President Ron AD7FV called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM
Introduction of guests & new members :
Treasurer's Report: Carolyn AB7KC
Carolyn reported that we have a $500 insurance bill due plus some other smaller bills. People were requested to buy hats and shirs if they needed them. Gene W0KAD announced he had sold 5 shirts at the bargin price of $20 so far tonight.
Technical Report:
Ron AA7RP said the the 27 and 29 machines are finally linked and working well.
He is going to tweak the 27 audio a little.
Linking the UHF with the 27 and 29 is on the back burner for now.
Education Report:
Lloyd N7GV reported that 12 students are about ready to start flying models and are presently working on a simulator.
The rest of the class is going along very well.
Spring Picnic:
The date and location have been set.
Mark your calendars for April 10th (Thursday) at noon.
The place is Madera Canyon at the same picnic area.
Bob AD7FQ and Bill AA0TF will secure the site.
Bill N9CHN asked for a show of hands on who will be there.
He will purchase the ribs and hamburgers and is our official cook.
Others signed up for set up and clean up.
Website:
Gene W0KAD subbing for Jon AD7GS reported Jon had given him a report which he had no clue what it all meant.
He did report that it is important that we all use the web page because we could lose it if there is not enough use.
Gene said he still had plenty of club shirts for sale.
He also reported that a ham from California had used the Titan Antenna and was so enthused that he sent a check for $50 toward the purchase of a picnic table at the site. Gene has the approval of the museum to get one. Jack's K6IZZ hat was passed to add to the funds. Rudy N3EBG counted the money collected and said there was $115. Rudy then made a motion that the $115 plus the $50 donation be used to purchase the picnic table. The club is to chip in if more money needed. The motion was seconded and after discussion passed.
A Transmitter Hunt (Fox Hunt???):
The club will have a Transmitter Hunt April 20, 2008.
Since Lloyd N7GV is the only one to be involved in one and that was 40 years ago it should be fun finding our way.
A workshop to build antennas will be held March 24th and Gene's W0KAD house—work shop.
Time for the workshop is 1:00 PM.
Dale Lang AA1SZ gave an excellent presentation with power point slides on PSK31 which stands for Phase Shift Keying 31.25 hz. He gave out a handout with lots of good information to all present.
Reminders:
Bob Lindstaedt, W6PGK recently passed away. An avid DXer, Bob's collection of awards can be seen at the club station. Bob was the net control for the Snow Bird net for many years. He had a powerful signal and could be heard from coast to coast when he was net control. When he announced the beginning of the net, he bored a hole in the band and when he stood by, the low power mobiles could check in and he heard. Bob lived North of Radio Shack and his towers with the Force 12 beams could clearly be seen from the expressway. Bob and his fantastic signal will be missed.
We regret to announce the passing of Sam Steele, W0ROD. Sam earned his amateur license at age 15 and was an avid builder. He was one of the early members of GVARC and a past president. Sam earned his Electrical Engineering degree from Kansas University and spent the next 40 years with General Electric. He moved to Green Valley in the early 80s. He has lived at La Posada for the past 4 years.
The final details for the transmitter hunt, scheduled for April 24, will be announced at the April 9th meeting.
There was an antenna building party in Gene's W0KAD garage on March 24th.
At least 6 tape measure YAGI antennas were built and parts for more were processed.
Light refreshments were provided and a good time was had by all.
Several designs for attenuators were evaluated.
The possibility of an attenuator building party will be discussed at the April 9th meeting.
Several students have finished their AM/FM radios and are busy on their next projects. Three have selected the digital clock with 87 LEDs. One is building a radio controlled car. The group working on the radio controlled airplanes is waiting for a calm Wednesday to try out their planes. A total of 6 planes are complete, balanced and checked out. The radios finally arrived last week, so all parts are on hand. We have several competent volunteers with flying experience available, so weather is the limiting factor.
As you may be aware, ARRL offers a teacher's institute for school instructors. This year, Tucson will be one of the locations where the institute will be held, June 25-28. We have 4 people signed up from Continental School to take the 32 hour course, including Lloyd N7GV, and Jack K6IZZ.
April is already upon us, and soon some of our GVARC members will be heading for home. Even so, we still have almost three months of planned events before club activities slow down for the summer. On 10 April we will have our Spring Picnic at 1200 at the Madera Canyon Whitehouse Picnic Area. The picnic committee, led by Sharon Hanold, KA9GPY, is working hard to make the event a memorable one. Then on Sunday, 20 April, we will conduct a "fox" hunt. Gene Schouweiler, W0KAD, is spearheading that event, with Lloyd Miller, N7GV, and Jack McGowan, AD7NK, assisting with antenna and attenuator designs (see the www.gvarc.us for more details). Fox hunts are great family events as well. More information will be provided at the GVARC meeting on 9 April.
On another note, I just want to say that I am constantly amazed at the level of dedication exhibited by a number of our club members. The linking of our 145.27 and 145.29 repeaters was a big step forward in that it has extended the area of coverage and greatly increased repeater usage. Ron Phillips, AA7RP, led that often frustrating effort, and has kept peaking and tweaking things until it’s now difficult to tell whether someone is on the .27 or .29; the audio is virtually the same.
Also, Eric Rosenquist, KG6WOU, who is not a club member, donated $50.00 to start a fund to place a picnic table near the discone antenna at the Titan II Missile Museum. Our past president, Gene Schouweiler, W0KAD, took on the task of building it. Pictures of the resulting table should be on the Web site by the time you read this.
No list of people contributing to the activities of the GVARC would be complete without mentioning Lloyd Miller, N7GV. From setting up our Field Day station, to teaching all levels of license courses, to working with the kids at the Continental School, to assisting with equipment design for the fox hunt, to helping everyone with whatever ham radio challenges may arise, Lloyd is right there in the midst of it all. There is simply no way to say "Thank you, Lloyd" often enough!
Have a great week!
We’ll see you all on Wednesday night at the club meeting!
Ron Gross AD7FV
The past few days have had very stable geomagnetic conditions. After unsettled to active geomagnetic indicators on March 26-28, conditions quieted down dramatically. Combined with the nearly two-week run of sunspots and the spring season, this makes good HF conditions. There were actually three sunspots, beginning on March 23 with the first one and a sunspot number of 14. March 24 and 25 each brought one new spot; the sunspot number rose to 35 and 52 on those days. Activity peaked between March 26-29 with daily sunspot numbers of 63, 57, 63 and 50. Yesterday, April 3, the sunspot number was back to 14 again, as one-by-one, the three spots drifted from view. Today's sunspot number may be back to zero, and it may stay that way until April 18-20. Sunspot numbers for March 27 through April 2 were 57, 63, 50, 41, 45, 25 and 24 with a mean of 43.6. The 10.7 cm flux was 84.8, 82.9, 82.6, 80.5, 79.2, 77.8 and 75.9 with a mean of 80.5. Estimated planetary A indices were 31, 21, 8, 8, 4, 4 and 1 with a mean of 11. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 19, 13, 6, 6, 2, 5 and 1, with a mean of 7.4.