After a great Christmas party, and holiday season, we’re back, stronger than ever, with the return of several good friends from snowbird land. Welcome back.
This month, we’ve got some information from Lloyd and a report from Gene and Ron, on what’s going on with the repeater. We also have a nice article from Ray, on rig blasters.
This month’s meeting will feature a longer and more detailed explanation of the adventures of our repeater, from Ron.
A group of us will return to the mountain top on Thursday this week to install the brand new 145.29 repeater and its Motorola 900Mhz Link Radio.The other end of the link at the 145.27 repeater can and should be installed soon. Both sites have new 5 element 900Mhz Yagi antennas installed and ready to go. Thus both VHF repeaters should soon be linked again.
Also when we are up there we plan to replace the Coax on the 449.375 repeater with LMR-400 a much better performing coax in the UHF area.
Note; Gene WØKAD purchased a 500 ft roll of the LMR-400 coax.There will be a couple hundred ft. left after the repeater project is finished and will be "For Sale" at a very good price.
The club UHF repeater is now getting a lot of use due to its link to the WIN system [Western Intertie Network see -www.winsystem.org] The WIN System is a series of 64 linked, or Intertied repeaters in 14 States and 4 Countries.A demonstration is planned for the January Club meeting.
As you know the old 440 link of the two VHF repeaters became unusable due to interference which we have discovered is due to the primary users of the 440 band the USAF using a system called SADL [Situation Awareness Data Link] between Fighter aircraft. Which of course we have lots of in Tucson. Thus the switch to 900Mhz link between the VHF repeaters.
The interference on the 145.27 repeater has diminished over the Holidays. lets hope it stays away. If not Ron has a work around of sending a DTMF code of Ø. That will open the repeater to normal conversation. As long as a normal QSO goes on the repeater will stay open resetting to a Ø required after a couple of minutes of nonuse.
Note;
The GVARC repeater fund has been spent down to near nothing. The hope is members will donate a few extra Dollars to the fund when they renew there membership this year
A Raffle for a Kenwood TH-K2AT VHF HT will be held at the January meeting all proceeds go to the repeater fund.
Take Care Gene
If you have not paid your 2009 dues by Feb 1, 2009, you will not be listed in the club roster that will be mailed with the Feb. newsletter.
Welcome to new club members Jerome Franklin N7JFF and Tim Nolan, N7MDT.
Students are back at school this week. Most are starting on their AM/FM radios. Those on the robotics team had 2 extra meetings during the holidays and their robot is now almost complete. The hardware is completed and only the programming and de-bugging is left before the competition on January 17th at Sahuarita high school.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Radio Club through the tax credit program. Without funding, this program would not happen.
Licensing classes for Technician will start Jan 18th and run through Feb 15th.Testing will be on Feb 22.
Licensing class for General will run from March 1 through March 29 with testing An April 5.
All classes will meet on Sundays from 2 to 4 P.M. at the SAV building. Text books can be purchased at the first class meeting.
Both testing sessions will be open to anyone wanting to take any class license. Advanced notification is required.
Class for Extra will be held if there is sufficient interest.
Lloyd Miller N7GV
Any of the Rigblasters will work on SSTV. The difference between SSTV and PSK31 or RTTY is simply software that you load onto your hard drive.
The main difference between the Pro and the Plus seems to be that the Pro will permit computer control of your radio via the PS232 serial port, if you want to do that. That facility is also built into my Ten-Tec Argonaut but I have never found a reason to use it. On the other hand, its being there allows you the flexibility to do that in the future should a reason ever present itself. Conversely, the main advantage of the Plus over the Pro is that it is simpler to install and operate.
Personally, I would opt for the simpler alternative, but I'm not a computer jock, nor am I a contester. Contesters like computer control of their radios because, for example, they can log onto an Internet DX cluster, click on the callsign of a station that appears there, and the computer will then switch the radio directly to that station's frequency. Saves time, which is "money" in a contest. A serial port interface also facilitates logging software, since fewer entries will have to be made by hand. I don't use computer logging (I'm not about to key in 50 years of back data) but it's virtually mandatory in a contest, if you want to submit your score for competition.
BTW, most operators find that SSTV isn't a lot of fun unless they're running high power, using a big antenna, or both. Mario only has a 20-foot vertical, but he does use a 900-watt amp.
On the ARRL PR committe mailing list this morning, Allen G Pitts, W1AGP, the ARRL’s Media & PR Manager reported the following year-end statistics: The ARRL grew by 1100 members, There was approximately a 1.2% growth in hams in the USA, using stats found at AH0A’s Amateur Radio Education Website, And there are 28,066 new US hams in 2008.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but the CIA estimates that the US population will grow by about 0.9% in 2008. If you assume that without any additional effort, the number of licensed hams would also go up by that amount, then the real increase is only about 0.3%. While that’s good, we need to do better.
Also, if the number of ARRL members increased by 1,100, then that is only a 0.7% increase (1100/153535) in the number of members, meaning that ARRL membership decreased as a percentage of licensed amateurs. In December 2007, that figure was 23.4% (153535/655842), while in December 2008 it is now 23.3% (154635/663564).
Finally, it would be interesting to know how many of those 28,066 new hams joined the League.