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CALENDAR
August NGARC meeting:
August NGARC meeting: Monday, August 15 at 6PM to eat, meeting at 7PM.
Location and reservation has been confirmed at HONG KONG Restaurant in
Dahlonega. The restaurant is located on North Grove Street across from
the old high school, just over a half mile north of Main Street (Just
across the road from the school 'Rock'). It is adjacent to the
EconoLodge Motel.. |
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Reminder: Club dues of $10 are for the year Jan to Dec. ($5 now for the last half
of the year) and will be collected at the next meeting for 2005 for
those of you not already paid up. Also, please fill out one of the new
NGARC club application forms even if you are a long time member so we
will have your information for our records. Diana has a roster of all
the members info (addresses, telephone, etc.) available.
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For anyone who might be interested, I happened to find a page I was working on that calculates the length of various elements for antennas. This is taken from the ARRL Antenna Book, and should prove useful, although not completely accurate, for frequencies UNDER 30MHz.
The link is: http://home.syclone.net/~kc4gck/antenna.htm
If you wish to use this offline, simply click (on WINDOWS systems, that is) 'File' and 'Save as ...'
Enjoy!
73,
Buck, KC4GCK |
| Notes From the President
SIX GAP BICYCLE RALLY
The Six Gap Bicycle Rally is scheduled for September 25, the last
Sunday in the month (next
month!). Once again, members of the amateur radio community have been
asked to provide
communications for the event. This years event will be much larger than
previous year's with an
estimated 2,000 cyclists. We have provided excellent coverage in year's
past and I hope we can
meet or beat expectations this year. A meeting for all volunteers is
scheduled for Wednesday,
August 12th, at 5:30pm at the Chamber of Commerce. Please plan to
attend, if you can.
I am open to any and all ideas for this years event. If you have an idea
or suggestion to
streamline our efforts, please let me know. Our plan is to use the two
Dahlonega machines and
one of the Gainesville machines for this years efforts. We will probably
have net control work
out of the Woody Gap location with fixed stations in operation at the
high school and each of
the rest stops. Routes for mobile stations will be determined as we get
closer to the day of
the rally.
The yearly communications operations for the Six Gap Bicycle Rally is
the biggest community
function our group undertakes. Our service in the past has been
outstanding and nas been noted
by most all of the officials in the county. Let's keep up the tradition.
Mark your calendars
now for this event (Sunday, Sept. 25). Call all you HAM friends and
invite them to participate.
Everyone is welcome.
GOLD RUSH FESTIVAL
Everything is moving into place for our Special Events Station at this
year's event. Hopefully
the weather will be good and the bands will be open. Our application for
the special events
station was approved by the ARRL and we will be published in QST.
Keep working on those QSL Card. I have been working on several that I
will show everyone at the
next meeting. I am currently experimenting with color photographs in the
back ground.
CHRISTMAS PARADE
While you have your calendar out, be sure to mark Saturday, December
3rd, for the Dahlonega
Christmas Parade. I am hoping the club will support this function by
providing communications
at the line-up and along the parade route.
August Meeting
We are going to try a new place for our August Meeting. Chinese food
has been selected and the
location is HONG KONG Restaurant in Dahlonega. It is located on North
Grove Street across from the old high school, just over a half mile
north of the square (just past Moore's Hardware). Please plan to attend
so that we can discuss activities for our fall calendar.
Thanks, Tom Crowell KD4DK
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| The long awaited changes to the Morse Code licensing requirement are
finally underway. The FCC has proposed dropping the 5 WPM Morse code
element as a requirement to obtain an Amateur Radio license of any
class. The Commission recommended the change in a Notice of Proposed
Rule Making (NPRM). The NPRM would not become final until the FCC
gathers additional public comments, formally adopts any changes to its
rules and concludes the proceeding by issuing a Report and Order (R&O)
spelling out the changes and specifying an effective date. That's not
likely to happen for several months. The FCC declined in its NPRM to go
forward with any other suggested changes to Amateur Service licensing
rules or operating privileges beyond elimination of the Morse requirement.
