Greetings:

This is Joe Goudsward from the NWS checking in. First off, I would like to wish you, your families and all your members a fantastic holiday season. Your help has been invaluable over the past year and I am sure we will be working closely with you again this upcoming year !

This letter does actually have a purpose! I would like to let you and your club members know our packet system is fully operational. Thanks to Bob Avritt from Great Falls Area Amateur Radio Club, I was given a lesson in packet basics and everything seems to be a go on our end with a few limitations. With a little help from you and your members we should be able to use the system to its fullest for your informative reports.

We are all set up and anxious to get your reports. Our personal mailbox address, in case you do not have it, is KD7CSI-1. The only problem is in our responding. Please let your club members who use packet know, in order to see if there is a response to the original message, to go into our mailbox to get it. It is a limitation of our software that we can not work around. Please let your packet users know, that I will be checking the mailbox several times on my shift, and that I will respond or at least acknowledge all messages. It may be a few days until I do so due to our rotating schedules but it will be done. Again, the only thing your members will have to do is access our mailbox to receive responses.
We also now have the capability of contacting your packet users directly. This is where I need another favor. Since we are unable to contact your packet users without knowing the specific path, could you send to me, a list of all your packet users and call signs? That way we can try to contact them via the LNC digipeter for the Helena area and using BZNLAN for the Gallatin valley. (Ed Note: Sent Joe a packet users list in December) As soon as I get these lists, we can work out the final bugs and get some reports left in our box or better yet on the air. I think this is another great tool we can all use. The MRLA system also seems to be running fine and we have gotten some good reports from both the Helena and Gallatin valleys ! Please express our gratitude to everyone for all your help.

Bob Avritt is going to send me his local packet users ASAP and that should complete the ring ! Please send me those list via E-mail or better yet by snail mail. The address up here on the hill is

National Weather Service
5324 Tri Hill Frontage Road
Great Falls, MT 59404

If you or your club members have any questions, concerns, comments or what have you, feel free to drop me line on the spotter line. I am working 3;30 P.M. to 11:30 P.M. the rest of the week.

73 Joe KD7CSI

Test sessions are held at 9 am in room 632 at Cobleigh Hall on the MSU Campus the first Saturday AFTER the first Thursday during the following months: December, March, June, September. This schedule may be revised. Make sure to check your newsletter each month for any changes to the VE Testing Schedual.

March 4th

June 3rd

September 9th

December 9th

This year, like last, I asked my son Max if he would like to participate in Kid’s Day. He jumped at the chance to operate and asked a different friend from last year to join him in the thrill of contesting. If you’ve never heard of Kid’s Day, it is a fun contest just for kids but adults can also make contacts. The kids give their name, location and favorite color as a contest exchange. It is really laid back and sometimes the kids get into quite a rag chew. One kid asked my son if there were any pretty girls where he lived. I told Max to say 73 and work the next kid, thankfully he did!

Last year Max made 40 contacts and his friend 15. This year Max made 67 contacts in 22 states and two countries! His friend Ryan made 30 contacts in 15 states. Both boys said they had a great time and when I asked them if they’d like to do it again, they both said an eager YES!

73 Lyndel N7LT

Last meeting minutes of the Millennium:

TREASURES REPORT: $1337.87 minus $60 for the newsletter.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: Contact Glenn KD7AZT for radio equipment for sale from a silent key.

VE exam Saturday.

Fox hunt of the century in China, October 2000. World class. Contact Harley KI7XF to help set up courses in the Spring.

10 meter contest December 10th to 12. Contact Lyndel N7LT.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Eaglehead Repeater Assoc. reported an income of $1370 and expenses of 1260, leaving 190 balance. Savings balance is $467. Lots of checks were received at the meeting, however.

88 repeater: Hardline to be put in Spring of '00. 88 and 82 to be linked Summer of '00 and 82 to get a new solar panel Summer of '00. Have applied to the Forest Service to keep 82 alive.

NEW BUSINESS

Christmas dinner: contact Doug KD7DOK at 587-9593. [It was great!]

Lyndel N7LT is working on W7ED QSL cards. Also, send QSL cards to Lyndel for big cost savings on mailing.

ELECTIONS

Short & sweet:

President: Jim AA8Y
VP: Cory KC7MRQ
Sec: Ron KD7FVR (melron@avicom.net)
Tres: Harley KI7XF

Thank you to the new officers and to the outgoing officers for their hard work! And--it was fun!

PROGRAMS

Harley KI7XF provided a program on operating the 447.770 repeater.

The tangerinecity site needed to be reset by our host server, due to a site malfunction. They asked me to save all data, which I did. I saved our site (and it has been reloaded) so that everything would be ok - but I forgot about the mailing list. I am very sorry for not remembering to back it up. My request is that those of you who want to be on the list simply hit reply to this message and I will restore you to the list. I put as many of you back on as I remember, but I would not want to include someone who did not desire to be on the list by accident. I am very sorry for the trouble!! Thanks for your understanding! I realize that I may not have sent this to everyone that was on the list - if you know of someone who should be on it, please let me know or have them contact me. I will ask Lyndel to put a blurb in the next newsletter to catch the rest, hopefully. Again, I am very sorry for the trouble.

