November 1997

President's Message 
Our November 6 meeting program will be WARC's annual ARRL Night .  We've invited Atlantic Division Director  Kay Craigie (WT3P) and Eastern Pennsylvania Section Manager Bernie Fuller (W3TI) to give WARC members an update on League  and general ham radio happenings. And don't forget to bring your questions to the meeting- we'll leave plenty of time for "dialogue" after Kay and Bernie give us a general overview. This is also an excellent opportunity to invite a guest ham who might not be a member of an ARRL affiliated club and wouldn't otherwise have a chance to meet with our local ARRL leadership. 
At the November meeting, Steve Larson (KA3ZLY) and Marty Squicciarni (NR3Z), Nominating Committee Co-Chairpersons, will present a slate of candidates for election of  two Directors that will be held at the January 9, 1998 general meeting.  This is an opportunity for any current WARC member to be part of the club leadership at the Board level- please contact Steve or Marty if you would like to be on the slate of candidates.  Ballots will be mailed with the January FEEDBACK and nominations from the floor will also be accepted at the January meeting. We are grateful to WARC members  Steve (KA3ZLY) Larson (Fall Protection) and George (KA3WXV) Altemus (RF Hazards) for putting together an informative program at our October meeting on safety concerns that are important to all of us as amateur radio operators. Club Vice President Hank Hamarman (N3NID) is always interested in  receiving ideas for future programs.  Drop him an e-mail (bunnies@itw.com), call him on the phone (610-287-4891) or pass along your thoughts at a board or general meeting. One of the major accomplishments of the club last year was our participation in the ARRL sponsored January VHF Sweepstakes contest. With Joe Bagnick's (N3EMA) leadership, WARC submitted 22 logs last year and took 6th place with a score of 57K in the "local club" category.   And MOST important to me was the fact that we submitted the largest number of logs for all clubs in the local club category (the eighth largest number of logs of the 39 affiliated club entries) for the '97 SS contest. As those who participated last year know, you don't have to be a die hard contester, have a "power" station or operate the entire contest period to have fun participating. Virtually everyone in the club has the ability to be involved and I hope you will spend some time between now and the weekend of January 17-18, 1998 to prepare your station so the club can have an even better showing in the '98 SS event. Joe will be talking up the contest during the next three months, so let's all start thinking  about our equipment, antennas, new bands and computerized logging. If you haven't already done so, send in your reservation for WARC's December Holiday Family Dinner.  This is always one of the most enjoyable club activities we have and provides us with a great opportunity to socialize with club members and their families. 
de  Bill , K3MFI 

Thanksgiving Day 5 Mile Run 
        Thursday, November 27, 1997 at 9:00 am to 12:00 pm. Event benefits the Bucks/Montgomery Women's Shelter- please bring a non perishable food item.We need at least 20 operators to staff  this event. Please contact Doc Whitticar (W3GAD) by e-mail at docw@voicenet.com or by telephone at 968-6397 or sign up at  the November 6 General meeting. 

WARC Seeks '98 Grange Fair Chairperson 
The Warminster Amateur Radio Club is seeking a chairperson for its participation at the 50th annual Middletown Grange Fair in August, 1998. The successful candidate will be responsible for coordinating the club's message handling activities, seeing that updated display material about ham radio and the club is developed and selecting day captains who will oversee activities for each of the five days.  This annual event attracts over 30,000 visitors and provides club members with annual training in message handling, an opportunity to increase the awareness of amateur radio in the general community; students for club sponsored licensing classes and prospective WARC  members. Contact a Board member if you are interested in this challenging and important position. 
 

UPDATED MEMBERSHIP LISTING 
Available at the November 6 General Meeting- please check for accuracy and give additions and corrections to Membership Chairperson Don McCunney (KA3N) or reach him by e-mail dmmccunney@njaost.ml.com or by telephone (215) 364-7891.  If you have a new or updated e-mail address, please let him know. 
 

BATTERY BAGS 
Will be delivered at the November 6 General meeting to those who previously reserved them. Unless you make other arrangements, "reservations" will not be honored past the November 6 General Meeting.  Some additional "green bags" (which include 2.3 ah battery, charger and cigarette adapter and fused plug) are available for $15.  Contact Stu Simon (N2QBU) at (215) 345- 9295 
if interested. 
 

