve heard it said that tubes and chips are distantly related) somehow made the quest itself seem rather like an archaeological dig. Some categories of vacuum tube web sites include: Retro Those hams who wish to reconstruct their original stations can find many classic construction articles published in QST between 1955 and 1971 on the ARRL technical information services web site, In the same vein, the University of Idaho College of Mines website hosts W7EKB s Glowbugs page at with reprints and reconstructions of articles from various sources dating 1938 to HARC ACTIVITY CALENDAR FOR November, 2001 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday EMERGENCY NET on 1930 Skywarn Net on PSPICE for the casual user, Tom Duncan, KG4CUY 3 CAVEC Exams, 0900 at Red Cross building 2001 GA State Convention, Lawrenceville, GA GA State Convention, Lawrenceville, GA EMERGENCY NET on 1930 Skywarn Net on A How-to Guide For White Jet Drivers, John Lewis, WA4PRH 10 Montgomery ARC, Montgomery, AL EMERGENCY NET on 1930 Skywarn Net on Vox Night, come help assemble the Vox & chat Thanksgiving (plus the usual Thursday activities) 23 HARC Meeting EMERGENCY NET on 1930 Skywarn Net on HARC Meeting 1 CAVEC Exams, 0900 at Red Cross building Page 2

3 Vox November, 2001 Audio The tube audio culture is not just a bunch of former garage-band rock-star wannabes pining for their old amps. Lots of serious design work goes on here, including time- and frequency-domain circuit simulation. Two related sites, and deal with simulation tools with a tubey twist. Have you misplaced your dog-eared 1966 RCA Receiving Tube manual? Use Bill Beech s collection of some 3,500 tube data sheets at If you don t trust all this web stuff, Glass Audio is available in the periodicals section of Books-a-Million. Manufacturers Like their solid-state counterparts, vacuum tube manufacturers fill their web sites with data sheets and models. Mentioning our home town connection first, contains links to some SPICE models, though some of the links are outdated. Technical bulletins and white papers, mostly dealing with power tubes, are at TB.html. The Eimac logo can still be found at along with an interesting white paper, Care and Feeding of Power Grid Tubes, at Their new parent company is Communications & Power Industries - their is no mention of the previous connection with Varian, the Varian brothers, Stanford, the klystron... We ll leave that for another VOX. 73, Tom Duncan, KG4CUY K4BFT does it Again It is now official and we have earned another First Place Plaque in the AMSAT Satellite Field Day Competition for Field Day I accepted the award on behalf of the Club at the annual AMSAT Symposium held in Atlanta during October 5-8. This is the third year in a row we have earned this honor. I really appreciate all the help we get on Field Day each year. The tear down team this year was spectacular. When everybody at the station was very tired at the end of the Field Day event, there were several people who showed up right out of thin air. To give you an idea how well we did this year, the second place station came in at 62% of our score and that was a home station operating on battery power. This is pretty amazing when you consider that the West coast and the Northeastern states had several more hours of satellite operating time available to them in comparison to our area. We overcame some huge odds. Great Job! Thanks again to all those who helped at the Satellite Station this year on Field Day. 73, Tim, N8DEU AMSAT Area Coordinator Page 3

4 November, 2001 News From EMA/RACES: I would like to give everyone an update on the RACES unit. At our last meeting, the unit voted to approve several new members. We would like to welcome each to the unit. New RACES members will be taking a few introductory online courses that are offered free by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as storm spotter classes offered by the Weather Service. Other training opportunities are being planned for the RACES unit, including classes given by the EMA staff and participating in exercises. This will enable the RACES members know what the role of Emergency Management is during a situation. By coincidence, the RACES meeting was scheduled for Thursday, October 11 at 6 PM. As luck would have it, Tornado Watch No. 776 was issued for Madison County until 10 PM. It was later cancelled with no damage being reported. This forced the meeting to run longer than anticipated, but allowed the new RACES applicants the opportunity to see the Emergency Operations Center in action. Immediately, announcements were made on city and county government radios, notifications were made to officials, information was plotted on the map boards, outdoor warning siren availability was confirmed - all 101 sirens were online and ready to be activated at a moments notice. RACES and ARES worked together side by side in the EOC. Chris Reed, KF4MMF, HARC President, assumed his RACES role and helped EMA staff by verifying that the EMWIN computer equipment was fully operational. Next, Ernie Blair, WA4BPS, contacted the Skywarn folks in Moulton and it was agreed that Chris would