TROJAN ARC HARMONIC

MEETINGS 2^nd THURSDAYS 7PM PIONEER MEMORIAL LIBRARY

HAM LUNCH NOON THURSDAYS MONITOR .82

WORK NIGHTS AS SCHEDULED

WØWOB REPEATERS

146.22/.82

444/449.65 156.7 PL

KØFJ-2 APRS DIGI 144.39

AUGUST 2002

BACK TO EVENING MEETINGS There are advantages both ways but a number of members like the chance for longer discussions that evening meetings allow. We’re going back to 2^nd Thursday evening meetings starting this month. We’ll meet August 8 at Pioneer Memorial Library at 7PM CDT.

TWO NEW AREA CALLS Rumor was correct and Jeff ex-KCØJAO got first choice on his list and is now ACØJ. Congratulations Jeff! The NWS Office in Goodland applied for a club call and has been issued KCØNTY. Another rumor – look for them to be fishing for a vanity call, along the lines of some of the ones heard during the NWS Special Event operations.

CHS WX APRS STATION A long-term back-burner item came to the front of the stove (a 100 degree one….) July 26 when NØQE, N5DBZ and Jeremy Martin, a NWS intern met with KØFJ at the Colby APRS WX station located at the Colby High School tech lab. The wind equipment recently began sending inaccurate or no data, and the rain equipment has not worked correctly from the beginning. The NWS crew brought a new style Peet Brothers tipping rain bucket with .01” resolution and anemometer. The group quickly determined the old remote wind and rain sensors were inoperative. KØMXU got in on the act with Mike, pulling cables and working some software issues. KØBJ played gofer and got material from Golden’s for a holder for the new, larger rain bucket. Bruce also ferried the station’s rig and TNC to K-N, where NØXJ and ACØJ *(see related story!) tweaked the TNC tones, then confirmed correct operation later in the day. KBØLGX performed the final adjustments and testing with a bucket truck, once the WX station’s pole tower was raised back up. Ham Lunch at Twisters occurred in the middle of all this activity. The NWS crew had to scat to Gem to replace an AC unit for the Weather Radio transmitter located on the KQLS tower north of Gem. The system was back on-line by 1600 hrs. Thanks to all hands for helping out. Now we have a fully functional WX station at WØWOB….. maybe it’ll even record REAL rain someday!

KBØLGX adjusts the new gauge Jeremy NØQE KØFJ and N5DBZ ponder the next move!

NWS SPECIAL EVENT The 2002 SKYWARN Recognition Day is being planned by Goodland’s own NØQE and company. In coordination with WV1X and the Field and Educational Services branch at ARRL, December 7 was chosen for this year’s event. Scott will be releasing more info on this fun operating event soon. Most likely our club will be invited once again to participate with the NØA crew. This should be a great year for it; a number of the NWS hams have got their feet wet calling the noon Skywarn nets.

SCOTT CITY FEST/POTLUCK UPCOMING Rod K0EQH from the SHARC club was on the repeater recently and advises their pot luck bbq and swapfest is set for September 22 at the Scott County Fairgrounds. We normally have 4-6 Trojans attending this event and will be arranging carpooling. Holler on .82 if interested.

IRLP PROJECT HOLDUP KØFJ held an informative work night meeting on the IRLP project to prepare us for the 400+ station high-speed internet audio/radio link. The computer boards have been installed in a Linux machine. However a bottleneck has been hit in the project here. Configuring the necessary ports on the firewall, will entail a $1200 charge from SBC! That seems just a tad rich for the club treasury…. We’re looking for alternate high-speed access. Current ideas are waiting for S&T’s DSL service, or KØBJ checking with Colby Online Service to piggyback the system onto service for him (this one is problematic in that an RF link from Bruce’s QTH to Colbyweb’s radio at the CoOp elevator is questionable). In the meantime lighting up the service here is on hold.

HAM LUNCH SUMMER VENUES The CCC Union has closed down until school starts up in late August, so the Union cafeteria is NOT the default location for Friday Ham Lunches. Monitor 146.82 prior to noon (CDT) to cast your vote and find out where to bring that hungry belly.

SUNFLOWER CLUB WEBSITE KB4GFT at NWS in Goodland has developed a webpage for the Sunflower ARC. You can visit it at http://www.qsl.net/kb4gft At the site you can subscribe to a club E-zine. Here’s the latest issue. BTW the Trojan ARC website has been changed a bit and can be most easily accessed at http://colby.ixks.com/~bfrahm/trojanarc.htm

The Sunflower Seed Sunflower Amateur Radio Club

July 26, 2002

Why not forward this to a ham friend!!