For those of you that do not know about the list, here's some info:

The GHRC Reflector Mailing List is just the place to ask questions about ANYTHING ham related, post news, events, cries for help putting up that new antenna, items for sale, and what hand held to buy. The list is where you are notified about upcoming ham activities, hamfests, classes, test sessions, weather alerts, community service, Search and Rescue information, new FCC rules and band provisions. This list is where our new hams can ask for help and our Elmers can give advice. This list is what we make of it and we have a great membership making this list a useful tool and a nice place to share your latest ham-venture!! You don't have to be a GHRC member to join. This list is open to anyone interested in ham radio and/or emergency communications.

Here is the list as I recreated it. If you are on the list and do not wish to be, just let me know. If you are not on the list, it is only because I was unsure. Simply reply and I will add you!

Laura, KJ7UN

For you H.F. enthusiasts, there is a new player on the scene. It is the Elecraft K-2, the product of two capable hams, Wayne Burdick (N6KR) and Eric Schwartz (WA6HHQ). Wayne is the designer of the "world famous" Norcal 40, which has achieved wide acclaim in QRP circles. The K-2 is an all-band H.F. rig with 10 watts output, user programmable crystal filters (4 for each mode), and test results that are comparable with some of the finest rigs that money can buy. This rig puts Elecraft and the USA "on the map" along with Ten-Tec as being competitive with Japan as designers of high class ham gear. It is sold as a kit (I took 30 hours total assembling mine). The parts are highest quality, and Elecraft support is second to none! The basic kit (CW) costs $549. If you are interested, the URL is Www.elecraft.com, where you will find much more information than can be given in this space.
Test results are available at www.natworld.com/ars/ enter the ARS Sojourner (the official journal of the Adventure Radio Society), select ARS Archives, then Back Issues and then the October 1999 issue. Todd Gahagan, WA7U has also built one with all the options (SSB, internal 2.9 ah battery, noise blanker) and has the internal Antenna tuning unit on order. Elecraft has much more in the works for this rig, including a power amp (50 or 100 watts to be determined), computer control etc. If you haven't gotten the idea from what I have written, I am Impressed!!!

Mal Goosey N7GS

Ed. Note: Rick KB7MPG from Livingston has also built a Elecraft K2 and really loves his new toy. Rick says it hears like nothing he’s used before and plans to takes his K2 with him on his Harley this summer!

If you’ve not signed up as a net control operator yet, please do so! As members of the GHRC, each of us should take at least half an hour each month to help run the net. This is a very small sacrifice of time which greatly enhances the quality of our net and club.

If you’ve never run the net before, contact either KC7EWZ, Don or N7LT Lyndel for an outline on how to run the net. All you have to do is substitute your call sign and you’re ready to be net control. Running the net is a great experience which will help prepare you for participating in emergency communications.

The net is every Tuesday evening at 8PM.

Once again the Gallatin Ham Radio Club activated W7ED at the MSU club station. This year, as in the past two years, the club has seen about 50% new hams attend this contest. This has been a great learning and "getting to know" experience for both new and old hams. It’s also a chance to hone our skills as operators and exchange operating hints in contest situations which prepare you to hand traffic under serve conditions.

The contest was loosely organized by Lyndel Thiesen, N7LT, who on the day of the contest came down with the stomach flu and couldn’t attend. Don, N7FLT, and Fred, KE7X, took over and the two of them set up the borrowed Kenwood TS-450 (Thanks Todd, WA7U) and by 5pm Friday the 11th of December, they have everything ready to go when the contest began. We also had the use of Fred’s Kenwood TL-922 amp which gave us 500 to 700 watts output into the TH6DXX on the roof at 150 feet above ground. With all this horsepower, the operating crew started calling CQ at 0000Z and they were on their way!

The ten meter band is getting better and better each year as we near the peak of the sun spot cycle in 2001. Even though the cycle is moving up, we still had difficulties working EU stations that we thought we would find easy to work this year. Well, there’s always next year.

A bonus that we never had last year was the packet DX cluster spots. This is a nice feature which receives DX spots from local operators who feed the frequency and call sign via packet radio to the W7ED computer which puts it right on our computer logging screen. That way all we had to do is dial the radio to that frequency and call the station. If we worked them, all we had to do is enter their designator and push enter. Very nice addition to the operating position at W7ED!

With all the new blood at each of the past three years of ten meter contests, I think we’ve accomplished an excellent goal with this club event. We’ve been able to enticed a couple of new hams each year to try HF and experience the excitement of working DX, contests, competition and just plain ham radio FUN!

Operators of the W7ED contest station consisted of: N7FLT, AB7VR, W7LR, KE7X, N7GS, KC7PFH, KD7EMO, KD7DOK, KD7AZS and KD7AZT.

CW 307 1228 47 24

SSB 1132 2264 56 50

-----------------------------------------

Totals 1439 3492 103 74

Thanks to everyone who made this years event a fun and exciting experience and I hope to see all of you at the contest next year when I’m healthy!

73 Lyndel N7LT

As you know, we are ALWAYS looking for information related to ham radio for the newsletter. Please, if you have anything you think would be of interest to the members, please forward them to your editor, Lyndel N7LT. Thanks