serve as Skywarn net control from the EOC. Rolf Goedhart, KG4IGL, and Tom Hatter, K4AKC, ARES EC, were busy getting the Madison County Emergency Net up on 94 and checking into the Alabama Emergency Net on (I was told that 18 persons checked into the net on 94 which was an increased number from my understanding - great going guys!)steve Bell, KD4TFN, was present and helping out the guys in the radio room. Ken Magnant, W4WEY, RACES Radio Officer, explained what was taking place to the new RACES applicants that were observing the activity in the EOC for the first time. Fortunately, the severe weather threat passed and Madison County was dropped from the watch early. A work party has been scheduled for needed HF antenna work. Ken is making the antenna at home and it will be up soon. Things are coming together great! Thanks to each and every one of you that make this possible! Scott Worsham, EM Officer / RACES Coordinator Huntsville - Madison Co. EMA AMSAT Symposium The AMSAT Symposium was held in Atlanta, GA this year during October 5-8, It was another highly successful event attracting Amateur Radio Satellite enthusiasts from around the world. The talks covered many topics from how to set up an AO-40 receiving station and building antennas for working AO-40 (Phase 3D). G6LVB demonstrated his portable satellite station, using a homemade portable dish made from an umbrella and some special conductive cloth. This was a very impressive portable setup as you can see in the picture. Then, there was Bob Brunninga, WB4APR, the father APRS giving a demonstration of PCsat using an HT. PCsat is our latest APRS satellite for mobile and handheld travelers in remote locations around the world. Kris, KB3DXR, went along for the ride to check it out. Although, we did run into hostile territory on the drive to Atlanta just south of Summerville, GA and south of Gore, GA. There was a big sign displaying HAM SHOOT on the side of the road. We figured they shot their old radios, QRM/ers, or all HAMS every Saturday. I am not sure, but we did not stick around long enough to find out either. This may be the reason I have never heard any HAMS on the air when passing through that area. In the future, it is probably a good idea to turn off the APRS equipment and sneak through the hills. We had one more incident on the way. As we were looking for the location, a car pulled up behind us wildly Page 4 Vox G6LVB demonstrates his portable satellite station and umbrella antenna honking their horn at a stoplight. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I recognized it was Bob Bruninnga, WB4APR, opening his door and getting out of the car headed in our direction. The light changed and we took off with him closely following behind us. Evidently, he did not have his GPS connected to his TH-D7A handheld, but he recognized my callsign on the license plate and knew we were close by the signal strength. When we arrived at the hotel, it seems we both Discount Card The bearer of this ad is a member of the Amateur Radio community of Huntsville and is entitled to a $10.00 discount on all services performed by Meineke Discount Mufflers, South Memorial Parkway, Huntsville, AL, (256) At MEINEKE, you ll get a lot...but you re not going to pay a lot!

5 Vox November, 2001 were looking for the same spot. We got a good chuckle out of the episode. They had 140 prizes to give away at the annual AMSAT Banquet. Kris won a low noise preamplifier for 2.4 GHz. Talk about luck! This is exactly what he needed for his AO-40 Drake downconverter. All he needs now is an antenna and he will be ready to hear the S-band downlink. Me, well I won an MFJ coffee mug. The AMSAT Symposium will be held in Ft Worth, Texas next year. 73, Tim, N8DEU AMSAT Area Coordinator The Giggle Box HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EVERYBODY WHOSE BIRTHDAY IS IN NOVEMBER!! A Joke or Two or Three. Two elderly women were out driving in a large car, both could barely see over the dashboard. As they were cruising along, they came to an intersection. The stoplight was red but they just went on through. The woman in the passenger seat thought to herself, I must be losing it, I could have sworn we just went through a red light. After a few more minutes, they came to another intersection. The light was red, and again they went right through. This time, the passenger was almost sure that the light had been red, but was also concerned that she might be seeing things. She was getting nervous and decided to pay very close attention. At the next intersection, sure enough, the light was definitely red and they went right through it. She turned to the other woman and said, Mildred! Did you know we just ran through three red lights in a row? You could have killed us. Mildred turned to her and said, Oh, Shoot! Am I driving? How old are you? asked one woman of another. I m thirty-nine, was the response. But I don t look it, do I? No, but you used to Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at them and says, I m sorry, gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger. 2. Two boll weevils grew up in Mississippi. