November, 1999 Edition
Laura Marino Lubner, KJ7UN ~ Editor

GHRC, Membership & Info
P.O. Box 4381,
Bozeman, Montana 59772
Email to: ghrc@tangerinecity.com

1999 Club Officers
President N7LT Lyndel Thiesen
Vice President N7GS Mal Goosey
Secretary KC7PFG Kurt Borge
Treasurer N7ZHN Kay Newman

 

 

ATTENTION: NEXT GHRC MEETING
(LOCATION CHANGE FOR THIS MEETING ONLY!!!)
Thursday, November 4, 1999 at Bozeman Senior High on 11th St. at 7pm, Rm H5.
(Best access to the room will be from the WEST Side of the Highschool, down Ruth Theibolt Lane on the North side of the football field off of 15th Street. Glen's room is in the shop wing located just south of the music section.  This means turn right into the parking lot and go in the west door of the shop wing.)

CHECK OUT THE GHRC WEBSITE AT: www.tangerinecity.com/ghrc

 

GHRC MINUTES - September meeting - submitted by Lyndel, N7LT

Introductions Secretary report:    Kurt not present to report  Treasurer report:    $992.90.  Paid for hamfest prize = $546.55), printing & stamps = $90.20   Announcements:   Ve Exam's Saturday at Coblie Hall #632, 9AM, All Elements. N7ML has radio gear for sale.   Old Business:   Christmas Party Dec. 4th or 11th at Senior center.  Discussion about finding a different place. Doug, KD7DOK to look into Lindly Center & catering.  Current meal price is $7.50 at Senior center. General feeling was everyone didn't mind paying around $10.00 for a meal. Hyalite challenge canceled twice, next date Sept 26th. or 2nd Sunday in Oct.  Need 5 - 6 hams to help.   New Business:    Jeff announces new pagers available for free (Must buy the pager but service is free)  Don, KC7EWZ, Reviewed necessities for Hamfest.  Fred, KE7X, reported Thursday Oct. 16th is Airport Drill & Hamfest meeting at Sacajawea Middle School.  School not available in November.  Must locate a new meeting area for that month only.     Program presented by Fred, KE7X, about amateur involvement in county  Y2K drill on 9-9-99. Meeting adjourned shortly after 9pm.

 

 

