TROJAN ARC HARMONIC

NWS SPOTTER TRAINING Kevin Lynott KC0FEH will be conducting the NWS spotter training for Thomas County Tuesday March 27 at 7PM in the Community Building Little Theatre. This is a great education or refresher and allows us hams to get recertified as spotters. With the wild winter we've had, maybe the spring will turn out to be wild as well…? Could be we'll be seeing some real action in spotting this year. Come out and enjoy cookies, camaraderie, & an interesting program. This will be a bit of a celebration -- Thomas County has been named one of the first 30 Storm Ready counties in the USA, in part due to our wx spotting activities.

VE SESSION SATURDAY A session for all elements will be held Saturday March 3 at 9AM. This will be the normal venue - K0FJ's office at City Hall, upstairs at 585 N Franklin, access through the fireman entrance at south door on the east side. Walkins are welcome. There is also a tentative plan to hold a session April 28, same venue. Remember, the new VE exam fee is $10.

MARCH PRE-MEETING and MEETING VENUE _…_ FEB. MEETING CANCELLED Mike K0FJ will be taking photos for our ARES ID cards. If possible, please show up at his office at City Hall between 6:30 and 7:00PM so he can get a start on snapping facial shots. We'll go ahead and hold this meeting at the newly remodeled office in City Hall and admire the new IC706. We got hit with iffy wx and decided to call off the February meeting instead of risk someone getting stuck or hurt. This has been a hard winter so far!

FIELD DAY Three months and counting, until one of our premier events. One topic that's been kicked around is how well the multiple cut dipoles worked last year, but how 'hairy' the experience of walking the Rohn 25 tower up turned out to be. KB0MBT has located a 60' telescoping Rohn mast that would be ideal for that support, for $150 including guy system. A 40' version is available for $80. Would this be a good investment for the club? Thoughts of a 3A effort this year have been teased around too. We have a number of new or new to HF hams that might make 3A consideration. We need to survey the available pool of ops. and see if a 3-station setup (plus free VHF)could either be manned effectively, or provide enough extra enjoyment to be worth doing.

PACKET RACKET de Mike K0FJ - Big Joke guest editorial: Mike K0FJ studied JNOS in his Emergency Comms Certification course. JNOS is an operating system utilizing packet and wormholing to the internet. It also is optimized to handle formal NTS message traffic. He and Gerry KB0LGX are looking into the possibility of running JNOS in this area. Standby for further developments on this interesting-sounding tool.

440 MACHINE QRX The 440 machine at Brewster disappeared from service sometime February 25. No solid info on why, but the antenna seemed ok from the ground. KB0MBT and KC0JAO pulled the machine from KLBY Thursday and should have answers soon.

NEW HAMS IN THE AREA Oberlin is host to two active hams. Gil K0BLU & Charlotte K3RRY Hart are Extra Class and new arrivals in the area. They are looking for people to meet & to get invloved. Both are VEs so it sounds like we'll benefit from their presence. Welcome Gil and Char. We hope you'll be active with the Trojans.

$WAP TABLE FOR SALE: Yaesu FT2500 50w 2M base/mobile 'milspec' station w. 5/8 wave lip-mount antenna. $175 Ron Moore N0TSF Hoxie, or contact Allen K0MXU