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils. 3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank proving once again that you can t have your kayak and heat it, too. 4. A three legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to the bar and announces: I m looking for the man who shot my paw. 5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication. 6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why? they asked, as they moved off. Because, he said, I can t stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer. 7. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Amal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Amal. Her husband responds, They re twins! If you ve seen Juan, you ve seen Amal. 8. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to persuade them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he d be back if they didn t close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that: Hugh, and only Hugh can prevent florist friars. 9. We all know who Gandhi was, right? He was a spiritual man who fasted regularly. Some may not realize that fasting, when practiced regularly and for extended periods, leads not only Page 5 to weight loss, but can also cause bad breath. No matter, his interests were higher. This great leader hardly ever wore shoes. One might say he was... a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis. WHY PARENTS HAVE GRAY HAIR! The boss of a big company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with one of the main computers. He dialed the employee s home phone number and was greeted with a child s whispering, Hello? Feeling put out at the inconvenience of having to talk to a youngster the boss asked," Is your daddy home?" Yes, whispered the small voice. May I talk with him? the man asked. To the surprise of the boss, the small voice whispered, No. Wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, Is your mommy there? Yes, came the answer. May I talk with her? Again the small voice whispered, No. Knowing that it was not likely that a young child would be left at home alone, the boss decided he would just leave a message with the person who should be there watching over the child. Is there any one there besides you? the boss asked the child. Yes whispered the child, a policeman. Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee s home, the boss asked May I speak with the policeman? No, he s busy, whispered the child. Busy doing what?, asked the boss. Talking to daddy and mommy and the fireman, came the whispered answer. Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the ear piece on the phone the boss asked, What is that noise? A hello-copper, answered the whispering voice. What is going on there?, asked the boss, now alarmed. In an awed whispering voice the child answered, The search team just landed the hello-copper. Alarmed, concerned and more than just a little frustrated the boss asked, What are they searching for?

6 November, 2001 Still whispering, the young voice replied along with a muffled giggle: Me! The Thought for the Month of November Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow. Did You Know... In the 1940s the FCC assigned television s Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments.that is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. 73, Peggy Bell, K4EGB SEW LONG! PCSat has launched Amateur Radio has another new satellite in orbit. PCSat launched on September 30, 2001 from the new Kodiak Launch facility in Alaska. It was a flawless launch carrying several satellites and a first launch of any orbital satellite from this new location. PCSat, Shappire, and Starshine3 are three satellites launched from the Kodia Star that will transmit in the Amateur Radio bands. PCSat is a Prototype Communications Satellite, designed and manufactured by Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy. PCSat was activated for all Amateurs to work APRS on 03-OCT-01. This is the first APRS only satellite placed in orbit for Amateur Radio. The history behind the satellite is rather unique. When the students at the Naval Academy asked for a mere $50,000 they received a laugh and then granted $250,000 to build it. It only took $30,000 to build the satellite using many off the shelf parts and the famous Stanley Tape for antennas. These antennas are really easy to measure since the measurement units are printed on the tape. The PCSat downlink can be heard on (1200 baud) and (9600 baud). The uplink frequencies are (1200 baud) for HT users and MHz (9600 baud) for mobiles running 50 watts or less. More information can be found at csat.html Starshine 3 transmits telemetry data on MHz at 9600 baud every 1-2 minutes. It contains 1500 little mirrors polished by students from around the world. The satellite generates 1.25 watts of RF into a pair of quarter-wave monopoles fed 180 degrees out of phase. The downlink signal can be decoded with a 9600 baud FSK modem or the Kenwood TH-D7A handheld or the TMD-700 mobile. Shappire transmits telemetry data with 2 watts of power on MHz (1200 baud). Shaphire contains 3 payloads which are Tunneling Horizon Detectors, a