TROJAN-ARC HARMONIC JUNE 1996

JUNE MEETING - FIELD DAY PLANS -1015 MAIZE ROAD - 7:00 CT JUNE 20

The editor's word processing software is STILL waiting to be reloaded after the hard drive

crash, and with a trip to the east coast no June newsletter went out before the regular

meeting. A half-dozen Trojans met informally at Fike Park and decided we should meet two

days before Field Day to firm up plans. The meeting will be at Helen Frahm's house, the first

one SW of the Methodist Church on s. Franklin. We won't cover much besides Field Day

plans. Paul NOTM of Stratton NE has agreed to bring alot of gear, especially VHF stuff, and

we should have a real good setup for bonus stations this year in addition to the normal 2A

stations. S0, we can use as many ops as possible. Also John WAOCAL, of Brewster and now

Colby, wants to join our club and plans to visit the site.

For those of you who don't make the meeting Thursday -- we'll be gathering at the I-70 eastbound rest area, about 4 miles east of Levant, Friday afternoon. VE exams will be held, probably Friday evening. Field flay runs from 1 pm Saturday to 1 pm Sunday. Food and gear arrangements will be finalized Thursday, but the main thing is to SHOW UP and lend a hand with operating/setting up.

AREA PACKET MEETING HELD IN HAYS

The Hays ARC generously hosted a meeting of packet node and bbs ops and any other

interested persons, Saturday June 15. There was good representation of the critical persons

in the NWKS packet region, except Downs and Great Bend, which had conflicts. From the

Trojan club, the packet ad hoc committee of KOMXU KOBJ and WAOGBN attended, as did

NOSEG :and KB0NYC. Afruitful 2 hour-discussion took place. While no "official" action was

taken, those in attendance agreed to the following general ideas for purposes of planning:

We should initiate 70cm backbone capability, and should use 9600 baud in the area on 446.1

Mhz. Individual keyboard users will be discouraged from using the backbone frequency.

Using 9600 baud will require more initial costs to get the system going but it was felt by most

participants that the extra speed would be worthwhile. Most of the node/sysops indicated they

could probably be up and running on 446.1 at 9600 baud within a couple months to a couple

years. Our CLBY node is actually very near this capability now, with the 'windfall' MFJ 1270C

tnc, and a donated 440 radio that just needs minor modifications, thanks to the foresight of

putting up a dualband antenna at CLBY. If Butch WAOVJR can obtain a tnc upgrade and

antenna we could link from CLBY to the WAOVJR bbs on 440 which in itself would be of

significant benefit to packet users in our area, even if others are much delayed in getting on

packet. More will be discussed later on this.

KGOPI NOW A BIG GUN

Jim KGOPI has been earnestly collecting Rohn 25, a rotator and A3 tribander for quite some

time. D-DAY came the afternoon of June 15, when KFOMJ KOBJ, their XYLs and KBOMBS

came over for a Raising Party. Despite some slightly butchered leg joints and rain from a

nearby thunderstorm, the group got the A3 installed at 42'. As they say, an antenna put up in

bad wx is more likely to ride out storms The folks enjoyed hamburgers and fixins after

the raising, but the big reward came when they snagged Hawaii and Moscow for the first

QSOs on the new antenna. The yagi outperformed Jim's old roof-mounted dipole by 7 S-units

on a Massachusetts station! Look out world -- KGOPI rules the airwaves.

SONYA COOPER SCORES BIG AT HISTORY DAY For her final History Day event, Hoxie HS senior Sonya Cooper didn't fool around: Her program on Prohibition took 2nd place nationally at the finals in Maryland! Bruce KOBJ got the good news firsthand, as Sonya, another Hoxie competitor, Mrs. Emerich and the Coopers were in the US Senate Gallery at the same time as Bruce, to watch his sister-in-law Sheila Frahm being sworn-in as Senator replacing Bob Dole. Congratulations Sonya! Mrs. Emerick commented that the ham radio topic Sonya used as a freshman was her most unique.

FCC NEWS

The FCC surprised everybody by opening up gate 1 of the Vanity Call program May 31 ! The Ak-Sar-Ben club of Omaha was one of the first recipients, getting their old KOUSA call back. Gate 1 is only for clubs or individuals to get former calls back. Gate 2 opening has not been determined, but will depend on the volume of Gate 1 requests. There will be adequate prewarning time. Form 610V is the proper way to file a request, See KOBJ if interested.

The "little LEO" industry, which wants to use low earth orbit satellites for messaging services, included 2 meters and 70cm in their list of candidate bands! Some initial email word from ARRL Hq and others has prompted a flood of objections to the plan, from hams, and now that July QST is on the streets even more can be expected. Details on how to file in this matter are in July QST. You can also get info from KOBJ, or off the ARRL web site on the Internet.