THE LOCAL OSCILLATOR - October 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS COMING EVENTS INTERNET LOCAL OSCILLATOR REPEATER THOUGHTS NOMINATING COMMITTEE OCTOBER MARATHON ARRL RM REFLECTOR BACK ISSUES UNCLASSIFIED ADS NEW MEXICO HAMFEST 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 Sept 23 4th Mon Business Meeting Club House 7:00PM Sept 28 Whole Enchilada race Oct 5 Saturday Breakfast Club House 8:00AM Oct 14 2nd Mon Social Meeting IHOP restaurant 6:00PM Oct 17 1st Thur after 2nd Mon Directors at Club House 7:00PM Oct 27 Rio Grande Marathon Oct 28 4th Mon Business Meeting Club House 7:00PM INTERNET LOCAL OSCILLATOR K5XY This issue of the Local Oscillator appears on the Internet at www.zianet.com/common/mvrc/index.html. Please look at it and tell your officers whether or not the extra work involved in creating a web edition is worth the effort. Your opinion can be easily transmitted via the form located on the feedback page. This e-mail issue had to be prepared a bit earlier than usual so the web edition might be a bit more up-to-date. In any case the web edition does have some photographs of the New Mexico State Hamconvention in Albuquerque that cannot be included in this e-mail edition. It also has some tables that will not format in an e-mail edition. REPEATER THOUGHTS AD5LJ Some Thoughts on Repeaters 1. Current status of repeaters: a. 146.64 is working well and its performance is much better since the tower work. b. 448.200 is working but not performing as well as it should. Suspicion that the transceiver needs to be realigned. Brad has the spare xcvr and is checking it out. He will swap out the unit on twin peaks with the spare in the near future. c. 146.76 was having troubles with excessive audio noise in its output. Brad, Mike and myself swapped out the transceiver with the spare unit. This solved the noise problem but the spare radio’s sensitivity is lower than desired. Brad will make another trip to the mountaintop and attempt to adjust the radio in the near future. The old radio will be repaired (hopefully) by Dave Hassall and Richard Johnson and returned to service or kept as a spare. d. The back-up batteries at both twin peaks and Caballo sites are now 7-years old and test weak with a battery tester. These batteries need to be replaced. At the last business meeting, the members voted to buy new batteries. Brad will do this at the next sale. 2. In the future, possibly next year, the Cabillo repeater will be moved to a new building. 3. Status of repeater spares and repair parts. a. All the club repeaters use Motorola MICOR crystal controlled radios. All our MICOR radios were manufactured between 1975 and 1980 and are no longer supported by Motorola. Several of these radios are starting to show signs of their age (most notable 146.76 and 448.2). b. We have one complete, ready to go, spare radio for each repeater although some are currently undergoing maintenance (see above). We also have two sets of spare diplexers, one spare repeater controller and one spare 12 VDC power supply. c. For spare parts, we have three partially cannibalized MICOR radios. These are being cannibalized for parts. 4. The current MICOR radios can be expected to remain in service for a few more years. The club must face the fact that all three repeaters will have to be replaced in the future. I believe that the club should start planning for this event and saving money to buy new hardware. We need options on how to proceed. I propose a committee to address the issue headed by Brad Sacca. Any thoughts on the above??? NOMINATING COMMITTEE AD5LJ At the next business meeting, I must set up a nominating committee to select candidates for officers and board members for next year. The Committee will present their candidates at the Oct meeting and the club will vote on them at the Nov meeting. Be sure to bring your suggestions to the next business meeting. OCTOBER MARATHON K5DI At 0700 AM October 2002 at the Las Cruces Public Schools Sports Complex a Marathon Race will begin. This is near Mayfield High School. There will be 5KM runners/walkers, 5 man relay team runners, 1/2 Marathon runners and Full Marathon runners. The full Marathon will run out to a point on South Snow Road near where it joins Highway 28 which is 13 miles from the start line. The runners will then turn around and head back the way they came. I will have a map for all Hams supporting this event. The duration of the event will be about 4 hours. Distance makes it necessary to use a repeater and the location makes the 146.84 the best. Each Ham will be given the 4 health warning signs to look for in distance runners. We will have Hams at many locations that are critical for the race, like the points that runners turn, and where the runners drop off of Valley Drive to a bike trail along the Rio Grande. We will need all the Club's Hams that can participate to do so. There will be a lot of police, fire and other services participating. We will interface at the Start-Finish line with all the other services. At least 15 Hams are needed and more is better. This will be more like a Civil Defense Drill than a normal foot race. They expect at least 300 Marathon runners for this first race. It could be twice this