BANDSCAN Bad news for Trojans -- Larry N0ZTM has transferred to Greeley with his job and his family will be following shortly. We'll miss them (and their camper!) at Field Day and other activities. Gary K0BAJ of Garden City and his XYL Patty have been maritime mobile in the Gulf of Mexico. They have a beautiful boat they keep at Galveston and recently had the chance to sail to their 2^nd home in Port Isabel, the 3^rd last Texas gulf coast town before Mexico. (A place called Bagdad is the last one!). Jim KC0HBR caught Gary operating on one of the WARC bands. FJ BJ MBT PI and HBR met Gary and his XYL at the Scott City picnic this summer. BT K0BJ got to enjoy contesting on his Cayman trip, where he operated the 160 M cw contest from the ZF1A club shack. This was his same TS-50 and the club's 160 inverted vee at 100' that Bruce piloted to a difficult 55 QSOs 2 years ago. However this time the band was hopping and 560 Qs were made, including numerous Europeans and one Japanese station - pretty impressive for Topband! One graveyard shift rest break presented the chance to wrestle with and catch a 10" crab that BJ took back to the condo for family and friends to admire. BT Speaking of Bruce's Cayman trip, pres. KC0HBR was the king of sked-keeping with ZF2CM, but Trojans K0MXU and K0FJ also logged the vacationer, as did AC0E and W0YQX from the SHARC club. The guys tried to pull the wool over Bruce's eyes about the dismal wx back here, but he didn't bite…. for too long, anyway. BT K0FJ put the new EOC IC-706 through its paces on 75 Thursday night with the regular monthly RACES meeting on 3.940 and got good signal reports. BT Moe Francis W0SZF (the man who made CW Juice famous, for those long-time Field Day veterans….) has had medical travails recently. First was a hip replacement, then he had unsuccessful angioplasty followed by heart bypass surgery. True to his crusty RR landline-op nature. Moe is home and doing fine now. He was often on 17M, sometimes mobile, in prior years, while snowbirding down south. BT Mike K0FJ has taken ARRL's popular web-based Emergency Communications Certification Course. The class is taken on the web, with mentors available to facilitate learning. FJ will receive CEU credits and a diploma for completing the course. FJ gave the course high marks for its thorough treatment of the subject. ARRL will be offering an advanced Emerg. Comms. Course soon, as well as courses on other subjects. BT Congratulations to Scott KB0WPY, who is now a DXCC member! And he's still basking in the glory of the successful NWS Special Event we all enjoyed. BT Bruce K0BJ went from 1 to zero working light bulbs in his TS-50 2^nd rig's LCD display on returning from the Caribbean. After a little tool procurement help from the guys at K-N Communications, Bruce got some Radio Shack bulbs to replace the originals. He guessed the circuit was 12 v, and guessed high -- the replacements work fine but dim. Should improve life of the repair, but he's evaluating whether they provide enough light or if a lower voltage replacement should be installed. BT Butch WA0VJR is pretty settled in Las Vegas, but returned recently to take some more stuff to the new QTH. He's still working on getting antennas up. BT Another wanderer is Chet NS0O, who is a bit closer to us nowadays as he's moved to Quinter, a bit closer than Leoti. He too is looking to get up some antennas. BT During the recent ARRL DX CW contest Bruce K0BJ worked his yachting buddy Mike KM9D/mm, as ZL1CMY. Bruce didn't fully appreciate the QRP aspect of Mike's 5 watt report at the time of the QSO -- he was tenting in the rain and running wire antennas fed by homebrew open wire line, all driven with an Elecraft K-1 dual band QRP rig he'd just completed days earlier. BT Musical rigs….. When John WA0CAL's TS-820 ended up at the KB0LGX QTH, little did anyone suspect it'd soon be moving on….. It's now sitting at KC0JAO's and Jeff's likely to have privileges to heat them tubes and make some HF QSOs. BT Jim KC0HBR continues to knock off DX at a steady pace from his modest but effective station. Ah, to be a rabid DX hound once again, with plenty of fresh meat available through the speaker…… BT Ham Lunch participants March 1 enjoyed more than the Gambino's pizza; Jim W0EB from Wichita joined the gang. Jim was in the army in a different life in Viet Nam in code intercept. In fact Garden City mayor and ace ham Jim AC0E, was in the same unit (or something…) as Jim EB. It was fun getting some stories spun by this long-time ham

The Trojan Amateur Radio Club is a general interest educational and public service ham club. We maintain 2M and 70cm FM repeaters 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