GHRC MINUTES - October meeting - submitted by Lyndel, N7LT

Meeting opened at 7:02PM Secretary report/minutes - Not read or approved as Kurt Borge, KC7PFG, was not in attendance due to other commitments.  Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, announced he would take minutes as best he could for the meeting this month.   Treasurer report - Kay Newman, N7ZHN, reported that running the adds for the hamfest in the papers costs $56.10, postage for the newsletter paid to Don Godward, N7FLT, was $75.20. Current balance was $901.60.   Announcements - Kay Newman, N7ZHN, announced that with the upcoming hamfest on the 16th that she will be out of town from Oct. 14th to the 18th. Any business for the club involving Kay to please remember to do it before or after those dates.   Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, announced that the 10 meter contest will again be active from the W7YB club station at Montana State University.  Everyone is invited to come and get involved or just watch.  The date of the contest is December --,1999.  This will be the 3rd year club members have done this contest as a group and we keep getting better every year.  Lyndel ask that everyone participates this year and make it another winning contest for the W7YB and W7ED clubs.   Don Wilson, KC7EWZ, announced that he needs net control operators for the upcoming Tuesday evening 146.88 repeater nets.  Please contact Don if you would like to run one of the nets.  They are easy to do and are great practice for emergency preparedness in handling traffic.  Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, even has a format to follow in which you just read from the net script and it makes running the net very easy.   Committee Reports - Don Wilson, KC7EWZ, reported that the Y2K drill performed by the club and various county emergency services was received very well by county officials and they were very happy with our performance of providing communications with Australia, Guam and other Asian countries to see if they were having any problems with the 9-9-99 date 16hrs before the 9-9-99 date became such here in the Mountain Time Zone. Don reported that we provided more communications staff than there were locations to put them all.  All-in-all, it was a very successful drill.   Jeff Tong, AA7GK, and Steve Longacre, AB7MV, reported that the Airport drill also went very well with an excess of ham operators to cover all locations adequately.   Old Business - Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, reported that he talked with Darrell Thomas, N7KOR, and Darrell asked that we get back to him with what was needed to better serve dinner at the Glacier Waterton Hamfest next year. (The GHRC served the 1999 Saturday night hamfest dinner)  Comments were better communications to club or group doing the serving from the Hamfest committee next time such as a information sheet with details of everything to be done by the group serving.  There was a shortage of about 25% Ranch dressing and 50% excess of the other.  There was twice as much butter as needed.   Doug Peterson, KD7DOK, reported that the Corner Cafe will be the location for the club Christmas Party this year on Saturday evening, December 11th, from 6pm to 9pm.  There will be a choice of two different meats, they have a beer and wine license and the price will be $11 - 12 dollars per person.   Don Wilson, KC7EWZ, asked Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, if the "Montana Field Day 2000" was going to take place and if the GHRC was going to have a field day operation locally this year.  Lyndel said that he and Bill Erhardt, K7MT, from Helena were working on getting a site nailed down and would announce the event after getting more input from more clubs around the state.  Lyndel said he hoped to have the official announcement by the first of the year.  Don said that we needed to reserve the Battle Ridge Cabin soon or we could loose that date.  Doug Peterson, KD7DOK, said that we should have a local field day for those who can't go to field day 2000 because of distance and costs.  He said that those people shouldn't be excluded from field day because it is so far away and we should still hold a local field day as usual.  Lyndel said he would try and get a definite answer by the December meeting and Don said he would like to reserve the cabin by the first of November.   New Business - Jeff Tong, AA7GK, announced that he and Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, will be working on getting the BZN packet node back up for use for general packet use, packet cluster and APRS.  With the reinstallment of this node, we should have better packet communications with Helena, Great Falls and maybe even Billings.   Doug Peterson, KD7DOK, announced that his wife would give a CPR class if enough people were interested.  Doug said it would be around $21.50 per person if 10 people registered for the class.  Contact Doug for more information.   Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, announced that the Sacajawea Middle School would not be available next month for our meeting.  Discussion involved changing the date to the day before or after and Glen Bradbury, KD7AZT, offered his classroom at the high school for the meeting.  Agreement was made to meet at the Bozeman High school for the NOVEMBER MEETING ONLY!  The location is Room H5 which is accessible via the west entrance near the old Buttery shopping center.   The meeting adjourned and the program consisted of a very interesting presentation by Harley Leach, KI7XF, who detailed his very successful radio direction finding adventure in Portland OR.  If you missed the program, refer to last months (Sept) newsletter.  

 

PRESIDENT'S COLUMN ~ by Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT
Hamfest a success!
The 1999 Gallatin Ham Radio Club and Sacajawea Middle School Radio Club hamfest has come and gone as another great success! Notes from Don Wilson, KC7EWZ report that there were 111 people who "signed the book" and an estimated 50 more who didn’t for a total hamfest attendance of about 160 hams. Greg Milnes said that he had 20 to 25 people attend his "Get to know your NW division director informal talk session". Greg said that our hamfest was the second most attended he’s been to after the Seaside hamfest!

Don had picked up Greg the day before from the airport and took him to lunch, then to Mikes, N7ML’s and then to Bob’s W7LR and later to the school to show him where the hamfest would be. They then went to the airport to pick up the club trailer, that evening; they had dinner at Don’s, home. Hamfest morning Don took Greg to breakfast at 4-corners. Don also saw Greg off to the airport again the next day. Thank you again Don, KC7EWZ for going above the call of duty and a big thank you to the crew who helped make the 1999 Hamfest successful.

The prizes pretty much stayed in the Gallatin Valley this year. Don Godward, N7FLT won the Dual band Maxrad mobile antenna. Dave Ashpole (no call sign yet) came with his ham friend and won the Astron Power supply! And the grand prize went to Todd Gahagan, WA7U, who won the Kenwood TM-V7A mobile radio!

The Concessionaire said that thing went well for him and he looks forward to attending again next year. Bridger Communications did well selling plenty of ham gear at cost and plan to do it again next year! The other venders also expressed their pleasure with our hamfest and we hope they return again next year. Next time you see Glen Bradbury, KD7AZT, thank him for a super job of organizing the seminars. They went very well! Thanks Glen.

