Old News:
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
EASTON AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY
MARCH 2003 NEWSLETTER
www.k3emd.com
Welcome all E.A.R.S. members. Our next meeting will be 3-18-03 at the Talbot 911 Center at 7 PM. Our meeting last month in February was canceled because of the poor road conditions from the big snowstorm. Our guest speaker this month is going to be Marty Johnson, W3YOZ who is going to give 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 operated the main station, W3SO on top of the mountain near Altoona. After this, Marty is going to give a brief description of several different antenna systems.
John, K3OLE has made us up a new membership list for our club. We currently have a total of 34 paid members for the 2003 year.
Today, 3-11-03 I have mailed one to each member, along with their new membership card. This will be the first month that the newsletter is going to be emailed to everyone in the club who is online.
As of right now, we only have 4 members who will be getting the newsletter mailed to them. Paul, W3PAW deserves a round of applause for all the money he has spent in postage and envelopes, and having Ginger, his secretary, print up and mail out the newsletters for the last couple years. As club secretary, I will now mail out the 4 letters each month myself, and the rest of the members will receive their newsletter via email. I hope this emailing works out well. As I get better at this, I plan to put a couple pictures in each newsletter.
BULLETIN
The Easton repeater 147.045 intermod is gone !!
On 2-26-03, John K8JW brought all his test equipment to the Trappe tower to work on the repeater to try to rid us of the awful intermod noise that we have been plagued with since our move from Easton to Trappe . John’s idea was to turn off the Kenwood repeater’s transmit PL so that the interference, even though it is right on our input frequency of 147.645, would not be able to open up our receiver. His idea worked, and now the intermod noise is gone !! It took this situation for the intermod to happen: The Talbot Co 800 system had to transmit on 867.5750, our repeater had to transmit on 147.045 and another Talbot Co transmitter had to transmit on 866.9750 all at the same time. So what this would look like is 867.5750 +147.045 - 866.9750 = our input 147.645 !!
The only “problem” with this fix, is that with the repeater not transmitting PL, our own 2 meter rigs will hear other 147.045 repeaters when conditions are good during the summer. John is going to take our repeater home with him, hopefully before summer conditions cause a problem, and make a modification to the repeater so the PL will go on and off with the carrier of the person using the repeater. If this can be done, it will permanently fix the intermod problem.
Arch Kingsley, N3DLI has given the club a nice Tri-band HF beam, rotor and control, and a power supply. We thank Arch very much for this kind donation, and we hope to be able to use this antenna on field day this year. Arch is going to be moving to Virginia this month.
We have 3 of our members wintering in the sunny South, Debbie, N3RIG, Peter, K3PKC and his wife Nancy, KB3HYW. You “warm” folks go to the E.A.R.S. website and see how cold it is here!!
Our new E.A.R.S. website at www.k3emd.com is working fine, and I would like to encourage anyone to send in ham radio pictures of yourself and your shack and antennas to put on our gallery page. Also, any items for sale can be listed on the web site. At the bottom of the home page we now have the current weather for Easton, and a place where you can look up calls on www.qrz.com.
Remember that our hamfest is not far off! It will be held on April 13, 2003 at the Talbot Community Center in Easton. We will be talking about this at our March meeting.
Our Talbot County RACES Officer, Brett, KB3HGP has made great strides in training 10 of our EARS members over the past few months. They were recognized in a ceremony last month and had a group picture in the Star Democrat with a short article on our emergency communications work. Brett has sent in a page for our newsletter, covering RACES accomplishments.
73
Tinsley Meekins Jr K3RUQ EARS Secretary
tinsley@towerleasing.biz
P.S. President Bill Windsor’s birthday is 3-18-03, the same day as our meeting this month. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILL !!
RACES News:
This has
been a very busy month for Talbot County RACES! We finished our training in
late January and participated in our first statewide RACES drill on February
11th.
The statewide drill was a great success with 10 trainees
and Director Ed Mullikin
participating. Two people manned the radio room at
the EOC and the others were dispersed to 4 shelters, the Easton Fire
Department, Easton Red Cross and one mobile unit. Eleven messages were
passed over the Talbot County RACES net and seven messages were passed
between the TALB EOC and MEMA over the Central Region Net. Everyone put in a
fantastic effort. We have come a long way since our first training on
December 7th, all due to your hard work and diligence!
A report of the drill was presented on February 25th with State RACES Officer Al FitzSimons and MEMA Communications Officer Hank Black in attendance to witness the appointment of 10 hams to Talbot County RACES. Ed Mullikin made the appointment of the 10 new RACES Members during the ceremony by presenting each Member completing training with an official letter of appointment and a certificate for framing (see photo in the March 2nd Star Democrat). The first 10 RACES Members appointed since 1997 are: Brett Hammond, Dr. John Hawkinson, Lucas Marsh, Tinsley Meekins, Donald (Chris) Patrick, Lee Stevens, Paul Wachter, George Wiegand, Stephanie Windsor and Bill Windsor. Congratulations for a job well done!!!! Letters were also presented to Pete Mullin, Tinsley Meekins and Paul Wachter for their much appreciated volunteer work on RACES antenna.
We will be participating in the statewide RACES drills conducted every month on the second Tuesday of the month (note there is no drill in July and August). Please mark your calendars for the rest of the year to arrive at the EOC by 7:15 PM on the second Tuesday of the month. The objectives of these drills are: 1) To keep our message handling skills polished; 2) To provide an opportunity for each member to become familiar with every position [shelter/Red Cross/net control/MEMA etc.]; 3) To test radio coverage from various locations throughout the county using a variety of antenna and power; 4) To familiarize RACES Members with all potential destinations in the county; 5) To rehearse various emergency scenarios and RACES Plan procedures; and 6) To provide a mechanism for new members to be trained.
In addition to the monthly drills, we will be having one final RACES training session before summer to discuss antenna coverage and other general technical and logistical lessons learned from our drills. We will not be discussing mistakes made by individuals. These will be discussed in private with each individual prior to the next drill. Also during this last meeting I would like to have one final review of the RACES Plan. This will also be an opportunity for anyone that could not attend previous training classes, to receive training on the RACES Plan so they too can be appointed RACES Members. We will select a convenient date and time for this meeting, at the next EARS club meeting in March. Bring your calendar.
If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to give me a copy of your FCC Amateur Radio license. Keep up the good work and see you on the air!!!
Brett Hammond (KB3HGP)
Talbot County RACES Officer