TROJAN ARC HARMONIC

CHRISTMAS PARTY AT K0BJ QTH Due to booking difficulties with Montana Mike’s our Christmas party will be at K0BJ’s, 1553 County Road T on regular meeting night Dec. 14, 6pm. From 24/25 intersection it’s 3 miles west, 1 mile north and ½ mile west, 2^nd house. We will not have a sitdown meal – please bring a pot luck munchy of some sort. Trojans, family and guests are welcome. K0FJ will conduct ARES signup for anyone not yet recently registered, and will accept dues for 2001. Bruce’s shack will be open for tours.

JANUARY HOLIDAY PARTY Kathy N0XNJ has booked the Colonial Steakhouse in Oakley for a Holiday party similar to the one we had last year. This will be our regular meeting night January 11; meet at 6pm and order at 6:30. Kathy needs a preliminary count; please advise her of your plans on or before the December party.

70CM MACHINE UP AND RUNNING A big thanks is owed to KB0MBT and KC0JAO for getting the 444.65 machine going. This was a long-ago repoed commercial machine that the guys recently padded down to our coordinated 70cm frequency. The ID is an audio unit which Gregg and Jeff have programmed utilizing a website that synthesizes well-inflected speech. MBT and JAO had some fun playing with this feature – the crowd favorite was the "Di Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah….." spoken cw ID. After some burn-in at K-N the repeater was moved to our old packet dualband antenna site at KLBY. The bad news is the machine is looking at a lousy 7:1 SWR due to some undetermined feedline or antenna problem. The good news is -- range is very good anyway!

ATTEND WB0DRL OPEN HOUSE? It has been a couple years since any Trojans attended the New Years Day open house at the WB0DRL VHF superstation in Hedville. The 190 mile one way drive is made worthwhile by viewing the awesome setup at Pete’s station, and enjoying a small buffet of goodies with visiting hams. We’ll discuss this at the Christmas party and see if we have enough interest to bring a vanload to Pete’s.

CQ CALENDARS Some of you are familiar with the "QTH" and "Classic rig" 15 month calendars that CQ publishes. In prior years we have done a group order and saved postage costs, although we didn’t do an order for Y2K calendars. We’ll display and discuss these at the Christmas meeting and see about ordering this year.

NWS EVENT FUN The N0A effort was a lot of fun, with Colbyites K0FJ KB0MBT K0BJ KG0PI KC0JAO and KC0IWH making the trip. Trojans WA0GBN KC0HQZ KB0WPY and KC0FEH also operated, and AA0PP and K0GS attended as well. The Trojan trailer tower was used to support the TH3 and dipoles for 20/40/80, and the NWS windom antenna was available also. Their IC706 as well as K0FJ’s were the rigs used. The guys made 801 QSOs during the 24 hour special event. Only half of the 83 NWS stati ons on for the event have reported in, but N0A is hoping their 810 effort may be the 2^nd highest – they’re pretty sure Des Moines outdid them again this year. N0A logged 56 of the other NWS offices. The rigs were even kept on during the wee hours, an easier feat when so many ops are available. Photos and statistics are available at the NWS GLD website http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gld/

BANDSCAN Gregg KB0MBT was the successful bidder for a TMD700 Kenwood data radio and GPS from eBay. Seems as though the K-N gang is really getting into this eBay stuff.. rumor has it Jeff KC0JAO is working on further goodie grabs. BT Congratulations to weekend warrior Jake KB0ZIA. He recently was awarded a National Guard Emergency Service Duty ribbon for deployment in the heavy snowfall last month. BT Sheriff candidate Tom N0XNO made a good run but came up short in his bid to unseat the incumbent. Sorry Tom, but maybe this means you have more time to ham it up now that the campaign is over? BT Congratulations to Dave N0TES who just graduated from Highway Patrol school, and is assigned to Goodland. Yet another badge-carrying ham will be in our area. Dave, you oughta have plenty of time for hamming now that you’re not doing hundreds of pushups and miles of running every day! FJ and OXP went to the graduation in Salina. BT K0FJ’s newly-mounted mobile IC-706 has seen some limited HF action, thanks to loan of a 3-pad mag mount and Pro-Am 17 and 6M whips from K0BJ. Mike’s looking at eventually installing a screwdriver or Hustler. BT During the NWS special event Darel WA0GBN took K0BJ and Jim AA0PP, GHS math instructor, out for some 160M fun. After the 11:30pm CST signoff of KLOE 730 kHz, the trio went to the base of the station’s free standing 310’ tower. The 15’ square base is insulated at each of the 4 legs, with a watermelon sized porcelain insulator! They set up a TS-50 and tuner in the KLOE "matching network shack". By padding the tuner’s cap. With 47pf in parallel, the tower matched up fine on 160. It was colder than a well-digger’s toenail in the ventilated shack, so Bruce just made a quick tour up the band during the ARRL cw 160 contest, working 36 stations in 31 minutes before they ran away freezing. The guys hope to get a lantern or two and put the station on again in the CQ SSB 160 in late Feb. No DX was heard, but all parts of the USA were pounding in. BT Jake KB0ZIA is ready to study for the General and is looking for a used but newer (post-RF Exposure) General manual. Anybody help out? BT Kevin KC0FEH did great and had fun running stations on HF in the N0A event. He’s hoping to test for General prior to his busy wx spotting spring training leadership. BT Results of the June VHF QSO Party are out. Son/father rover team Matt and Scott signed KB0YFN and activated 7 grids making 93 Qs. They were 3^rd of 3 in Midwest division, but would have ranked halfway up in 7 divisions, including some much more populated than Midwest Div. K0BJ entered the QRP portable category with his pvc quad and 8 watt transverter and bagged 31 Qs. This put him 3^rd in Midwest region (4 division group) QRP, but behind N0JK of Wichita, who is National Contest Journal’s VHF editor. Acknowledged KS VHF wizards N0LL and K0KQY grabbed 561 and 253 Qs respectively, on 5 bands each, but didn’t grab slots in the Midwest Region High Power box. BT Jim KC0HBR has been nabbing DX with his peanut whistle station, but is dreaming of getting his tower planted and swinging a yagi, which should salt his signal a fair bit. BT A big relay occurred when contest station owner W0CEM of Jct. City sold his screwdriver mobile antenna to K0BJ. Jon KB0MBS picked up the ant from CEM before his big RV holiday, then K0FJ nabbed the goodie from Jon when he attended a school in Manhattan last week. Bruce has yet to decide whether he’ll keep the tunable ant. for his own mobile setup, or sell it to K0FJ…. BT K0BJ will be thawing out on Grand Cayman Jan 21- Feb 3 and signing ZF2CM. In the next newsletter Bruce will publish a sked and hopes to work some of the home gang. BT KC0HQZ KC0HBR and KC0IWH were all set to help K0BJ out with a multiop effort in SSB Sweepstakes. Bruce came down with flu Sat. morning and managed to call Brad on the landline. However Jim and Mike didn’t get the wave-off ‘til they showed up at the scene of the crime and got the news from Bruce’s XYL. BJ made it to the shack by Sunday afternoon and managed to make 150 Qs to get his participation pin. K0FJ fared better, making over 300 Qs in the contest between various projects. But the winner among Trojans was Scott KB0WPY, who pulled down about 450 contacts and missed only SD WY PQ and one other Canadian province for a clean sweep.

The Trojan Amateur Radio Club is a general interest educational and public service ham club. We maintain a 2M FM repeater and a station at the NWS in Goodland. Dues are $10/annually, payable to Mike Albers K0FJ, 140 E. Cherry, 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