THE LOCAL OSCILLATOR - July 2009 NOTE: An HTML version is available at www.mvrc.qzxservices.com. A pdf file of the web edition is available at http://www.mvrc.qzxservices.com/pdf/LO0907.pdf. It will be easy to print that edition. If you do not have the free pdf reader, you can get it at http://www.adobe.com TABLE OF CONTENTS COMING EVENTS PRESIDENT'S CORNER CLUB NOTES 2009 FIELD DAY BUILDERS GROUP STORAGE BUILDING UPDATE NVIS ANTENNA STUFF TREASURER'S REPORT OFFICERS JOIN THE CLUB COMING EVENTS Sun Slow CW net 3.575 MHz 3:30PM Sun CW net 3.575 MHz 4:00PM M-F 6 m FM net 52.540 6:00AM Mon WTRA Swap net 146.88 8:00PM Wed Net 146.64 6:45PM MWF Informal get together Wal-Mart W (Valley) 10 AM TTH Informal get together Wal-Mart E (Walton) 10 AM June 27 Field Day noon Club House July 4 NO Breakfast 8 AM Club House July 4 NO Business meeting 9 AM Club House July 7 Buiders Group 7 PM Club House July 8 NO Board Meeting 7 PM Club House July 21 Builders Group 7 PM Club House August 14-15 Duke City Hamfest (Albuquerque, NM) Sept 5 Alamogordo Hamfest (Alamogordo, NM) October 3 Pecos Valley ARC Swapfest (Roswell, NM) PRESIDENT'S CORNER KC5HFJ The usual breakfast and business meeting will NOT be held in July.. CLUB NOTES KD5SSJ None received FIELD DAY AD5LJ 1. MVRC field day activities will be held at the clubhouse starting at noon on Saturday 27 June. We will support 24 hour operations if anyone wishes to operate between midnight Saturday and 0700 Sunday morning. If no one wants to operate during this time period, we will close the clubhouse at midnight and reopen at 0700 Sunday. 2. Soft drinks and snacks will be available during the event. Dinner (hot dogs, hamburgers, etc) will be served Saturday evening starting about 1730. If you intend to join us for dinner, please let me know so we have an idea of how much food to buy. 3. Our intent is to operate our stations on emergency power. If this fails we will revert to commercial power. We will attempt to use both of the HF radios in the radio room. So we will be 1E/2E category. 4. Last time I checked, the clubhouse was listed in the Dona Ana records as an alternate EOC. If we can confirm this and get permission from the powers to be to activate an alternate EOC, we will compete in class 1F/2F. 5. WE NEED OPERATORS and LOGGERS. If you would like to participate, please email me with your preferred operating times. If you are a night owl, please consider working the club station Saturday night/Sunday morning. . BUILDERS GROUP INFO KD5SSJ I brought a documentation of the Arduino based QRSS system that was demonstrated last meeting. Evan has been busy working on the hardware that I demonstrated last week and will bring his latest efforts. I have not had very much time to work on this problem but have had a couple of weeks of intense debugging of a closely related chip and the GCC compiler. Randy got a couple of loose ATmega168 chips and I got 10 pieces of the ATmega168P. I was going to program the bootloader into my new chips and trade him a couple of pieces, and then we discovered that the Arduino system needs a slight modification to work with the "P" type chip. I have not made the changes but Randy did some research and we know how to fix this problem. HAM RADIO LORE W3GWU (An outline of a talk which might have some useful information to many.) I. Ham radio background 1. Amateur radio licensing by FCC, based on written test of simple electronics, operating practices, and FCC laws. Ham licenses no longer require proficiency in Morse code. About 650,000 current licenses. 2. Frequencies allowed, small band portions of em spectrum: HF: mainly 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10-meter bands VHF: 6 and 2-meters: “2 meters” is 144-148 MHz. UHF: 70-cm and on up into microwave bands. 