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EASTON AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY
FEBRUARY 2003 NEWSLETTER
Welcome all E.A.R.S. members. Our next meeting will be 2-18-03 at the Talbot 911 Center at 7PM. Our guest speaker will be Marty, W3YOZ. He will be giving us a talk and description of a district level RACES drill in western PA which was held during October 2002. It was a 3 hour drill that covered 9 counties with very difficult terrain for communications. Marty and Roy, W3TEF were the main station for the drill, and they operated from the W3SO contest station location on top of the mountain. After this, Marty is going to give a brief description of several different antenna systems.
Brett, KB3HGP will be going over our RACES drill from 2-11-03. This will be a good time for us to critique our performance at our first simulated county wide communications effort.
Our new club website is progressing nicely. Please look at www.k3emd.com and see the changes and corrections that we have made since the last club meeting. It is really looking quite professional and something we can all be proud of. We need everyone to send in a digital photo of themselves and their shack and antennas so we can put it in the photo gallery section of the web page.
At our February meeting we are going to start getting serious about planning for our hamfest. The E.A.R.S. hamfest will be April 13, 2003 which is only 2 months from now. Paul, W3PAW has many things that he has saved from last year’s hamfest that we can use again this year. We have our orange E.A.R.S. T shirts and hats, the big signs for out on Rt. 50, the tickets for admission, and many other items that won’t have to be purchased again. John, K3OLE sent out our hamfest information to all the major ham magazines, and to the ARRL hamfest website. The ARRL website takes people directly to our www.k3emd.com site with the page about our hamfest, with map and all details.
The 2003 dues were due as of 1-1-03 for E.A.R.S. membership. If you have not sent your dues in, please mail them to E.A.R.S. PO Box 311 Easton. MD 21601, or you can pay them at the February meeting. If your dues are not paid by our next meeting on 2-18-03, you no longer will receive a newsletter, or be considered a current member.
John, K8JW has an idea which he feels will eliminate the 800 mhz interference that we are getting on the 147.045 repeater. Hopefully, we can get access to the Trappe tower building and John can implement his idea and see if it works. Our new club repeater and antenna system at the Trappe, MD tower are working very well except for the interference that we are getting when our 147.045 signal is on at the same time as one of the Talbot County 800 mhz signals.
Remember our E.A.R.S. net on 147.045 every Tuesday night at 7PM, except for the third Tuesday night each month, which is our meeting night. Chris, KB3HVE has his audio working much better and he is playing the ARRL news each Tuesday at 6:45 PM before the net starts.
E.A.R.S. now has their official “lighthouse number” and several of our members are interested in operating from the St. Michael’s Hoopers Straight Lighthouse in the future. Elliott, N3NVW, John, K3OLE, Ray, W3BFC and Paul ,W3PAW are all interested in operating from there. This will give us some good public ham radio exposure.
Paul, W3PAW is working on two big jobs out of town, one in Virginia and one in North Carolina and he has been down there part of each week. One of Paul’s employees, Mark Heil has been helping us update our website.
Ray, W3BFC has been coming down to his summer home in Tilghman Island every weekend this winter, and is planning on putting up a new tower and several new antennas when the weather breaks.
Nancy and Pete Colket are still at the dock in the Keys having a great time!
We would all like to thank Brett, KB3HGP for his very informative battery talk at last month’s meeting. This information is also on our web site under the button that says Technical Info.
I will look forward to seeing everyone at our meeting on 2-18-03.
Don’t forget to send me in those digital pictures of you and your shack! Also please send in any input you have for next month’s newsletter, as well as items for sale.
73
Tinsley Meekins Jr K3RUQ
k3ruq@arrl.net
410 228 8888