many. To help at this interesting race, contact Karl Larsen at 524-3303 or k5di@arrl.net ARRL ROCKY MOUNTAIN REFLECTOR W6TER A new email reflector has been started for the ARRL Rocky Mountain Division. An email reflector is a group name, in this case ARRLRMD, that operates much like a radio traffic network. You send email to the group and everyone that is a member of the group receives your email and can respond. A reflector group can have thousands of members and they are generally set up for a specific interest or purpose. The ARRLRMD reflector is for discussing any issue relevant to Amateur Radio but with special interest to the Rocky Mountain Division of the ARRL. You do not need to be an ARRL member to join this group, but there will be some ARRL matters discussed that may not be of interest to you personally. So, what is discussed and what is the reflector for?? - Input to the ARRL Division Director to carry your opinion to Newington, CT ARRL headquarters; - Polling the members for concerns of the ARRL leadership or division members; - Passing computer files, address lists, and other public information to a broad range of members; - Broadcasting Rocky Mountain Division news to group members, including campaign information for ARRL elections; - Answer resource for questions that you might have. An email reflector is a powerful tool. An email reflector was recently used to communicate with amateurs throughout NM to enable a coordinated effort in the successful state PRB1 initiative. Just like a network, you may speak and be heard. The only censorship is with respect to inappropriate use of the reflector. It should not be used to email spam or jokes or DX spotting. Posting inappropriate email will put you on a list where your email will be reviewed by a moderator before it is posted. In general, the list is unmoderated, so if you have a problem, issue, or other concern where members within the RMD may help you, then post your question or concern. It will be heard! To subscribe to the email reflector, simply send an email to ARRLRMD-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can set your membership to send all email from the reflector, daily digests of the reflector email, or you may go to the yahoogroups website to view posting. If you do not like the reflector content, then you may unsubscribe at any time by sending an email to ARRLRMD-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com The email reflector is a valuable communication tool. You will enjoy the activity. Join today. ARRLRMD-subscribe@yahoogroups.com BACK ISSUES AD5LJ There is an excel spreadsheet in the web edition of the Local Oscillator that shows the current status of my efforts to obtain copies of the oscillator for archive purposes. As can be seen, we have almost a complete set for 1990 through 2000 except for some missing months in 1992 and 1993. Thanks to Charles Welch, we now have a very good archive for 1980 through 1990. The spread sheet shows that we are still missing several months in 1980-1982. I am not sure how far back the oscillator was published. The club was formed in 1956 and I don't believe a news letter was published during the first few years. I know that the oscillator was being published in Feb. 1965, I have a reference to an article in the oscillator for that date. I am going to give this effort about two more months, then I will copy all the loaned newsletters that we have been able to locate and have the copies bound into hard back books for the club. UNCLASSIFIED ADS I have several ham radio items I wish to dispose of. Some for free and others for sale or perhaps for trade. This list is too long to list here, but can be found at http://www.zianet.com/damila/hamgear.htm. Gus, W5YGR NEW MEXICO HAMFEST K5XY A very successful hamfest was held in Albuquerque last month. The attendance at the new site at the University of New Mexico was larger than in previous years. Much of the increase could be attributed to the increased publicity which the hamfest committee arranged. A number of people from Las Cruces attended and K5DI was one of the featured workshop leaders. His workshop on wire antennas was of interest to quite a few hams. After the formal presentation, he spent considerable time answering questions. Other interesting workshops presented information on transverters and the growing sport of tranmitter hunting. Because this was an official ARRL convention, a large number of ARRL officials were present. One of the best attended presentations featured national ARRL officials who spoke on the future plans for the organization. Unfortunately one of the meetings with relatively poor attendance was the one arranged to thank the legislators who had been particulaly helpful in passinfg the PRB1 antenna bill during the last legislative session. It was particularly interestiung to walk through the parking lot and look at the wide variety of antennas sported by many of the cars and most of the RV's. There was thousands of dollars worth of new equipment displayed and tables full of parts. There was even one ham who was giving away new computer power supplies. In short, a well run, interesting, and useful operation, 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?