3. emergency communications, electronics hobby, experimentation ARRL: “Amateur radio is a scientific hobby.” 4. repeaters on UHF and VHF bands 5. satellite bounce, moon bounce, ham satellite repeaters, etc. II. Emergency communications 1. emergency power, off the grid 2. mobile as well as stationary 3. nets, passing messages, practice, preparedness III. Morse code 1. E, I, S, H, T, M, and O, etc. 2. short long, dot dash, dit dah 3. SOS: didididahdahdahdididit IV. Operating principles 1. frequencies, bands, power and mode limitations, rules 2. modes: cw (Morse code or “continuous wave”), FM voice, SSB, RTTY=radioteletype, PSK, SSTV=slow scan TV, and others. 3. phonetics: W3GWU is “whiskey three golf whiskey uniform” 4. abbreviations: CQ, DX, 73, K, OM, YL, FB, HI 5. signal report RST=readability (1-5), strength (1-9), and tone (1-9). Voice example: report 5 9 or “5 by 9” 6. clock time: military style eg. 1432 hours. Also prefer UTC=GMT=Z=Zulu time. 7. shack, rig, handle, work, copy, sked, net, traffic, location QTH 8. International Q signals (see next side) V. International Q signals, originated for cw, still used on voice. Hundreds on complete list, here are a few in common use. QSO: contact, conversation; “eyeball QSO” QSL: confirm contact; QSL card QTH: current location of rig QRZ: listening. QRT: stop sending; “silent key” QRM: interference QRN: static QSB: signal fade QSY: change frequency QRP: low power QST: call to all amateurs Strictly speaking, Q-signals are statements: “QSL” means “I confirm contact.” With a question mark, the Q-signal is interrogative: “QSL?” means “Do you confirm contact?” Sample use on cw: “FB QSO OM PSE QSL QSY UP 15KHZ QRZ DE W3GWU K” On voice: “Fine business QSO, old man. Please QSL. I will QSY up 15 kilohertz. I will be QRZ on the higher freq. This is W3GWU, over.” VI. Digital radio demonstration using AFSK 1. handheld transceiver for 2 meters, on freq 146.55 Mhz simplex. 2. laptop computer with built-in sound card. 3. digital interface hardware ($60) and software (free). 4. Digitally transmitted information happens by altering the carrier wave into at least two states. RTTY and PSK (phase-shift keying) are two well-known forms. Here we are using an interrupted audio tone, generated from the computer’s sound card, to modulate the carrier FM signal, called “audio frequency shift keying” (AFSK). 5. To transmit, produce text in the software interface window, which is converted to a digital code, generating an interrupted audio signal through the sound card. The audio signal triggers the hardware digital interface to turn on transmitter (through PTT switch) and frequency-shift the FM signal transmitted. 6. To receive, frequency-shifted FM signal is passed from receiver to hardware digital interface, sending interrupted audio to the sound card, translated by software from code into text, which appears in the screen window. 7. Advantages: relatively error-free transmission of messages, recorded automatically at receiving station, sent multiple times without alteration if necessary, and stored in files or printed from the computer. JUNE TREASURER'S REPORT KI5FJ Because the Local Oscillator had to be sent early due toField Day and the editor's trip, this report is not yet available. OFFICERS Pres Perry Welch KC5HFJ 373-9171 Perrywelch@hotmail.com VPr Cash Olsen KD5SSJ 382-1917 kd5ssj@arrl.net Sec Jack Lemons N5PK 644-7207 jack_N5PK@hotmail.com Treasurer Joe Ostrowski ki5jf@arrl.net BOARD Communications Henry Schotzko AD5FE 526-1922 schotzko@comcast.net Education Special Events Kevin McNelis K5KMC 571-7326 kmcnelis@nmsu.edu Newsletter Alex Burr K5XY 522-2528 k5xy@arrl.net Clubhouse Bob Bennett AD5LJ 382-0148 rpbennett1@comcast.net Repeaters Robert Truitt KE5OFK 649-4173 robtruitt@zianet.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?