CALENDAR

From the President's Desk

Last year was quite a year from a weather standpoint. More hurricanes than any year in history, the wettest summer, the driest fall, snow at Thanksgiving, and a major ice storm before Christmas. And now the new year has started with a bang. We had three F-3 tornadoes pass through neighborhoods less than a hundred miles away. What do you think the rest of the year holds in store for us? Maybe we should get prepared for some rough times ahead. I don't know what the "Experts" are predicting, but I expect that we will see more destructive weather as we get into 2006.

We have received fifteen to twenty SASEs from our Special Events Station at last year's Gold Rush Festival. I have an order at the printers for thirty of the QSL cards with the "Clydesdales on the Square" that everyone saw at the September meeting. I apologize if everyone did not like this card, but I figured we needed to get some type of response in the works. In the next few weeks, I will be asking for some help in getting these cards out.

I want to thank the people who assisted with the Old Fashioned Christmas Parade.  Bill, Pete, Russ and Craig stepped forward and helped on that dismal, rainy day. Despite the weather and several last minute unfortunate events, the show went on and Dahlonega had a Christmas Parade. Thanks again to those who helped.

Last year, I found myself in the situation that I had overextended my involvement in our community. I felt I could not give 100% to some of my endeavors because I had over-committed. So this year, I have decided to limit my eagerness to take on new projects and will be dropping a few past projects. I have no plans to decrease my involvement with the ham radio club, but I will be confining the projects I promote to events we have done in the past. I will welcome any new activities if the manpower and backing of the club is evident.  

See every one at the meeting in a few weeks.

Tom Crowell KD4DK

K4SZ's Bulletin Board

From the Newsletter of ARRL Section Manager Susan Swiderski AF4FO, here's information, from ‘our friend Dave K4LDI' of the Ellijay ARS:  "EARS will conduct a VE Testing Session on Saturday, January 14 at 10:00am. The session will be held at the Albert Harrison Memorial Hall located at the corner of Dalton Street and College St. Licensed candidates should bring the original and a copy of their current Amateur Radio license.  All candidates should bring the following: Any Certificate of Successful Completion of Exam (CSCE) for any amateur examination elements they have previously passed, the original and a copy of a picture ID (we'll return the original after viewing it), and $10.00 in cash or a check made out to WCARS. Candidates may bring electronic calculators but must show that no formulas or previously calculated problems from the question pool are stored in the memory of the calculator."
The Lanierland club will have an exam session the first Sunday in February (5) at Johnson High School at 2PM.  Contact Alfred Westbrook kt4vp@arrl.net for further info.  The club will have exam sessions the first Sunday of the even numbered months in 2006 for your planning purposes.

73, Bob K4SZ

Club Website, Thanks to KC4GCK

Webmaster Buck Cheves KC4GCK agreed to write a few words about the website.

I have copies of the previous newsletters for last year (sans the minutes), and there are some other ham-related links on either the main page or other pages (if any are out of date, please let me know).  There is also a link to a program I wrote for the purpose of maintaining a list of the club membership (the link for that one follows):

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

This is a self-extracting ZIP-type file. Download it and copy or move it to a 'work' directory, then run it to extract the files.  After that, run the 'setup' program.  There is a help file included which you might want to review (not that I ever read directions myself, but who knows???) before starting to use the program.  Unfortunately, this was written on a Windows XP system, and I don't think there would be any problems for other windows users, but for our Apple users, I just don't know if it will work under a windows emulator or not ... however, you are welcome to try it.  Any comments would be appreciated.

73, Buck

EC Remarks – ARES Update

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

Consider this also a call for net control stations for 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.

There is coffee at the EOC ham shack. The table at the station is getting crowded, but it will keep us from begging at the 911 Center door, and unless the 911 Center goes down, we must not bother them.