SPOTTER TRAINING March 23 Thomas County spotter’s training will be held at the CCC Union at 7:00pmCST pm. With the departure of Dennis Hull KB0NYC, Kevin Lynott (see next article) will be doing the training, so there’s likely to be a new presentation.

NEW HAM AT NWS Kevin Lynott at NWS just passed the Technician exam and is awaiting his callsign assignment. Great timing – Kevin goes on the road this month with weather spotter training in the counties covered by NWS Goodland, and we’ll probably be hearing from him during our spotting activities. Kevin’s desk is adjacent to the 2m equipment!

NEW HARMONIC AT LAST! Congratulations to Shawn KC0CVS and Christy who are now sharing their home with Shelton Edward, who weighed 9 1/3 lbs at birth. If alot of hair is an indication of ham aptitude, the kid oughta be licensed shortly!

SOLAR CAR UPDATE Trojans have been active with Sunrayce support during the last two runs. However this year officials have moved the action to the east coast (where the traffic is much worse but sponsor $ are easier to obtain) so we’ll be away from the race and have to rely on Internet reports. This will be K-State’s 2^nd time in the race and the following info is from Norm N0JCC, Sunrayce faculty advisor for KSU and frequent W0WOB repeater user: Good progress has been made recently on

the KSU Solar Car; Apollo #11. Qualification is at the end

of April in Michigan and the Rayce is at the end of June.

If we have time we'll give a tour of the current progress

after the next regular MAARS meeting. The team has made a

lot of progress on encapsulating and testing the 700+ solar

cells on the car. The individual testing is almost done.

The prototype of the maximum power tracker to get as much

energy possible from the solar cells is being constructed.

Most of the data acquisition system had been built and the

two-meter packet link is working. We hope to have a 9600

baud/440 MHz system for the race. The motor and controller

finally arrived. It's a ($12,000) hub motor that is very

efficient. We also have all of the race batteries and extra

test batteries. We're using special lead-acid batteries and

not the $40,000 NMH battery pack made available by Ovonics.

The composite frame is all done and all four wheels should

be attached by the meeting. The main part of the composite

body has been painted. If you have questions about the car

just call "CQ Solar Car Team" on the 145.41- KSUARC repeater

and you'll probably get an answer. The team members are

required to have a Ham license to go on the race. In

addition to the APRS/GPS mapping in the lead car and two

support vehicles we also use 2-meter and 440 MHz to

communicate with the driver and each other; 440 MHz for data

as already mentioned plus we'll be experimenting with SSTV

on HF.

TROJANS ACTIVE IN DX CONTESTS Scott KB0WPY and Bruce K0BJ put in some time during the ARRL DX contests, both the cw and sideband weekends. Bruce had a great time with hot band conditions on the cw weekend, and bagged 760 QSOs. Scott found the speed of average contest exchanges challenging, but managed a little under 100 Qs and a number of new DXCC countries. BJ only made 70 SSB contest Qs, with much less favorable band conditions. No report from Scott by press time.

BANDSCAN BT Dennis Brown, formerly of Colby and now from Oberlin, is

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