There of those of you who have been waiting for this development and it
will probably take effect the first of next year. Those who still wish
to upgrade with Morse code will have time to do that too. Anyone who
has studied and is ready to take a Morse Code test, just let us know and
we will schedule an exam session if you wish. I still have code tapes
and the ARRL CDRom to loan to anyone wanting to work on their code.
Your last chance to get a license with Morse Code is coming soon so act
now and study.
73 Bob K4SZ |
| Amateur Radio and Emergency Communications.
As the club prepares to organize an Em Com group, some interesting
questions and comments are being heard. Here are two. Why AMATEUR
radio? Government officials don't want a bunch of AMATEURS in their way
when they are working on a serious problem. What can AMATEURS do?
Government agencies have the best equipment available, and they have
trained operators to use it. Besides, cell
phones are available to everybody! Perhaps this is a good time to take
a closer look at our title "Amateur
Radio Operator". Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines
Amateur as "one lacking in experience and competence in an art or
science. This is unfortunate, but it may easily be the usual definition
thought of when Amateur Radio is mentioned in some circles. We must do
everything necessary to redefine Amateur Radio Operator to mean one who
devotes personal time to improving competence and gaining experience in
the art and science of radio communications in the public interest. An
amateur can in fact be an expert, a professional, albeit unpaid. I will
offer some comments to that end in a series of short pieces in this
newsletter. My comments will be based principally on the Amateur Radio
Emergency Communications Courses sponsored by ARRL's Certification and
Continuing Education Program. This series is not intended in any way
to be a substitute for a formal course. If I can cause the reader to
want to read more on the various issues I will have achieved my goal.
Good Things To Know About Em Com
Why should the North Georgia Amateur Radio Club get involved in
emergency communications. Simply put, because Don, our Director of
Emergency Services for Lumpkin County, has asked us to do it. The Red
Cross has asked us to do it. This, and FCC rules Part 97, Subpart A Sec.
97.1 (a), provide all the mandate that we need. What can Amateur Radio
do for served agencies? While it is true that our government agencies
have state-of-the-art communications systems, as well as very fine
commercial telephone systems, disasters do result in equipment failures
and overloaded circuits. When this happens, a communication emergency
exists. An agency may then call upon amateur radio for assistance
because amateur radio is immune to these disruptions. Amateur radio can
provide essentially any mode of communication that a served agency may
require except totally secure circuits. There may even be an
interesting and perhaps a surprising way around that. We will talk more
about that later. Mention should be made of some things that Ham
operators should NOT do. We are not "first responders". We should not
race to the scene of an
emergency with antennas bristling and radios blaring offering to help.
Stay away unless you were the first one there and put in the call for
help. In this case, leave when the authorities arrive unless they tell
you to stay. Speaking of authority, we hams have none. Don't be a
Walter Mitty* and act otherwise. The served agency is in charge. We
work for the served agency. The employer-employee relationship applies.
This relationship is codified in a document called Memorandum of
Understanding. Look at examples of these documents on the ARRL website.
Also, read about plans and procedures in Chapter 8, Emergency
Communications, in The ARRL OPERATING MANUAL.
* The Secret Life Of
Walter Mitty by James Thurber
Russ W4YKF: Stay tuned.
ARES Update
The first batch of ARES ID cards are complete. Each of the eleven who
had their "mug shots" taken at the last meeting owe Dave, W9JWT, $0.34
each for laminating. ('Just kidding !!! ) Please try to come to the
next Club meeting so you, too, can have your photo taken for the ARES"Most Wanted List" !
The EOC station nears completion ... The FT-7800 still needs "teaching"
as this update is being written. And we still need a desk. 'Most else
is ready. The EC (alas, that's me) needs to assemble a station binder
(to be kept at the EOC) that will have "Readers' Digest" instructions
for the '7800, a basic emergency
net protocol, and lots of other things that are appropriate for our
emergency station. As collected, all sheets will be laminated and
placed in the binder.
Hopefully we will soon have a joint Lumpkin/Dawson County ARES/RACES net
on Monday nights. Dawson County now conducts theirs at 8:00 PM;
typically it's just a roll call net, with announcements and an
occasional test message (to practice formal traffic handling.) When it
becomes joint net, we will
do away with the roll call and make it strictly check-in. The net meets
on the Dahlonega (.835) repeater.
73 de Dave W9JWT
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