THE LOCAL OSCILLATOR - April 2006 NOTE: An HTML version is available at www.mvrc.qzxservices.com. A pdf file of the web edition is available at www.mvrc.qzxservices.com/pdf/LO0604.pdf. It will be easy to print that edition. If you do not have the free pdf reader, you can get it at www.adobe.com TABLE OF CONTENTS COMING EVENTS PRESIDEBT'S CORNER FIELD DAY TECHNIGHT CW INSTRUCTORS NEEDED MINUTES OF MARCH 2006 BUSINESS MEETING MINUTES OF MARCH 2006 BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING BACK PAGE COMING EVENTS Sun CW net 7.142 MHz 4:00PM M-F 6 m FM net 52.540 6:00AM Mon YL Rise & Shine 449.9 8:30AM Mon WTRA Swap net 146.88 8:00PM Wed Net 146.64 6:45PM M-F round-table 52.525MHz 8:00PM MWF Informal get together Wal-Mart W (Valley) 10AM TTH Informat get together Wal-Mart E (Walton) 10AM Apr 1 Breakfast 8:00AM Club House Apr 1 Business meeting 9:15AM Club House Apr 1 Horse Race Apr 2 Triathelon Apr 4 Club House Clean-up Day Apr 5 1st Wed after 1st Sat Directors at Club House 7:00PM Apr 13 Technight (repeaters) Club House 7:00PM Apr 21-23 General Class Club House Apr 27 Technight (networks) Club House 7:00PM Apr 21-23 General Class Club House Apr 29 Albuquerque tailgate Apr 30 Bean Feed Club House May 6 Grant county hamfest Motel 6 Silver City June 9=11 Rocky Mountain Hamconvention www.hamconcolorado.org June 24-25 Field Day Aug 25-26 Duke City hamfest Sept 8-10 Technician Class Club House Oct 27-29 General Class Club House13 PRESIDEBT'S CORNER N5PK Sorry to have missed the last club meeting, I had made plans to attend the Midland Hamfest sometime back and neglected to check my calendar plus they decided to change the dates of the gathering as well. I enjoyed the hamfest, Saturday's attendance was an estimated 1200 folks at one time or another, Sunday was dismal, when Dale and I left at around 10:00 Sunday morning there was only a dozen or so people there. I've heard good reports from our meeting in March, I thank you for your attendance, participation and support of Tres. We are very fortunate to have such a quality young man to serve as our Vice President. Also, a special thanks to the volunteers charged with seeing to the business of our club and serve as our officers and directors. The tower work some of us have been involved in the past few months is quickly winding down. I believe John Beakley and crew are ready to retire, both my knees are shot and we are slowing down a lot! Any volunteers? Looking forward to the April meeting and breakfast, business should be brief and routine with plenty of time for the program. Please make an effort to attend both functions. There will be several opportunities to help with communications activities, all in all a busy time for us. Offer your talents if you haven't already signed up to help. Keep Art and Jody Trout in your prayers, Art has been hospitalized for a while and Jody may need our help. It is requested that we observe the "no visitors" request until further notice. Thanks, see ya on the 1st of April or at an event, FIELD DAY WA5DJJ Field Day Planning is in progress: Our Field Day site has been laid out and we expect to operate five stations. The 3A class Emergency Power stations on SSB, CW and PSK-31. A station for newcomers and hams who have been inactive are invited to work the GOTA station. A Big Guns 6 Meter and 2 Meter station will be available and if the band opens this can really be a blast. What I am missing is YOU!! I need operators and Loggers for all of these stations. A single station operating for 24 hours needs a minimum of two people (one operator and one logger) for the whole period. I have set up the operating periods in 2 hour increments, which allows you to operate for 2 hours and then go back home. This means that 48 folks will be required to keep that station on the air. Now I am not limiting you to only 2 hours. In fact, you can sign up for as many 2 hour operating or logging periods that you desire. It was just a simple way of scheduling the operator and loggers into the different stations. I am also asking for help with the Special stations. One is the Alternative Energy station. The other is the Satellite Station. We would get a 100 point bonus for making the required contacts with these two