THE LOCAL OSCILLATOR - September 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S CORNER BASTILLE DAY SUMMER FUN RUN BREAKFAST PROGRAM REPEATERS WEEKLY NET EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS GROUP ACTIVITIES WALKING BACK PAGE COMING EVENTS Week days 6 m FM net 52.540 6:00AM Mon R&S Net 449.90 8:30AM Breakfast Wal-Mart 10:00AM Wed Net 146.64 6:45PM Aug 23-24 Duke City Hamfest Aug 26 4th Mon Business Meeting Club House 7:00PM Sept 7 Saturday Breakfast Club House 8:00AM Sept 9 2nd Mon Social Meeting IHOP restraunt 6:00PM Sept 12 1st Thur after 2nd Mon Directors at Club House 7:00PM Sept 23 4th Mon Business Meeting Club House 7:00PM PRESIDENT'S CORNER AD5LJ I have several items of news that will probably be of interest to club members. First, we had our monthly social at the IHOP Restaurant this month. We had a total of 14 people attend, which is about the same number as in previous months. The dinner social, which is held on the second Monday of each month, is a great place to socialize, get to better know the MVRC members and generally have a good time. I encourage everyone who can to attend. In September, the club is going to make another attempt to order club jackets. If you would like a jacket, please get in contact with Dorothy Figgins (K0SKW) or me. We are still missing email addresses for about 30 club members. We sent postcards to all paid members two months ago requesting either email address or else confirmation that they do not have email. We received only ten replies. The board members have initiated a telephone-calling program to try to obtain email addresses. As soon as we either contact everyone on our list or else give up due to no contact, we will compile a list of people who do not have email. We intend to start mailing a copy of the local oscillator to every member that we confirm does not have email. At the present time, we have confirmed only four members without email access. We hope to mail the oscillator to these people starting with the September issue. At the July business meeting, I was asked a question concerning current membership numbers and if the club is shrinking. I did not know the answer at that time. I have researched our records and the following are the membership numbers for the last few years. 2002 -- 114 2001 – 141 2000 – 133 1999 – 155 1998 – 160 1997 – 169 1996 – 156 1995 – 177 1994 – 177 The trend is self evident in the above numbers; the club is indeed shrinking in membership. This also reinforces the need for everyone to try recruiting new members for the club. Some changes are being made to the weekly Wednesday club net on 146.64 MHz. These are detailed in another article but I want to encourage everyone to check into the net whenever they can. Finally, over the last month, I have been collecting usage statistics on the club repeaters plus other repeaters in the area. I thought I would be able to report the results in this copy of the oscillator. However, I was not able to get all the data analyzed in time. Hopefully, I will be able to present the results at the August business meeting. BASTILLE DAY RUN K5DI On July 20 2002 runners showed up for the 8 K Bastille Day Run and Walk about 7:00 AM at Preciado Park on the NMSU campus. We Hams showed up about the same time and after getting a map went to their locations. Karl, K5DI, was net control and we moved to a frequency of 146.55 MHz simplex and were all in place when the gun went off. Rod WK5I had the Williams at Standley, Bill W5UMQ had Stewart at Williams, and Bob KB5WHP was at Wells and Research Drive, and David WA5DJJ was at Wells at Locust and Henry W4GEG was at Locust and Stewart and Elaine KC5TWD was at Williams at Sam Steel. As the race went on some people moved to other locations. We helped several runners stay on track and the race was over by 9:30 AM. SUMMER FUN RUN K5DI The Summer Fun Run was held on August 3d at the usual 7:00 AM to help keep the runners a cool as possible. The Hams also got to this race about 7:00 AM. The race started from La Buena Vida Park which is near University Ave. and Terrace St. The runners go toward A mountain on University Ave. and turn around behind A mountain. One runner had just had his second heart transplant so we watched this runner with care. He made the whole run without any problem. As always all runners finished the race with only very minor injuries. BREAKFAST KD5OHA September 7 will be the date of the next club breakfast: 8 A.M. to 9A.M. Please come. those of you who did not make it last month, missed Cash's real gravy as opposed to my prepackaged mix. So come join us $4.00 for all you can eat. PROGRAM KE5FF The program for Aug 26 meeting Antique Radios Antique Rifles Antique presenter A little bit of everything Program by