TROJAN ARC HARMONIC

FJ & BJ DEPLOY TO HOISINGTON FOR COMMS WORK After conferring with Section Emergency Manager WD0DMV, Mike and Bruce loaded up the K0FJ van with self-sufficient food/camping eqpt./ham gear and generator, and taveled to Hoisington Monday after the Saturday night killer storm. There was plenty of food and beds, and for the most part local comms had been taken care of on 2m and telephone lines were being restored. FJ and BJ did set up a rig on 3920 and were ready to make quick health and welfare reports, but had minimal business due to the phone line situation. They gave up knob twisting Tuesday morning to ride a Red Cross ERV into the devastated part of town, delivering breakfast and drinks to scores of cleanup workers. This was the worst of 3-4 fresh tornado sites K0BJ has seen over the years. The hams stood down from all but Salvation Army liaison work Tuesday afternoon and the pair returned to Colby. Special thanks to K-N Communications for reprogramming the club's, and a spare, Motorola HT to work the Great Bend repeater and repeater output talkaround. Also special mention goes to Rick Lindquist N1RL who put together a comprehensive story on ARRL's public access website at http:// More than half the photos in the article were taken by Mike and Bruce. The May 3 Colby Free Press also had an article.

RIG AT HOSPITAL Citizens medical Center has agreed to purchase a ham VHF rig and antenna for use at their location. K0FJ will be requisitioning that shortly. We hope to be able to entice a hospital employee to become licensed, but if the need arose, it would be easy to send an op. to provide comms with a good rig and antenna already in place.

N0XJ Ex-KB0MBT is exercising his new Extra vanity call. Gregg has taken some ribbing for becoming one of "the J triplets", for moving from the middle to the back of roll call lists, and for being set up for confusion with Ross W0XJ of Ellsworth. There is one big upside to the new call, other than the sporty 1 x 2 configuration -- it’s just one character different from XYL Kathy's N0XNJ call. Hmmm…., if it's Kat 'n Dawg, shouldn't that 'n be in his call, not hers….?

CTCSS TONE PLANS After discussing the situation with skip and local noise sources, it was decided to PL the 146.82 repeater, but not by unanimous vote, at the April meeting. N0XJ and KC0JAO have already implemented 156.7 tone encoding/decoding on the 444.65 repeater. We've now decided to build a circuit to command the 2 meter encoding up or down with touchtones, so we can normally run an open machine, but protect from unwanted DX when the band is hot. This circuit will also bring the return of a tone warning when we're on battery power at the repeater, and provide a voice announcement of the PL tone being active. K0FJ is working on the necessary circuit.

HAMS GALORE AT NWS GOODLAND Five new hams are among the ranks at the GLD wx office, which will really aid the on-air spotting support we've received from Scott N0QE, Kevin KC0FEH and occasional Goodland civilian hams. The five new Amateurs are:

Llyle Barker III KC0KOS
Grady Bonsall KC0KPE
Aaron Dorn KC0KOR
Clarence Entwistle KC0KOQ
Michael Lammers KC0KOP

K0FJ NAMED NOAA ENVIRONMENTAL HERO Congrats to Mike, whose work with wx spotting, getting Colby StormReady, the wx packet node at Colby High School, etc got him recognized as one of 27 NOAA Environmental Heroes. The award, part of Earth Day celebrations, was delivered personally by Scott N0QE and Kevin KC0FEH at the Ramada Inn, in a special Ham Lunch railroaded by K0BJ KG0PI and KC0HBR. Mike's recognition on the NWS side of the NOAA house was a little different -- most of the 22 individuals and 5 families/groups cited had performed volunteer duties more in the oceanographic side of NOAA's interest. Mike is now an honorary tree-hugger, along with many turtle, bird, fish and other advocates and experts. More info at http://www.noaa.gov/earthday/heroes.htm

FIELD DAY The 60' Rohn mast has been ordered. Thoughts of a 3A effort this year continue but no decision has been made. We need to do some advance work at the airport (street light shielding, etc) and on other gear (The Tailtwister indicator, for one…). Discussion at the meeting.

PACKET RACKET de Mike K0FJ - Plans to switch packet over to 144.39 are made; we're waiting to establish a node at K0BJ's Halford grain bins before making the switch to the national standard. Gregg N0XJ is sending APRS position info on a regular basis from his pickup now with his D700. He even got WINAPRS updated at home so it didn't try to put him in Ohio…! K0BJ has been mumbling about the possibility of getting his D700 to do the same in his Explorer, but don't hold your breath…

BANDSCAN Bruce K0BJ has been appointed to ARRL's Novice Spectrum Repurposing committee. With Novice calls no longer issued and a small base of licensees, the Novice subbands are badly underutilized. The committee will survey ARRL membership, study their own ideas, and make a recommendation to the full ARRL board. BT N0XJ recently need to tackle a nasty interference situation lousing up his receivers at home over a broad spectrum. Acting on a tip of similar problems at the airport, Gregg started sniffing around and after some false starts -- it looked as though the culprit was right in his house….?!? Turns out a scanner was hashing things up when in scan mode. Physician, heal thyself…! BT Notoriety is a funny thing. Within one week, K0FJ in particular and the club in general, got mention on the ARRL's webpage. Between the Web Extra report of the Hoisington tornado, and In Brief coverage of Mike's NOAA award, we should be well-recognized by ARRL news readers. We'll probably go a decade before another "15 minutes of fame"…. BT Looks as though NWS Goodland is going to be able to reimburse purchase of the 440 antenna for our KLBY repeater. The location should be ideal for communicating with them in marginal wx conditions that seem to reduce ranges. Thanks NWS guys! BT Mike KC0IWH has joined the ranks of web-purchasers of ham gear. He's the new owner of an IC-718 HF rig. For now a longwire at Sunflower Apts will let him SWL, and he hopes to have the ticket and antenna in place later in rural KC to give the rig a real workout. No chance of running FM on this rig, but otherwise it looks like a winner, Mike says. BT

NEXT MEETING MAY 10 PIONEER MEM. LIBRARY 7:00PM. Field Day will be on the front burner; new scanner book, Emergency Agency day May 19 at armory, etc.

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