stations. The both require special setups that are best done with a small team for each of these special stations. There is also a special bonus points for passing a message to the ARRL Section Manager. I could really use someone to shepherd this activity so that we make sure this bonus is collected. Remember Field Day is June 24th and 25th, the last full weekend of June. It is also a good time to invite your friends to come and operate and help make our Field Day a nice Outreach to inactive hams, Old timers, and youngsters who would like to try their hand at making an Amateur Radio contact. For Questions or information contact WA5DJJ on the Repeater, or phone 505-532-1351, or Email: dhassall@zianet.com TECHNIGHT WA5DJJ April 13 Technight subject will be Repeaters. We will be discussing the repeaters in our area and the ones out of our area. Talk about repeater operations ... what equipment it takes to make up a repeater. Discuss repeater operations during emergencies. If you have a handheld and would like some help programing it for the different frequencies bring it along with it's manual. Come and join us for this meeting. April 27 Technight subject will be Network Operations. How to join and operate within a network. What networks are available to us here in New Mexico. The difference between Formal and informal networks. How you can have your own Net. What to do on an emergency Network. This could really help you if you are interested in Network Operations. Special guest speakers on their Networks. Hope to see you all there. CW K5DI I have conducted many CW Classes and the truth is that many want to learn the code, but few are willing to put in the work required. Early on in this 3 week class we had 11 people present. Monday of the third week we had 6 people. Right now there are people who, rather than coming class, are working on learning the code on their own. They will all fail. The reason is they can't find an hour where they can study every day, and they can't ask other people how they got past a problem. One person not in the class is going it alone. I asked him where he was and he said MP3. At that time most of my students were at MP45. Yesterday a student was doing MP74 and he will be ready to take his General Test next week. You just must learn the 26 characters, 10 numbers, and 6 punctuations. There is no substitute for this. The Chuck Adams CD-Rom teaches these characters one at a time. After about 2 it tests you to see if you really learned the two letters a and b (this is MP3). It does it at a high speed compared to other methods. At MP45 you have nonsense words with all the letters. Then numbers and last punctuation. Your all done at about MP76. The only person I know who learned the code by himself is Dr. Steve Horan AC5RI who locked himself in a room every day for an hour with Code-Quick on his computer. I know it worked because Steve came to one of my early VE sessions and passed the Extra Class when the code requirement was 20 WPM! There will be a VE session soon after the CW Class ends this Friday. As for doing another Code Class, I am willing in a few months and I think there may be enough people from the Code Class that need the No-Code Tech that we might hold one of those. They are using QRZ.com and doing quite well themselves. INSTRUCTORS NEEDED WZ5R We have a weekend - long General class scheduled for April 21, 22, 23 and once again need at least 4 instructors. One will teach Friday evening, one Saturday AM, one Saturday PM, and one Sunday morning. Teaching will be a bit more of a challenge than for the Tech class because our video (VHS) is not completely up to date with the current question pool. The technical information, of course, does not change much but some of the current rules are probably not covered in the video. This means instructors will have to "wing it' when reviwing the question pool and explain anything not covered in the video. Instructors will be free to view the tapes prior to the class if they want to make notes ahead of time. Let me know if you're interested. MINUTES OF MARCH 4, 2006 BUSINESS MEETING W5JRD The MVRC met at the clubhouse on March 4, 2006 for the regular business meeting. The meeting was called to order by Vice President