Sunflower ARC Meeting

There will be a regular meeting of the Goodland, Kansas Sunflower ARC at 6 pm Saturday the 27th. It will be held at Darel Graves home at 1601 Wyoming. Darel will be cooking hot dogs and will provide the drinks. Bring salad or desert if you wish.

Weather Station Gets Club Call

The National Weather Service in Goodland, Kansas applied for a club called and received it today. KC0CTN. They will be applying for a vanity call in the near future and will let everyone know what it will be when they receive it.

VE's

Larry Boyd, KB4GFT, got some good news from the ARRL VEC the other day. He wrote to the ARRL and told them his situation of just moving to Goodland, and that he had not been envolved in ham radio for a while. He asked him if he needed to retest for the VEC position he once had several years ago. ARRL wrote back and said they were sending him his new badge and all the papers!!

This means the Sunflower ARC now has two VE's, Larry Boyd, KB4GFT and Scott Mentzer, NØQE. The Sunflower Club only needs one more to hold their own testing in Goodland.

Question...if the SARC was to hold a testing session, could they ask for help from VE's from outside of Goodland to help out? If there is anyone out there that could help, please write to Larry Boyd, KB4gft at kb4gft@qsl.net

Sunflower Website

Please pass the news on to others about the Sunflower ARC website.

More features will be added when the club's webmaster can get around to them!!

If you have any articles or ideas for it, please send KB4GFT an e-mail (just click on the call sign to bring up your mail program or copy/paste kb4gft@qsl.net into it).

Ham Links

Sunflower Amateur Radio Club

Trojan Amateur Radio Club - Colby, Kansas

http://www.qsl.net/kb4gft

TIGERTRONICS TRACKERS FIRE SALE The weather mod. people in Lakin bought a number of APRS send-only tracking units, which they are now selling. These, along with a GPS and 2M rig, set your mobile, wx station, etc up to send (but not rx) APRS data. The guy @ the wx mod site in Lakin who has the Tigertronics trackers wants $50.00 bucks each. They run over 100 bucks new. Ex-Trojan Dale Urban NØKQX, can get anybody interested in these in touch with the right person. deunju@juno.com

TROJANS SHOW IN CONTESTS

Some club member and acquaintance calls showed up in recent contest results. The 10 Meter contest in December included the following KS scores:

#	Call	Score	QSOs	Mult	Class	Power	Section	Club	Ops
1	KØGY	1,115,932	1,592	227	D	C	KS	Kansas City DX Club	(+WØTM)
2	WØNO	1,057,122	2,055	209	D	C	KS		(+ABØS)
5	KØWA	143,080	373	98	C	A	KS
8	NØQE	89,496	378	99	A	B	KS
10	KØBJ	83,904	280	76	C	B	KS	Trojan ARC

Class A=Mixed Mode C=CW D=Multi Power A=5W B=150W C=1500W

The RTTY Roundup Kansas results included 2 Trojan efforts:

#	Call	Score	QSOs	Mult	Class	Power	Section	Ops
3	KØBJ	34,830	387	90	S	A	KS
7	KØFJ	2,660	70	38	S	B	KS

DX Specialty Convention One and Nine-landers have well-established district DX conventions. Now Nick KØPCG, the main ramrod of past winning Des Moines NWS Special Event operations, has organized an event for the Black Hole-suffering Zerolanders. KØBJ and possibly other Trojans will be attending this specialty event:

The WØDXCC is a GO for Saturday, September 28th, 2002  in Omaha at the Holiday Inn Convention Center at 3321  72nd Street, Omaha Ne. 

GRAND PRIZE...... a T-8 Tennedyne Log Periodic compliments of Chuck at Tennedyne.

Convention with lunch $30.00. $35 after September 12th
Convention, Lunch and Banquet $50.00.  $55 after September 12th.

WØDXCC c/o Nick Critelli KØPCG, 
Suite 950, 
317 6th Avenue, 
Des Moines, IA 50309

Rooms are available at the Holiday Inn for a reduced rate.  Simply tell them you are with the WØDXCC Convention.  Rate is $79 for a single and $84 for a double.  The special rate expires on August 28, 2002 to get your reservations in now. Call Holiday at: 402 393-3950  or fax at 402-393-1670

Tentative Agenda
Friday: Hospitality suite hosted by the Kansas City DX Club.  Take the Kansas City CW  Challenge...are you a good as you think you are???