Club to Elect Two Directors In January 
In accordance with the club's constitution, the membership will elect two Directors who will serve one year terms on WARC's Board at the January 8 General Meeting.  If interested, contact nominating committee co-chairpersons Steve (KA3ZLY) or Marty (NR3Z).  Ballots will be in January'98 FEEDBACK; nominations will also be taken from the floor at the January 8 meeting. 

Here is a couple of local links to add to the feedback 
The Rf Connection (Coax and Connectors) 
http://www.therfc.com 
 
The Rope Man, Irv Miller (the guy that comes to the 
hamfests) http://www.qth.com/rope 

Al WI3Z 

Hartsville Fire 
Company 
Ladies Auxiliary 
Buffet Breakfast 
Hartsville Fire 
Company 
1195 York Road 
Sunday, Nov. 2, 1997 
8 am to 1 pm 

The menu includes: 
Eggs made to order, sausage, ham, pancakes, hash brown potatoes, toast, coffee, juice and milk. 

Price:  $ 5.00 Adults   $ 2.50 Children Under 4 years, Free 

For any additional information call 672-9242 

de Rocky, KA3YVR 
 

MAYORS ON BOTH COASTS LAUD HAM RADIO 
For the second time in his administration, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recognized Amateur Radio by issuing a proclamation declaring Amateur Radio Awareness Day in the Big Apple. The September 19 ceremony was attended by Howard Price, KA2QPJ, NYC ARES EC for media and public relations/NYC RACES deputy radio officer; Charles Hargrove, N2NOV, Staten Island EC/radio officer; Matt Evans, WA2UKM, Brooklyn AEC; Scott Swanson, N9SAT; John Kiernan, KE2UN; and Jerry Cudmore, K2JRC. 
On the West Coast earlier this year, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown praised a local ham radio emergency  organization during a meeting of the City and County of San Francisco Disaster Council in late April. 
"I must also tell you that I have been frankly fascinated with that unpaid group of people with those ham radios, the Auxiliary Communications Service," the mayor said. Brown said that the ACS makes available "a wireless system that seldom if ever can be totally disrupted by a disaster" and that "ham radio operators are the heart and the soul and the life blood of that system."-thanks to Barry A Schwartz, N2SHP, The Hudson Loop, and Dave Larton, N6JQJ 

WORLD RADIOCOMMUNICATION CONFERENCE 97 TO OPEN IN GENEVA 
Four items of prime interest to Amateur Radio will be on the agenda when the World Radiocommunication Conference 97 (WRC-97) opens October 27 in Geneva, Switzerland. ARRL Technical Relations Manager Paul Rinaldo, W4RI, is a member of the US delegation to the conference. Others attending include IARU representatives Larry Price, W4RA, Wojciech Nietyksza, SP5FM, and Michael Owen, VK3KI. Representing Canadian amateurs on his nation's delegation will be Jim Dean, VE3IQ, of Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC). 
WRC-97 delegates will discuss the so-called "Little LEO" issue during the monthlong session. While the Little LEO industry's preliminary proposals to share 2 meters, 1-1/4 meters and 70 cm generated quite a stir in the amateur community last year, current US proposals do not include any plans for sharing of amateur frequencies. Also of interest to hams is the specter of increased interference on some amateur UHF allocations from Earth Exploration Satellites (EES), used for mapping by synthetic aperture radars (SARs) that are expected to be mostly active in the Southern hemisphere. 
Amateur radio delegates will make known the needs of our service. WRC-97 will be asked to consider allocating the band 430-440 MHz to EES and upgrading the status of EES at 1240-1300 MHz. Wind profiler radar systems operating near 50, 449 and 1000 MHz also bear watching because of the potential for interference to Amateur Radio. These systems are used by weather forecasters to look at wind patterns in the higher atmosphere. 
WRC-97 delegates also will set the agenda for WRC-99, where the potential exists to establish a worldwide 40-meter allocation. The current US concept calls for a "harmonized" band at 6900 to 7200 kHz that would be available to hams around the globe. This would mean hams would shift down by 100 kHz while broadcasters moved 100 kHz up the band. Yet to be determined is how fixed services would be handled in the realignment. The IARU is committed to the goal of a 300-kHz worldwide exclusive allocation for 40 meters.  Right now, only 7000 to 7100 kHz is available in Regions 1 and 3, where broadcasters dominate the upper 200 kHz of the band. 
WRC-97 is scheduled to conclude November 21. 