Tres Campbell (KD5ZHI) at 9:15 am. Reports: Judy Davis (W5JRD) Secretary – Minutes of the last meeting were read and approved as read. Sandra Hempfling (KJ5Q) Treasurer – There is a total of $13,809.28 in all accounts as of February 28, 2005. Several email addresses are incorrect on the LO mail list. Anyone not receiving the LO should provided a corrected address. Brad Sacca (KC5SKE) The 146.640 Mhz repeater is up and running. The 146.760 repeater will be in operation soon. Dave Hassall (WA5DJJ) – Tech night on March 9 will cover QSLing and wall paper collecting. The March 23 meeting will cover digital modes. Field day will be held on June 24 and 25. 146 operators and loggers will be needed over the 24 hour period. Tour guides for the site are also needed. Cash Olsen (KD5SSJ) Special Events – Volunteers are needed to run the Wednesday night net for the next month. Help is still needed for the Bean Feed. Dorothy Figgins (K0SWK) will be handeling the “talk in” duties for the Bean Feed. At the last breakfast Cash was left to clean up the kitchen with little or no help. Those who can stay a little while after the meetings are needed to put the clubhouse in shape for the next meeting. Education – The Tech class had to be canceled because of lack of students. Plans are being made to improve our advertising for classes and the tech class will be rescheduled if enough interested people can be found. Karl Larsen (K5DI) – CW classes will be conducted at the Mesilla Park Recreation Center from 7:00 to 8:00 pm for three weeks starting March 6th. The meeting was adjourned at 10:15 am A program on Echolink was presented by Rodney Davis (WK5I). MINUTES OF MARCH 8, 2006 BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING W5JRD Board members in attendance were: Jack Lemons (N5PK) Tres Campbell (KD5ZHI) Sandra Hempfling (KJ5Q) Judy Davis (W5JRD) John Beakley (WK5C) Cash Olsen (KD5SSJ) Alex Burr (K5XY) Joe San Filippo (WZ5R) President Jack Lemons called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm Reports: The minutes were read by Judy Davis and approved with one correction. Sandra Hempfling read the treasure’s report - The club has $13,809.28 in all accounts as of February 28, 2006. There are now 73 paid members. The club property tax assessment was unchanged from last year. The report was approved as read. Jack Lemons - Board members should each recruit an assistant. A program on amateur radio has been requested for a class at Hermosa Heights elementary school. Volunteers are needed to support this program. The exact date will be announced later Alex Burr - The deadline for inputs to the LO is the 20th of the month and this is extra firm this month due to planned travel. Joe San Filippo – Flyers are being distributed for the General Class training course planned for April 21st. Tres Campbell – Vice President – A club property inventory list is being prepared. A logo for the new club mugs was presented and approved. Both mugs and club shirts will be for sale at the Bean Feed. John Beakley – All needed positions are filled for the Bataan March (March 26) and the Run Old Mesilla (March 10). Other upcoming races are Apache Kid (horse) race (April 1), Triathlon (April 2), and MS Walk (April 8). Cash Olsen – Special Events. – Plans for the Bean Feed are progressing and two vendors will be in attendance. Door prizes will be provided by ARRL. The Meeting was adjourned at 8:00 pm. 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 k5xy@arrl.net. The club has a web site maintained by WA2NIJ at http://www.zianet.com/mvrc. OFFICERS Pres Jack Lemons N5PK 526-9428 n5pk@zianet.com VPr Tres Campbell KD5HZI 373-2008 trscam@netscape.net Sec Judy Davis W5JRD 522-6833 judy@davis-domain.com Tres Sandra Hempfling KJ5Q 373-1166 kj5q@arrl.net BOARD Communications John Beakley WK5C 522-7078 wk5c@arrl.net Education Joe San Filippo WZ5R 521-7574 sanfilippo@zianet.com Special Events Cash Olsen KD5SSJ 382-1917 KD5SSJ@zianet.com Newsletter Alex Burr K5XY 522-2528 k5xy@arrl.net Clubhouse Bob Bennett AD5LJ 382-0148 rbennett@zianet.com Repeaters Brad Sacca KC5SKE 382-4380 shiekyerbouty@msn.com 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 ($35 single, $45 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?