RADIO HISTORY

This December is crammed full of events, both current and historically related.

Sixty years ago today, the radio circuits were busy with traffic telling about the attack at Pearl Harbor.
W1AW went on the air on December 3 through 7 celebrating the 80th anniversary of the 1921 Transatlantic radio experiment.They can be heard on HF and VHF including satellite.
W1AW will also be on the air December 10-14 celebrating the 40th anniversary of OSCAR I.

Here is some more on that from K4SZ.

For those interested in ham radio history, I would like to recommend that you get a copy of the December 2001 copy of CQ. History is the theme of the issue and there are articles on the "Early Days", forty years of Amateur satellites, fifty years of the computer age,a very informative sidebar on 'spark' by Dave Ingram in his World of Ideas column and George Jacobs reminisces on his fifty years as propagation editor of CQ as he retires from that monthly duty. There is also an interview with Al Kahn, K4FW, founder of Electro-Voice and Ten-Tec.

An article about the September 11 ham volunteer responses includes our Gainesville friends from the Chattahoochee Baptist Association. A dozen hams from Gainesville went up to help with communications.

December 12, 2001 is the Hundredth anniversary of Marconi's first one-way transatlantic communication and December also marks the 80th anniversary of hams first one-way transatlantic transmissions in 1921 along with other notable radio related anniversaries.
The Marconi Radio Club, W1AA and The Falmouth Amateur Radio Association Amateur Radio operators will celebrate this event. Find out all about it at http://www.qrz.com/database?callsign=w1aa and http://personal.tmlp.com/k1vv/w1aa.

Also in the issue are some excellent book review/recommendations in the "Beginners Corner" that I would recommend to all, beginners or not.

Enjoy the issue. 73, Bob

FIELD DAY

The Field Day results were published in the December issue of QST. There was only one GA club with a higher 3A category score than our 4262 reported for W4QQ this past June. This is probably our best
showing ever, with a lot of the credit going to Neal and Johnny for the CW station where each QSO counts 2 points and they were really racking them up for us this year.

We did have a good time out on the
Etowah River. Make plans to be available for the fourth weekend in June next year as that is the annual Field Day weekend. We'll go out to the orchard again and try to better our score.

Our thanks to K4SZ for this information and for providing the great place to operate Field Day.

NEW FRIENDS ON THE REPEATER
by K4SZ

There are some new folks being heard on the repeaters now. Let's all make them feel welcome and invite them to join us in the club group. Seems we are hearing new calls all the time and we have some folks here in town who are studying for their own exams so they can join us soon on the air.

We've also found there are two new changed call signs around now too. Wallace Butler was KE4CRU and has now obtained N4WAB. Jeff Grote was KG4KYZ, got his old call sign back that he had for many years and is now back on the air with W0ONR.

DECEMBER MEETING

I regret that I was unable to attend the December club meeting. Bob reports that eight members and friends met at El Maguey and enjoyed good food and camaraderie without being distracted by annoying business transactions. That's my kind of meeting, and I look forward to January. Yall tell me where you want to
meet next time.

HAM OPERATORS ARE GETTING YOUNGER

Kids are getting interested in Amateur Radio at an earlier age now. One thing that has contributed to their interest is being able to talk to the astronauts in space from their class rooms. That is a pretty exciting stuff. ARRL has picked up on this opportunity and carried it a step further with "The Big Project", as well as several other activities. Go to theGeorgia/ARRL web page and check this out. If you are a parent or a teacher this is for you. Go to www.qsl.net/arrl-ga and click on Education.

Thanks to Mr. Bob, Chief Op at K4SZ, for his generous and informative contributions to the newsletter. Everyone is invited to send comments and suggestions for the newsletter and for the club activities in general.

Afghanistan is on the air! YA5T Wouldn't that be an interesting DX contact. Let us know if you hear him.

Web sites to visit:

Quarter Century Wireless Association http://www.qcwa.org
Lumpkin County Emergency Coordinator http://home.syclone.net/~kc4gck
ARRL http://www.arrl.org
ARRL Georgia http://www.qsl.net/arrl-ga
Marconi Radio Club W1AA http://personal.tmlp.com/k1vv/w1aa

73,
Russ W4YKF