TROJAN ARC HARMONIC

FIELD DAY - A GREAT TRAINING GROUND Good weather blessed the club for all but Friday night setup on this year's Field Day. The I-70 eastbound rest area proved to be not only a great QRN-free radio area, but an ideal physical location. The partitioned table areas under the "mushroom" were super for station separation, and open grass with ample trees provided antenna supports, shade and opportunities for baseball and other games for the harmonics. Our usual 2A entry was staffed by many club members. Adequate space and trees, and borrowed hardline for the Goodland repeater, helped minimize cross interference. We racked up 370 CW and 593 SSB QSOs, including Larry NØZTM and others on the Novice/Tech station for 56 SSB and 16 CW Qs, and the 6 Meter station borrowed from WAØGBN snagged 55 E-skip contacts. Our score was helped by the all-night efforts of KBØMBT KBØLGX NØXNK & NØXNO. I 70 brought a number of visitors, including a ham trucker who saw us setting up while westbound to Denver, then returned to check out the action. Fifteen Cub Scouts from a local pack dropped in a few hours before the event, enjoying a QSO with TI2CC in Costa Rica and another with a soldier at Guantanimo Bay. All the various Field Day bonuses were collected except Natural Power. A valiant effort was put in by NØQGB Dick to improve on our bicycle/alternator arrangement of '93 by chain-driving the alternator. But it went for naught when either the battery or alternator proved faulty. Here's our estimated score, along with previous actual scores:

1995 370 593 3650 est

1994 380 930 4380

1993 364 274 3004

1992 429 201 2818

1991 366 292 2748

1990 169 327 1930

1989 31 108 ?

GERMAN HAM VISITS AREA German ham Gunter Rossel, DGØOKJ and his XYL Angela stayed with KØBJ and family while touring the Midwest by VW van. Gunter was a POW in Texas for three years during WWII, having been captured in Tunisia early in the war. Gunter and Angela were East Germans until the recent reunification. Allen KØMXU, who speaks more German than Bruce, joined the group for dinner June 12. Gunter and Bruce joined Mike KFØMJ and Gerry KBØLGX at the command post/tower work night June 13. Gunter and Angela went on to KØMXU's and then Wichita the following day. They made numerous stops including Gunter's POW camp, and WF5T in Santa Fe before returning home July 6.

SUNRAYCE COMMS KEEP TROJANS BUSY Thirty eight solar-powered cars traveled west on US 36 from Indianapolis to Denver as part of a college/Department of Energy competition. Tuesday June 27 saw KBØMBT NØXNK KGØPI KØBJ WAØGBN and KBØMBS head north to help with race communications. Gregg took the club tower and 2m beam to a point 7 miles west of Atwood, where he was able to access Jim, Jon and Bruce at the midday stop in Oberlin, and also cover Darel in Atwood and Gary who rode with the route manager ahead of the solar cars. The 440/146 crossband base station of Ron KBØMLS helped Gregg cover the Oberlin stop well. A cranky rotator and some rig problems made life a little frustrating, but some good traffic was passed for the officials, who had cellular comms for critical items. After the crew had supper, Jon and Bruce camped out overnight in St. Francis. KFØMJ and KØMXU joined the race Wednesday, while Darel returned from Goodland. This time Mike manned the tower,while Jon rode with the route manager and Allen, Darel and Bruce did intermediate spotting. The steep hill just west of Sainty was the first place to spot troubles. The crew went on to Anton CO, the midday stop. MIT was the ultimate winner of the 9 day race, while Minnesota U did a record-breaking 50mph average on the Tuesday Smith Center-St. Francis run, and bagged 2nd place overall. This was a good event for our club to participate in and learn from. It pointed out both assets and shortcomings in our ability to provide point to point communications in rough terrain.

$WAP TABLE FOR SALE: 10 unused, "pickled" government surplus DC generators. Set for 24-28 VDC; adjustable to 10-32 VDC; at 1.5 KW continuous. 2cyl, 4cy engines include RFI-shielded ignition. Price not set at press time but should be near $500 @. Contact Daris Wiebe NØZEA 316-356-1284 in Ulysses.