Contest Time
The second weekend in December (11 & 12) is the ARRL 10 Meter Contest. The Gallatin Ham Radio Club is once again going to activate W7ED at the W7YB club station on the MSU campus. I personally would like to invite EVERYONE to come and experience the fun our club has had with this contest the last two years. Each year it grows and each year we keep doing better and better. The first year the band conditions were not that good but we still scored 38,416 points! Last year we were more organized, Fred Cady, KE7X, fixed the broken rotor and we used his amplifier to put out 700 watts. Band conditions were still poor but we sure did better with 584,586 points to take first place in Montana overall! We were also tops over Idaho and Wyoming!Mark your calendars for the second weekend in December. That’s Saturday December 11th starting at 0000Z (5pm local) and running until Sunday December 12th at 2400Z (5pm local). Talk in will be on 52 simplex and we’ll see you on the 6th floor of Cobley Hall on the MSU campus.

73, Lyndel Thiesen N7LT - 1999 GHRC President

  

 

eHam.net Survey
submitted to eHam by Lyndel, N7LT

What do you think will happen to CW if the rules are changed as proposed?

There have been 761 Answers to this Survey Question.

Answer Chosen Average

CW will continue in use as it always has.

 391 51%

CW will decrease in use.

 262 34%

CW will increase in use.

19 2%

CW will become a QRP users only mode.

10 1%

CW will become a footnote in Amateur Radio History

79 10%

The eHam.net Survey produces accurate results by allowing users to answer a survey question only once. Other sites may allow a user to enter an answer an unlimited amount of times. We feel accurate results are important.
http://surveys.eham.net/SurveyResults.cfm?SurveyQ=88  

FCC Sets Sights on Beefed-up 10-meter Enforcement - submitted by N7LT, Lyndel

Provided thanks to ARRL with their approval. - Submitted by Bill Fisher, W4AN

The FCC's Legal Adviser for Enforcement Riley Hollingsworth says hams can expect more rigorous enforcement on 10 meter issues next year. Over the Labor Day weekend, Hollingsworth told visitors to the Shelby Hamfest in North Carolina that the next area of enforcement would be the encroachment of unlicensed individuals into the 10-meter band and a crackdown on illegal RF amplifiers. His announcement drew loud applause from the Shelby crowd. Hollingsworth elaborated on the comments this week in an interview concerning this and other enforcement issues.

"We're coming on to ten months of rejuvenated amateur enforcement now, and two issues are clear--two areas we need to really crank up on next year," Hollingsworth said. "One is the incursion into 10 meters by unlicensed operators--CBers and so forth. The other is sales of illegal equipment on the Internet and at hamfests."

At Shelby, Hollingsworth told the crowd that he'd spotted more illegal equipment at Shelby that he'd seen last May at the Dayton Hamvention. At the Hamvention, FCC Field Office personnel from Detroit warned several vendors about potential violations involving RF amplifiers.

The Shelby Hamfest, held at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds, is best known for is flea market, not for its forums, but Hollingsworth still managed to draw a standing-room-only crowd for his Sunday morning presentation. After addressing the overflow forum audience, Shelby Hamfest organizers hastily scheduled a second forum and rearranged the room to gain more seating. Hollingsworth was scheduled to appear at the Virginia State Convention in Virginia Beach September 18-19.

Hollingsworth says his recent enforcement initiative aimed at call sign hoarders has met with some success. "I appreciate the people who have come in on their own and either turned in or trimmed down the number of club call signs that they had," he said this week. During a two-week period in late August, Hollingsworth said 43 call signs voluntarily were turned back to the FCC without any prompting.

Hollingsworth says he's received replies from all of the letters the FCC has sent to multiple call sign holders, including members of the Tucker family in La Mirada, California. On June 30, the FCC requested that family patriarch Roy T. Tucker, N6TK, and other licensees in the Tucker family provide justification in writing for the two dozen or so club call signs held by various family members.

"I have about a half a dozen cases in the hopper," Hollingsworth said of the call sign inquiries initiative, but added that he's deferring judgment on whether the message has gotten across to the amateur community. "I would like to think so," he said, "but I won't know until I've seen these responses." His stack includes replies from the Tucker family, who have hired an attorney to handle the FCC inquiry.