Mark, K1CQH REPEATERS KC5SKE After several months of being down, the 70 cm repeater (448.200 mhZ) is finally back on the air thanks to the help of John, WK5C, Mike, KC5SKF, and Mark Anderson. The 146.760 repeater will be replaced with another as soon as possible due to the quality of the audio. The 448.200 needs to be tuned and I hope to have both of these tasks accomplished by the time you are reading this. The 146.64 has been tuned and appears to be in great shape. Repeater Summary Output Input PL tone Phone patch 146.760 146.160 100.0 No 146.640 146.040 100.00 Yes 448.200 443.200 none Yes The instructions to access the phone patch is as follows. Key up and identify, while still keyed press *64 or *20 on your DTMF keypad (according to which one you are using) , phone # and release. You should hear dial tone and then the controller will begin to dial your number. To release the patch on both, key up, identify and press #1 and release. I would suggest that you let the person on the other end know that you are using the phone patch to avoid any confusion about how in how it operates. THE WEEKLY NET WA2NIJ Two Wednesdays ago I just plain forgot to run the weekly net. No one stepped forward to run the net. I was disappointed, to say the least. Last Wednesday I brought up this issue on the net. Several people volunteered to run the net if I would give them a net roster. OK, it's in the works. When it is complete and distributed, we will start rotating the net control weekly or monthly, whichever works better. This is such a good idea I am sorry that I did not think of it a long time ago. Then if we have a communications emergency, we will have a cadre of people able and willing to respond. EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION WA2NIJ Years ago, what was then known as the Office of Civil Preparedness was located in a building on Medpark Drive. The decision was made to build a totally new Emergency Operating Center (EOC) at the Health Building at Spruce and Solano. Medpark was abandoned, and while the office was in temporary quarters, Dave Hassall, WA5DJJ and I removed the ham radio equipment and put it into storage. John Beakley, WK5C removed the antennas and tower. About a year ago the tower was reinstalled at the new OEM location by WK5C, Jack Lemons, N5PK and Marnie Leverett, KA2FVO. Installation of the antennas and coax cable had to wait for the installation of a "roof penetration". This is a square box with a lid. There are four "boots" through which cable but not rain can come into the box. WK5C (who else?) and Brad Sacca, KC5SKE, installed the antennas and cables. Except for dressing the cables and grounding, the installation is in good shape and operable. The equipment includes an all-mode vhf radio and a separate uhf radio connected through a duplexer to a dual band vertical antenna. There is a folded dipole antenna for 150-170 mHz that could be used with a ten channel Regency radio that has search and rescue and public safety frequencies programmed. The only HF radio owned by the County is in the emergency command post trailer. In an emergency it would be necessary for us to bring in our personal HF radios and power supplies (or batteries) to be able to operate in the EOC. At least we would be operating equipment with which we are familiar. We now have to establish a routine for checking out the equipment monthly. We also need to check out the ham radio station in the emergency command post trailer monthly. Volunteers? GROUP ACTIVITIES WA5DJJ Any Amateur Radio Club has a number of official or unofficial groups that band together to promote a specific interest in a given area of Amateur Radio Techniques. The Builders group meets together to promote the art of building Amateur Radio equipment from various parts using many different methods of construction. The Emergency operators meet together to enhance their skills in providing emergency communications using various methods and types of equipment. You get the idea. With the size of our Radio Club, there should be more special interest groups contained within the organization. The lack of these special interest groups really hurts a club in being able to provide a well rounded interest pool to enhance the interests of it's members. I am proposing to help start additional interest groups within our club's structure. My problem in proposing this enhancement is I personally don't have a feel for what interest groups we need to start. For instance, Since the greatest portion of our membership in the club is of the Technician class License level, Would a VHF/UHF/Microwave group be a good way to go. For those Technicians who have mastered the VHF/UHF Repeater system like to try their hand at Long haul VHF/UHF communications, Meteor