The meeting opened at exactly 7:00 PM by President Ron AD7FV. I know it was 7:00 because Ron has an atomic watch. I guess he would say 1900 hours.
Guests were introduced—unfortunately with my hearing all I caught was the name Larry. Sorry about that.
Our three new General Class members were there having passed the test on April 5. They are Diane Ernest, KC7TJH; Jerome Franklin, K7JFF; and Tandika Star, KE7WSU. Congratulations to all of you.
Thank you Carolyn, AB7KC for keeping track of our funds.
A new repeater for 145.27 has been purchased (reason the repeater fund has been depleted somewhat) which expected to be in our hands in a couple of weeks. It won't be long until 145.27 and 145.29 are linked again.
Ron reports that there has been some kind of interference on the UHF repeater causing the link to Reflector to be shut down. Fortunately Ron was able to get it up and running again.
Lloyd N7GV reported that the kids have 3 more weeks so they are working very hard to finish their various projects.
As reported earlier, a test for Generals was given on April 5th with 3 passing.
He thanked the club for donating $176 for the petty cash fund which will enable them to buy small items without going through the channels required by the school.
Jon Otto, AD7GS gave a interesting report on the activity experienced on our web site. An amazing list of countries have visited it. We are getting a number of hits every month. The roster will not be a part of the web page to protect members privacy.
He requested information about club events and calendar be sent to him. I believe that can be done by sending to the web master from the web page.
AD7FV reminded people about the spring picnic April 9 beginning at 11:30.
He mentioned a QSO Party May 2-3. Lloyd will set up a station using the 90 food discone at the Titan Museum.
Anne Birch, W7IRL said the she was able to get permission for the club to use the Fire Department Meeting Room for Field Day to be held June 26-28.
Ron said the fall Picnic is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, October 29. It is on Thursday rather than Friday since the White Elephant parade is on Saturday, October 31.
The Christmas banquet will be Wednesday, December 9th which is a regular meeting day. It will be at the Grill on Greens where it has been held for the last several years.
The presentation for the evening was given by Dale Lang, AA1SZ. He first talked about he experience with Tucson Electric helping him to eliminate Radio Frequency Interference which he had been experiencing at his shack. He got excellent response from TEP and had a good outcome.
He then gave a presentation on W6EL propagation software. It was very interesting, but I will not try to summarize what he had to say.
Meeting was adjourned at 8:15 PM or 2015.
The Green Valley Amateur Radio Club decided at the last meeting to participate in the 7th call area QSO party. The Titan museum discone antenna was to be used on 20 meters. In addition to the discone, a 40 meter dipole was to be erected to allow 2 stations to operate simultaneously and to provide good coverage for close in communication.
Friday afternoon about 10 hams arrived and made quick work of erecting 3 poles to support the 40 meter dipole. All was ready. At 6 AM on Saturday, George, AD7DH, opened the gate to the Titan Museum parking lot. The predicted high winds were in evidence when the first sun canopy started to blow away. After packing it away, a second canopy was securely tied down and appeared to work until a gust of wind broke one of the aluminum supports. Thus began a hot, sunny, windy day.
The antennas worked pretty much as expected. The discone on 20 put out a good signal to the Mid West and East coast. Unfortunately, there were several QSO parties going on the East coast that weekend and 20 was loaded. We did manage to work 10 Oregon/Washington state stations through the East coast QRM.
The 40 meter dipole worked as predicted. Being low (30 feet above ground) it had a high angle of radiation so it put a good signal into LA, Denver and Albuquerque. We got an excellent report from Yuma, 240 miles away.
Between the wind and bright sun, it was tough going. We managed to make 50 contacts on the discone and 19 on the 40 meter dipole. Thanks to the 20 some hams that participated throughout the day.
The Continental School Radio Club sponsored a robot team this year. Led by Ken, KE7VTW and assisted by Kellie KE7DQJ, a junior at Sahuarita High School and former Radio Club member, the team won the regional contest at Sahuarita and became eligible for the international contest in Dallas, Texas. After considerable fund raising effort, the team raised funds to send 4 students and Ken on the trip. Though Continental is a middle school going only to the eighth grade, they competed with high schools which go through 12th grade. The results were 3 meets won, and 3 meets lost. Their final ranking was 68th out of 130 teams. Considering all things, this was very good for their first try at international competition. The students say they learned a lot. Congratulations to the Continental School Robotics team.
The Continental School Radio Club has completed another successful year. The students built 18 Christmas trees, 8 flashlights, 11 AM /FM radios, and 7 remote controlled cars. We had 6 kids who built model airplanes and learned to fly them. They have earned their Academy of Model Aeronautics membership cards.
The data at the end of last week's bulletin showed daily sunspot numbers from April 16-22 as six zeros, then 11. In fact, every day was at zero until April 21, when it was 11; it moved again to zero the next day, April 22. We had just as many zero sunspot days -- and only one day with a sunspot -- but we saw the sunspot on Tuesday, April 21, not April 22.
On Wednesday, April 29, President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Mignon L. Clyburn of South Carolina as an FCC Commissioner. If her nomination is approved by Congress, Clyburn will fill the seat of Democrat Jonathan Adelstein. Adelstein is leaving the FCC to head up the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS)
The 2009 ARRL National Convention and Dayton Hamvention: Two Weeks and Counting! (Apr 30, 2009) -- On May 15-17, hams from all over the world will make their way to the Hara Arena, located in Trotwood, Ohio for the 2009 ARRL National Convention and Dayton Hamvention. Held annually since 1952, Hamvention is one of the largest Amateur Radio gathering in the world.
Houston Representative Introduces Amateur Radio Bill in Congress (Apr 30, 2009 [REVISED May 1, 2009 13:37 ET]) -- On Wednesday, April 29, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) introduced HR 2160, the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2009 in the US House of Representatives. This bill, if passed, would "promote and encourage the valuable public service, disaster relief, and emergency communications provided on a volunteer basis by licensees of the Federal Communications Commission in the Amateur Radio Service, by undertaking a study of the uses of Amateur Radio for emergency and disaster relief communications, by identifying unnecessary or unreasonable impediments to the deployment of Amateur Radio emergency and disaster relief communications, and by making recommendations for relief of such unreasonable restrictions so as to expand the uses of Amateur Radio communications in Homeland Security planning and response." The bill has been referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Our next GVARC monthly meeting will be at 1900 on Wednesday, 13 May, at the SAV building in Green Valley. Steve Baker, AD7WY, will give a presentation on his Flex-5000A SDR (software defined radio). SDRs may well be the future of ham radio, so be sure to be there to see what these state of the art radios can do!