GEORGIA HAM WORKS KC5VPF ABOARD MIR 
US astronaut Dave Wolf, KC5VPF, has settled in aboard the Russian Mir space station to the point that he finally got a chance to get his feet wet on 2-meter FM last weekend. Tom Crowley, KT4XN, in Atlanta, Georgia, reports he responded to Wolf's CQ as the spacecraft passed over Southern Florida. "We talked for about 5 or 6 minutes on 145.985 MHz," Crowley said. "Dave said they had just finished dinner and watching a movie. He said he was trying to fix the CD player for music. Otherwise, just enjoying the view and taking it easy on Sunday." 
The contact between Wolf and Crowley was the first reported Mir-to-Earth FM voice contact since Wolf joined the Mir crew in September. Wolf is a relatively new ham and has little on-the-air experience. Before he returned to Earth, Wolf's predecessor, Mike Foale, KB5UAC, gave him a quick course on how to use the ham gear and packet system. Incidentally, the SAFEX 70-cm FM repeater aboard Mir is not yet back in operation. 

SEARCH CONTINUES FOR NEW PHASE 3D VEHICLE 
Germany's AMSAT Vice President Peter Guelzow, DB2OS, this week expressed confidence that the Phase 3D Amateur Radio satellite will get off the ground in 1998. "We are certain that P3D will be launched next year on an Ariane," he said in a statement released by AMSAT News Service. 
Guelzow's prediction concluded a lengthy statement in which he called on hams to not "jeopardize the present negotiations by speculations and expressions of bad tempers." Phase 3D had been scheduled to be launched aboard an Ariane rocket in late September (the launch of the Ariane 502 has since been delayed by another month until October 28 "at the earliest"). But last-minute revisions in the European Space Agency's predictions of vibration and stress aboard the flight meant AMSAT had no time to meet new mechanical specifications and still stay on schedule. Guelzow called the situation "very regrettable," but said AMSAT had to accept it. 
Some hams were not as complacent, however and publicly took ESA to task for bumping Phase 3D from the Ariane 502 launch. As the Phase 3D Program Board had done just last month, Guelzow suggested that such actions were counter-productive. He also said he's optimistic that the Phase 3D program will learn and benefit from the Ariane 502 launch, once it happens. "Immediately after the AR-502 launch, AMSAT and ESA will have enough facts to search for an amicable solution which will guarantee an early launch of P3D taking into consideration the actual Ariane flight-planning," Guelzow 
said.-AMSAT News Service 

APRS donation: The "father of APRS," Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, has donated a copy of the latest Automatic Packet Reporting System software to W1AW. --Joe Carcia, NJ1Q 

SOLAR UPDATE 
Propagation prognosticator Tad Cook, K7VVV, in Seattle, Washington, reports: Judging from the high solar flux and sunspot activity over a month ago, recently we expected to see more of that same activity, since the sun rotates relative to Earth once every 27.5 days. Unfortunately, by the time the rotation was complete, most of those active regions were gone. 
This week we saw solar activity go up only by a little. On five out of seven days the solar flux was above the average for the previous 90 days. 
Geomagnetic activity was up a lot though over last weekend, when the Estimated Planetary K Index was up to six over several periods. This is a very high value, indicating very stormy conditions with high absorption of radio signals. The most recent forecast indicates a small rise in solar flux into the low 90s next week, peaking around October 22 and 23, then dropping back to the mid-80s before the end of the month. Look for unsettled to active geomagnetic conditions around November 5 and 6. 
The NOAA Space Environment Center reports that a panel of solar experts met recently and fixed the probable date for the solar minimum around October 1996 and within a possible range from May through December. Panelists believe that Cycle 23 should be a large cycle, but not as big as Cycle 19 in the late 1950s. They expect it to peak around March 2000 and within a range from June 1999 to January 2001. This places the peak in the very near future, but sunspot cycles go up much faster than they go down. Sunspot numbers for October 9 through 15 were 27, 44, 31, 60, 44, 44 and 47 with a mean of 42.4. The 10.7-cm flux was 83.5, 84.2, 86.1, 88.7, 88.3, 84.8 and 86.9, with a mean of 86.1, and estimated planetary A indices were 19, 27, 26, 7, 7, 5, and 4, with a mean of 13.6. 

 A century of electrons: Dave Finley, N1IRZ, of Socorro, New Mexico, calls the attention of his fellow hobbyists to an article in the October edition of Physics Today. The special edition on "The Ubiquitous Electron" marks the 100th anniversary of J. J. Thompson's paper announcing his discovering of this important entity. According to Finley, a series of articles looks at the discovery and the subsequent multitude of applications that came from this discovery. 
 
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