Scatter Techniques, or working on their VUCC Certificates for each of the VHF/UHF/Microwave frequencies? There are a good group of "Old Timers" in our club that have done this type of operation for years and would be excellent "Elmers" to show the new Technicians the ropes. We have a hundred plus members in the club. If we could get 5 or 10 who wanted to do this activity, I know the station resources at the clubhouse could be setup for a first class UHF/UHF/Microwave station. In some areas, the Microwave group is separate from the VHF/UHF operators and in other clubs they all work together. Our Club station has not being operated with any regularity. There are many awards for contacting other stations like the DXCC, VUCC, WAC, WAS, that we really need to get our station on the air and start collecting the necessary contacts so we can hang that "Wall Paper" on our clubhouse walls. Ways can be accomplished so that the clubhouse is more accessable for more of the members to be able to go to the clubhouse and operate. Either through Activity Nights, Weekend Contesting, QSO Parties, or other activities that we choose. We have a first class HF station with an excellent beam and dipole that works really well. But it isn't being used very much, and when equipment sits without being used it goes down hill in a hurry. The thrust of this whole piece is that I am looking for ideas from you the membership. I am usually available at the meetings. I am monitoring the repeaters more now that I have a rig in my shop and I try to listen more. I have a telephone number of 505-532-1351, and an email address of dhassall@zianet.com. Think about what interest group you would like to join if it was available and let me know. Don't worry about wheither it is available now or not. We are looking to the future. Think about what types of Amateur Radio Communications you would like to learn about to expand your operating skills and let me know. Think about what technical area of Amateur Radio you would really like to learn about and let me know. Some of the things we can do as a club meeting presentation. Some of them we can maybe work on having short courses on to learn about the subject and then go off and experiment on our own. But I really need to know your thoughts and I am willing to listen. David R. Hassall WA5DJJ Email: dhassall@zianet.com Website: http://www.zianet.com/dhassall/ WALKING K5DI There are very few things Doctor's agree on, but one is that a human being to stay in good health and live a long life must walk every day a distance consistent with the person's age. I am not sure in Las Cruces, but I think about 1 in 10 people do any walking at all. The other 9 simply walk from the chair to the car and back again. I'm 68 years old and retired so I can walk when I want to. I have found that around 7:00 AM all year is a good time to walk my dog Bucket about 3 1/2 miles which takes over an hour, so I get home again about 8:15 AM tired but happy. I carry my HT and can hit both the 146.84 and 146.64 MHz repeaters while walking. Most days I find someone going to work to talk with for at least a few minutes. If more people begin to walk and carry their HT the repeaters will get busier. You don't need much to talk about. Just what comes to mind. Anyone who wants to try this, please do so. I and others are out with the Dog Patrol Net most every morning and will sure look for you. If your new to walking expect to only do a block the first day. Extend the distance a little every other day and your done when you take an hour to walk that distance. Now enjoy better health and stay young. BACK PAGE The newsletter is always looking for articles and notes of interest to the members of the Mesilla Valley Radio Club. Please send them to Alex. F. Burr, K5XY, Editor, MVRC Local Oscillator, 695 Stone Canyon Drive, Las Cruces, NM 88011. Small personal ads from members will also be published. It would be helpful if submissions would be made in a machine readable form. MSDOS disks are welcome. Files can also be sent to the Internet address aburr@aol.com. The club maintains a web site at http://www.zianet.com/mvrc. OFFICERS Pres Bob Bennett AD5LJ 382-0148 VPr Doug Hicks KE5FF 522-2683 Sec Ruth Barker KD6TBX 373-2838 Tres Rod Davis WK5I 522-6833 B'rd Alex. Burr K5XY 522-2528 Henry Frink W4GEG 523-5137 Dave Hassall WA5DJJ 532-1251 George Koop KD5OHA 523-1758 Karl Larsen K5DI 524-3303 Brad Sacca KC5SKE 382-4380 JOIN THE CLUB To join the Mesilla Valley Radio Club, renew your membership, or to support the repeaters, please complete the form below and send it with dues ($25 single, $35 family per year) to: Treasurer, MVRC, Box 1443, Las Cruces, NM 88004. Name: Address: Call: Class of License: Phone: E-Mail Address: ARRL Member? Yes? No?