NewsLetter for December

(Posted by KC4GCK)

 

NORTH GEORGIA AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
December 2005

CALENDAR
December NGARC meeting:

DECEMBER 19, NGARC Meeting:  Monday 6PM at Dahlonega United Methodist Church on South Park Street, just a block below the square.   We will meet in the Fellowship building at the back of the church. This will be a covered dish dinner, but Tom will cook and bring the Turkey.  Diana has started a food list  and will send it out via e-mail shortly and update it with the group periodically. 

Club Net:  Thursday nights, 8:30PM, 146.835 + T100 Dahlonega Repeater

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.
We will publish a 2006 calendar of events soon, but for planning purposes the NGARC club meetings are proposed for the third Mondays of every month except November.  We'll move Nov to the second Monday so as to not have the meeting Thanksgiving week, just like we did this year. If anyone sees a conflict with our normal schedule for 2006, please let us know and we'll take it into account.
JANUARY 16, 2006  NGARC Meeting:  We have selected the location and date for the January meeting.  It will be at El Maguey to eat on Jan 16 at 6PM and after dinner we will move to the Methodist Church for an emergency communications training exercise that Tom has devised.

There is a joint Lumpkin/Dawson County ARES/RACES net on Monday nights at 8:00 PM on the Dahlonega repeater.  This will be a check in net, with announcements and an occasional test message (to practice formal traffic handling.)

BULLETIN BOARD

Apparently not everyone knows that there are "AA" battery packs available for almost every hand held transceiver around.  Having one is a great back-up for emergency work, like in case you haven't kept your rechargeable batteries up and ready.  It is easy to carry along a couple of sets of "AA" cells.  Look in your manual or ham radio catalog.  Just wanted to pass along the info.

Speaking of emergency work, we had talked at the meeting about having a ready bag of useful stuff when we get called out.  Many groups call it a "Jump Kit" which I think originated with the "Smoke Jumpers".  I'd like to propose "Comm Pack" for our purposes.  I know some folks didn't seem to care for the Jump Kit name and were looking for an alternative. Since our main purpose is as emergency communicators, I think "Comm Pack" would be most descriptive, even it has survival-type items as recommended.  There will be further discussion about the name and contents in the future for sure.  Just my 2-cents worth.
I can't remember who it was or even if it was someone in NGARC that was talking about the old "Hammertone" finish paint that was used on a lot of old radio gear.  I was surprised to find it at Home Depot and other places.  All kinds of hammertone finish colors amongst other neat stuff like wrinkle finish, textured and others.  Lots of choices for the homebrewer or rebuilder of older equipment or even builders of new equipment among us.

Buck has written a database program with the club membership data in it.  It is on the website for any of us to access and use for club purposes.   You can download this from:

http://home.syclone.net/~kc4gck/downloads/NGARC.EXE

He is also going to work on his older NetMan logging program that he put together some years ago.  It will be of use whenever someone is Net Control for an emergency net, real or training.