BANDSCAN BT KØBJ and KBØMBS are enjoying the 6 meter band after completing their Ten Tec 8 watt transverter. Sporadic E skip has provided some fun QSOs, and they thank WAØGBN for loan of his yagi and NØXNO for loan of his wattmeter. BT After months of hesitation, your editor has grabbed the bull by the horns and is wrestling with word processing under Windows. The newsletter master is done with a DeskJet 500 running under Works. If you have graphics material under 3" wide for the newsletter, send it to KØBJ. BT The Topeka hams operating Field Day at WØCET had considerably dampened spirits, due to the death of Gene NØLLY. Gene had a heart attack while participating in setup. He was a well-known packet sysop. BT Jon KBØMBS is active again for the summer on RS10, and is at the halfway mark (the EASY half!) for Worked All States on the satellite. BT Matt Lindberg, son of NØXNJ and KBØMBT, continues to fight frequent pneumonia spells. The Trojans wish Matt the best of luck in staying well. BT While many Trojan ARC members suffered through heat and sun during their Sunrayce assignments, NØXNK and KBØMBS enjoyed the easier life, riding in air-conditioned comfort in the heavily radioed Lumina van of Art, the Sunrayce Route Manager. To top it off, Gary and Jon each received Sunrayce caps and a very nice compartmented backpack with the Sunrayce logo stitched on it. BT Norm NØJCC of Manhattan is known to many Trojans, as he travels through on I-70 frequently. Also he and Phyllis NØMJB were at FD'94 briefly, and at Ham Lunch recently. The Kansas State University engineering department is considering joining in the solar car madness for the 1997 Sunrayce, and if they do Norm will be one of the top faculty personnel on the team. Last word from Bennett W5ZTN who organized the ham comms support for Sunrayce '95 is that the route next time is likely to be a repeat of this year, which would give us another chance to be involved in the event. BT Mike KFØMJ had been suffering from intermittent bad tx and rx performance from his (well, NØOXP's) Yaesu rig. The problem turned out to be the pigtail from the board's antenna output to the PL259. Darel WAØGBN had similar troubles with his van mobile setup, which needed a new coax end. BT Bruce KØBJ thought his TS830's cw keying was on the blink. Turns out the culprit was his Heathkit keyer, which had "blown" the negative keying half of its circuitry. A new PNP transistor fixed the wayward keyer. In the meantime he and Jim KGØPI field-modified Jim's identical keyer to allow parallel keying with an outboard paddle, for Field Day. BT Allen KØMXU was reminiscing recently about his first Field Days in the late 50s with the Wheat Belt RC. One memorable time was when they worked all night on 15 Meters, but raised only a handful of stations. When the light of morning came, they discovered their "antenna" that night had been a coil buried under someone's pillow while they were sleeping! BT "Stick out your floppy and say 'aaahhh'..." When KBØMBS turned in the SSB log floppy for FD to FD reporter KFØMJ, Mike scanned the disk and found it infected with the "Form" virus! Jon's notebook 486 has since been disinfected! BT Gary NØXNK celebrated the BIG 40 on Firecracker day. He musta got some mad money for a present, as he's been toying with getting a MFJ Data Radio to replace his lightning-fried Standard. He's also given Tibi, KBØMBS's Hungarian student "brother", some BBS shareware, and Tibi hopes to establish a BBS in his hometown. BT Chet NSØO recently warmed up the ionosphere out in Denver, working numerous 440 repeaters with the old dualband Kenwood mobile he got from Butch. Chet's daughter comes to Colby regularly for a summer basketball team at the college. BT KFØMJ KBØLGX and families got together for dinner to celebrate the 4th. You'd think two city employees would have plenty of salt for freezing ice cream available, but guess what they were running around for at the last minute....? BT The Sunraycers had an anticlimactic finish day from Aurora to Golden -- they fought rain and overcast, with many entries being trailered in and the 'top guns' making 12-35 mph for the day. BT Not many Field Day results are in at press time, but the Sandhills ARC in Garden/Scott CIty report 527 phone and 65 cw contacts, and a whopping 51 operators and friends showing up including 19 hams making at least 1 QSO for the new 10 pt. ARRL operator bonus. Their club newsletter lists a 3914 estimated score -- for that to be correct they must have had a QRP multiplier. By the way the Trojan score this year was our 2nd best ever, falling only behind last year when hired gun NØVRP made a zillion ssb QSOs. All participants liked limiting operators to club and area hams. Most operators this year had enough time "behind the knob" and made good gains in tuning technique and "mic presence" too.