Hollingsworth says he's optimistic that an anticipated FCC internal reorganization that will create a new Enforcement Bureau will occur no later than the end of the year but could be as early as October 1--the start of the new federal fiscal year. Hollingsworth has assured that the change will have no effect on Amateur Radio enforcement efforts.--John Kanode, N4MM, provided some information for this report

(LOOK CLOSELY AND YOU'LL RECOGNIZE OUR OWN LYNDEL, N7LT, IS LISTED #87!! - N7LT/BCN  28.248.5 MHz 10 meter Beacon)
Top 100 28 MHz Beacons of 1998 - (unpublished compilation) *WB4WOR includes data for KE4YVL. GB3RAL excluded from this compilation.
A list of the 100 most reliable (most frequently heard) 10m beacons in 1998, as monitored in the UK by members of the Six and Ten Reporting Club. Beacons have been ranked by daily reliability values. Beacons on north-south paths have the highest reliabilities - South African beacons are frequently achieving reliabilities of 100% (i.e heard on every day) in recent months. Greatly improved propagation on east-west paths in the last 3 months has brought North American beacons such as 4U1UN, W3VD and VE3TEN into highly ranked places. Other top ranked beacons located in Europe have been heard by summer sporadic E (e.g. OK0EG) and by a combination of sporadic E and F-layer backscatter (e.g. LA4TEN). All other factors being equal, high powered beacons are the more reliable, but many beacons were not active for the full year and hence rank in low positions.

Beacon Nr Beacon Nr Beacon Nr Beacon Nr Beacon Nr
ZS6DN 1 SV3AQR 21 VE1CBZ 41 VE4ARM 61 VA3GRR 81
ZS1LA 2 4U1UN 22 AB8Z 42 W4STT 62 W8MI 82
ZS6PW 3 EA3JA 23 I1M 43 VK6RWA 63 W8BEP 83
CS3B 4 OA4B 24 VE9MS 44 W0ERE 64 KH6WO 84
LU4AA 5 DK0TEN 25 N1WRG 45 LU2FFV 65 PI7ETE 85
ZS1J 6 W3VD 26 K9KXP 46 PT8AA 66 LU7DQP 86
LU1FHH 7 DF0AAB 27 W2IK 47 KA9SZX 67 N7LT 87
5B4CY 8 VE3TEN 28 VE9BEA 48 SK7TEN 68 WJ5O 88
4X6TU 9 LA5TEN 29 UA4NM 49 NQ2RP 69 WA1RAJ 89
OH2B 10 PY2JAU 30 OH9TEN 50 VK2RSY 70 JA7ZMA 90
Z21ANB 11 WB4WOR* 31 KB9DJA 51 LW5EJU 71 PI7BQC 91
PY3ARL 12 KD4EC 32 N1ME 52 N9YDZ 72 SK3TEN 92
5Z4B 13 KB3BOE 33 KC4DPC 53 JA2IGY 73 W6TOD 93
YV5B 14 K5AB 34 VK8VF 54 K2KL 74 KW7Y 94
4S7B 15 SK5TEN 35 N3BUB 55 N2JNT 75 K2GEO 95
LA4TEN 16 SK2TEN 36 YO2X 56 N9RET 76 K5PF 96
VK6RBP 17 WJ9Z 37 IY4M 57 VE3GOP 77 KF4MS 97
S55ZRS 18 N2VMF 38 PY5CTB 58 WA8YWO 78 LZ1JW 98
OK0EG 19 W3HH 39 9A0TEN 59 VE8AT 79 WA6APQ 99
VP8ADE 20 KA1NSV/4 40 W6WX 60 VK5WI 80 ZL6B 100

 

Arrogance for an Ignorant Market Place  ~     by John B. Benediktson, N7RSQ

Once again the folks at Intel show their arrogance.  Rather than release superior chips with the potential to provide actual performance improvements for customers, Intel released a whole plethora of new inferior chips.  How so?  The new chips all have 100 or 133mhz buss speeds and all have 256k cache.  Compare this to the now established Athlon with a 200mhz buss and 384-512k+ cache + provision for external cache.  Further arrogance is evident in intels naming scheme.  The superior chips are now to be named P III classic while the newer inferior chips (much less expensive to produce) will be "false" named coppermine even though they do not include the new copper substrate technology.  Further, Intel has targeted these chips for their 440bx and 810 chipsets all of which use 100mhz ram regardless of buss speed.  With the growing production of PC-133 RAM (133mhz for Athlon and Via Apollo Pro systems) and the just ramping up PC-150 RAM (Slated for Athlon systems) Intel has ignored an important factor in system performance.  Intel does continue work on their 820 chipset which will support 133mhz buss speeds and RAMBUS RAM but neither will compete in performance with the Athlon 200mhz buss and PC-150 RAM.  AMD and Cyrix (yes cyrix is quietly reappearing with new financing and some new owners who bring some exciting technological breakthroughs to the resurging chip family) are quietly producing existing families of chips in new faster speeds for the expanded capacities of the "super 7" socket family.  Like the P II and P III from Intel "super 7" has been expanded to PC-100 RAM and Buss speeds up to 133mhz, but, unlike P III, super 7 is expanding to include PC-133 and PC-150.       