digital camera with its own JPEG compression, and a voice synthesizer that can speak messages on the downlink to be heard around the world. The voice synthesizer will be of special interest for education purposes. More on this satellite when the voice synthesizer is activated. If you tune to MHz and listen, you will be able to hear several satellites as they fly over our area. The satellites on are UO-11, PCSat, and Starshine3. The 1200 baud data is easy to recognize and you can tune to MHz to hear a sample of 1200 baud data at any time of the day. The 9600 baud data from Starshine3 will sound like noise breaking your squelch with very short durations. There is nothing like listening to a satellite in orbit with a handheld or mobile radio. It is easy, so give it a try and impress your friends or attract new people to the world of Amateur Radio Satellites. Vox 73, Tim, N8DEU AMSAT AREA Coordinator Receiver Clinic Results Since the last VOX, we ve had two interesting and informative programs. Tim Cunningham, N8DEU, gave his second program for September on APRS - a little on how the system in general works, and some specifics on APRS and weather tracking. It s amazing all the stuff that goes on at those little, teeny wavelengths shorter than 30 feet! Bob De Pierre, K8KI, gave a receiver characterization clinic on October 12th, and here are the standings: Thanks to Bob, and to all for bringing in their rigs. Appropriate figures can be obtained for your FM rigs too - watch for upcoming programs. 73, Tom Duncan, KG4CUY Area Hamfests November 3-4, 2001 Georgia State Convention, Lawrenceville, Georgia. Contact Randy Bassett, KR4NQ at kr4nq@bigfoot.com or The Alford Memorial Radio Club site, has detailed driving directions and hamfest info. November 10, Montgomery ARC, Montgomery, Alabama. Contact Philip Salley, K4OZN at or k4ozn@arrl.net. See for more details. 73, John Farr, KC4ZXX The Editor s Wastebasket On being asked by Prez. Chris to come down and get some grip n grin shots of the check presentation, I loaded up a rool of film and headed down to the Red Cross Building. We Results of receiver test clinic Who? Rig Sensitivity (dbm) Bandwidth (Hz) Noise Figure (db) IMD (dbm) Dynamic Range Band (Meters) (db) Chris Reed FT902DM B M Ron Lamb FRG TS130V -127 (SSB) (CW) Steve Bell FT FT757GX Ron Harvey TS Tom Hatter HW Page 6

7 Vox November, 2001 discovered on getting there that the presentation would be delayed a few minutes. On discovering that the club shack had just been straightened up, I figured we d better get that condition recorded before entropy set in again. The accompanying shots duly record the shack s straightened up status. One shot even shows Chris studiously listening to something coming in over the 2-Meter transceiver. We got two pictures of the presentation. One showed everybody with eyes open and nice smiles, but two folks have flags growing out the top of their heads looking suspiciously like dunce-caps. The other one was from a slightly different angle where the flags weren t growing out of anybody s head, but the expressions weren t as great and one even had a blinky-face. So I m using this opportunity to tell you those are flags behind the folks, not dunce-caps. For some years I ve had an interest in satellite weather images. Several years ago, when they were still being broadcast by a couple of HF stations, I experimented with those transmissions and got some good results. A few weeks ago I decided to check into what I d need to receive the images directly from the satellite, so I did a GOOGLE search on Weather Satellites. The search got literally hundreds of hits. On digging through the list of hits, I discovered NO web references toward receiving your own images. Almost every one was a site that made the images available in near real time and even with animation. There was visible imagery, IR imagery, color enhanced imagery, images from maybe a dozen different satellites. I had to face up to the fact that I d waited too long and been outdone by technology again. Why go to all that trouble when the pictures are available free on the web? The accompanying image is a visible light image showing Alabama in the midst of a beautiful October day. It comes from the NASA Global Hydrology and Climate Center right here in Huntsville. Our Party Coordinator, Peggy Bell, has announced that the Christmas Party will be held on Friday, December 14 at the Red Cross Building. That will be the same night as our early Vox assembly for the January issue, since the next Friday will be just a few days before Christmas. So make your plans now for the party and also be prepared to get your Vox inputs in a week before you normally would. Best Wishes to the HARC Family For Thanksgiving Day Do remember all the things we have to be thankful for come Thanksgiving day. Don t O.D. On turkey or football. 73, Frank Emens, W4HFU Page 7

8 Huntsville Amateur Radio Club P. O. Box 423 Huntsville, Alabama NON-PROFIT ORG U. S. POSTAGE PAID HUNTSVILLE, AL PERMIT # 637 Labels must be parallel to the bottom of the mailpiece within 5 degrees. Please affix labels carefully. Cover this block completely.