Saturday
8:00 to 8:30 Registration
8:30  the Call of the Zero Land DX Clubs.  An action report by the participating zero land DX clubs. 

Morning Sessions:
>>>DX Advisory Board.  Listen as members of the DX Advisory Board and ARRL Directors explain why Scarborough  is a real country !!!  Learn as they explain how the Challenge Cup award is working as well as other news affecting DX from Newington.
>>> A5  and KH1  Watch and Listen as you hear what is was like to be on their side of the DxPedition. 
>>>TI9M Cocos Is.  Get a full report of this "rare one" and possibly your QSL card. 
Afternoon  Sessions:
>>>The Log Periodic Antenna.  How it works, why it works and how does it compare to the yagi.
>>>The Transceiver Shoot-out:  All the major HF rigs will be shown and compared.  You be the judge.
>>>Contest Mania.  A multi media  view of Zeroland's best contest stations.

Evening Event: Banquet. MORE INFO AT http://members.cox.net/w0dxcc

BANDSCAN NØXJ is one of the many successful want-ad posters on QTH.com. Gregg picked up an MC85 desk mic for his TS440 and has had good luck with it. BT Congratulations to Chad ex-KCØ*** who is now NØYK. Chad was recently at Scott Lake and hit our 22/82 machine with 50 milliwatts to his hbw Arrow-type 2-band satellite antenna. He also had a G5RV and HF rig at the lake for those DX-type QSOs. Chad’s webpage is at : http://www.qsl.net/n0yk/ BT Kyle Andregg of Hoxie used to be a neighbor of the Lindbergs in Colby, and was a friend of NØXJ’s dad Marvin. He’s had interest in our hobby for a number of years and went so far as to pass the written and get a rig years ago. Now the fires are burning again and Kyle hopes to study up and work his way through the license cycle. BT KØBJ passes along his thanks to the folks who signed his ARRL Midwest Vice Director petition. If he’s elected, Bruce will begin his 10^th year on the BoD in January. BT Trojan friend Gary WØTM was at his Wolcott CO QTH for the IARU Radiosport/ WRTC contest in mid-July. Gary worked all fifty of the 2-man OJ teams competing for the world championship of contesting, 2002 version. N5TJ, who was a contesting student of past Midwest Director K4VX, and K1TO racked up their 3^rd consecutive win, an impressive record! BT On his recent trip to the ARRL board meeting, KØBJ submitted 950 QSL cards to the DXCC desk, and now holds CW SSB RTTY and 20/15/10 meter DXCCs, in addition to the Mixed award he had previously. Bruce is about 50 cards shy of initial qualifying for the DXCC Challenge band/mode plaque program. He also operated W1AW on 17M cw into Europe one afternoon after a committee meeting. BT David KBØZUO is an occasional user of the 82 machine when work takes him to Colby – he samples water wells for a Wahoo NE company. Dave is a cousin to KØBJ. He recently acquired a SB-22Ø which has some problems, and is receiving a workover from KØFJ, with occasional assistance by KØBJ. BT KAØRID and ACØE from the SHARC club attended the IRLP informational meeting last month. Thanks to Marion and Jim for adding to the discussion. BT Many Trojans and family members were among fair-goers. NØXJ and ACØJ ran a pickup pulling a float in the parade. Matt, harmonic of NØXJ/XNJ had numerous projects in 4-H including a Grand Champion Cruise missile rocket. KCØHBR’s kids were in the pedal tractor-pulling contest. KØBJ’s and KBØLGX’s harmonics were seen enjoying the fair. There must have been others as well….. BT Joe Vyzourek at KXXX/KQLS has expressed interest in getting a ham ticket. Joe is blind so will need some special resources. He’s been given the contact info for Courage Handi-Hams. Good luck to Joe, and thanks to KCØHBR for finding out about his interest. BT

NEXT MEETING AUGUST 8 7PM Pioneer Memorial Library The IRLP project and how to obtain high-speed internet service remains a top project We may discuss how frequently evening meetings should be held..

The Trojan Amateur Radio Club is a general interest educational and public service ham club. We maintain 2M and 70cm FM repeaters and APRS packet digi. Dues are $15/annually, payable to Kathy Lindberg NØXNJ, Colby KS 67701. Material from the Trojan Harmonic may be freely copied; attribution is appreciated. News and free email subscription requests to KØBJ, PO Box DX, Colby KS 67701 or bfrahm@colby.ixks.com Club website at http://colby.ixks.com/~bfrahm/trojanarc.htm