Could it be that Intel will find itself using its flagship processors to compete with AMD's low end processors and out of the running with AMD's upper end Processors?  AMD plans to show 800mhz Athlon processors at COMDEX next month.  Expect to see 1MB of cache RAM built into the chip with an additional 1-2MB ported off-chip but pre-buss (like the 256k on the P III coppermine).  This tighter coupling to the cpu should provide significantly better performance than the P III's can achieve even before the significant buss and RAM speeds are considered.  Then, to compete with Intel, they will show a K6-III 600 with 256k onchip cache (like the 256k on the P III coppermine) + 1-4MB of offchip cache.  This chip and variants with higher clock speeds should easily compete with the P III coppermine chips.       

This winter when the advertisement blitz hits for the holliday season our response to "Intel Inside" should be "so what?".  Like Microsoft, Intel hopes you will buy their products just because it is new; without any reference to whether it can improve your computing experience.  Similarly, Intel continues to produce support chipsets which result in slower less flexible systems.  The new 820 chipset will be behind the curve at release.  If it were released tomorrow, it would not produce the fastest P III systems and it would not allow OEM's the flexibility that chipsets from other companies already provide.  It falls on us, the consumer, to use our dollars to shape the future.  If we change our buying habits and buy more intelligently, companies like Intel will be encouraged to produce real advances in system architecture and companies like VIA and AMD will have the resources to create ever more advances.  Keep your eyes open for some really unique advances under the name Cyrix.  The people bringing this chip family back to us really have some incredible technology and could produce 400mhz chips faster than Intel's 700mhz coppermine.

 

UPCOMING CONTESTS

November, 1999
Ukranian DX Contest 1200Z, Nov 6 - 1200Z, Nov 7
ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW 2100Z, Nov 6 - 0300Z, Nov 8
North American Collegiate ARC Championship, CW 2100Z, Nov 6 - 0300Z, Nov 8
High Speed Club CW Contest 0900Z - 1100Z, Nov 7 and
  1500Z - 1700Z, Nov 7
Japan Int. DX Contest, Phone 2300Z, Nov 12 - 2300Z, Nov 14
WAE DX Contest, RTTY 0000Z, Nov 13 - 2400Z, Nov 14
ALARA Contest 0001Z - 2359Z, Nov 13
OK/OM DX Contest, CW 1200Z, Nov 13 - 1200Z, Nov 14
Six Club Winter DX Contest 2300Z, Nov 19 - 0300Z, Nov 22
LZ DX Contest, CW 1200Z, Nov 20 - 1200Z, Nov 21
IARU Region 1 160m Contest, CW 1400Z, Nov 20 - 0800Z, Nov 21
LI/NJ-QRP Doghouse Operation Sprint 1700Z - 2100Z, Nov 20
ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB 2100Z, Nov 20 - 0300Z, Nov 22
North American Collegiate ARC Championship, SSB 2100Z, Nov 20 - 0300Z, Nov 22
RSGB 1.8 MHz Contest, CW 2100Z, Nov 20 - 0100Z, Nov 21
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW 0000Z, Nov 27 - 2400Z, Nov 28
December, 1999
ARRL 160-Meter Contest 2200Z, Dec 3 - 1600Z, Dec 5
TARA RTTY Sprint 1800Z, Dec 4 - 0200Z, Dec 5
ARRL 10-Meter Contest 0000Z, Dec 11 - 2400Z, Dec 12
OK DX RTTY Contest 0000Z - 2400Z, Dec 11
RAC Canada Winter Contest 0000Z - 2359Z, Dec 19
Croatian CW Contest 1400Z, Dec 18 - 1400Z, Dec 19
Stew Perry Topband Challenge 1500Z, Dec 18 - 1500Z, Dec 19
Internet CW Sprint 2300Z, Dec 31 - 0100Z, Jan 1

 

Upcoming Events:

Tune into the 146.88 Bridger RepeaterTuedsay Night Net for future events, and visit the Upcoming Events page on the GHRC website!

The GHRC appreciates comments, suggestions and contributions from our members.
Contributions to the GHRC newsletter can be made by email to: ghrc@tangerinecity.com and can be in almost any format. Some reformatting of your submission may occur. You may also submit articles and information by U.S. mail to the club address at the beginning of this newsletter.
~ editor