CALENDAR
February NGARC meeting:  February 20, 2006, 6:00 at Fire Mountain at the Dawsonville intersection, Hwy 400 and Hwy 53.

Please submit any info you may have or conflicts you may notice, to dianacwhite@earthlink.net -- in general, the NGARC club meetings are proposed for the third Monday of every month except November.  We'll move Nov to the second Monday so as not to have the meeting Thanksgiving week, just like we did in 2005.

FEBRUARY

20 NGARC meeting

25 Dalton Hamfest

19-25 Severe Weather Awareness Week (new listing, from ARRL and Susan, see below)

MARCH

11 Charlotte Hamfest

18 Kennehoochee Hamfest – note correction; not 17th

20 NGARC meeting

Please remember that we have an official joint Lumpkin/Dawson ARES/RACES net on Monday nights at 8:00 PM. The net meets on the Dahlonega repeater, 146.835+ 100 Hz tone. Please join in. We'll try to keep it short and sweet, but have a pencil and paper – there may be traffic to be copied.

We need net control stations for the joint net. It's not hard; I'll provide you with a copy of the net protocol. Please call me at (706) 867-0805, or email to burrows@alltel.net and I'll get you on the list for NCSs. (We are scheduled through March 13, but it would be great to continue planning ahead.)

From ARRL Georgia Section Manager, Susan Swiderski AF4FP, I have taken some items for NGARC. Susan sends out the ARRL newsletter info for us in GA every month – af4fo@arrl.org will get you there, or the ARRL website.

The lone survivor of the Sago Mine accident in WVa, Randal McCloy, is a ham – he's KC8VKZ. If would like to send a note of support, his address is PO Box 223, Philippi WV 26435.

Susan writes about BPL – Broadband over Public Line, and the ham community's concerns. At the Gateway ARC meeting last month, Ron McEntire K4RBM and Jim Balaun K4PZ (was KG4WLA) reported on their findings. They took some equipment out into a community where BPL was being tested by Habersham EMC, and found not much interference at 80m, some at 40m, and below 40m it tore everything up. If you want a copy of the GARC newsletter which goes into more detail, please just email me and ask – dianacwhite@earthlink.net . Anyway, they get a mention in Susan's newsletter, where she reports that they are sharing leadership roles in the Clarkesville section and have done some measurements and have filed a formal letter of complaint. We might be able to get Ron and Jim to make a presentation for Dahlonega soon.

When power companies give BPL a test run, they are probably assured by BPL equipment suppliers that interference problems have been worked out. Even President Bush seems to think BPL is the greatest communication innovation in years. It is suggested that when we deal with this issue, we do not approach groups in a confrontational or antagonistic manner, but rather strive to present information, assuming that it is a lack of information about radio frequencies and use and interference that we are dealing with, not assign their motives to malice aforethought. The ham community is making concerted efforts now because once BPL is in use over broad areas, the damage is done and solutions will be much harder – and if complaints are not filed during the test periods, then the power companies assume there is no problem. The ARRL website for Georgia has information – www.arrl-ga.org .