NC4ML REPEATER. The President s Corner. Upcoming Hamfests. Charles Wackerman. MOCARS Officers 2011

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1 NC4ML REPEATER Vol Vii No 8 Moore County ARS MOCARS Officers 2011 President &: Charles Wackerman, W3CY Editor cwackerman@broadlink.biz Vice President: Robert Biamonte, WU1W, bobbymonte@earthlink.net Secretary & PAO: James Johnson KI4TAT cvttejim@yahoo.com Treasurer & Lionel Bryson, N4YYL ARES EC n4yyl@arrl.net Repeater Trustee Ernie Bryant, KR4W & Past President: ARES AEC & Ray Arnold. KG4CPM Skywarn AEC kg4cpm@arrl.net MOCARS web site Upcoming Hamfests 3 September 2011 Shelby Hamfest Shelby ARC 8 October 2011 Winston Salem October Swapfest Forsyth ARC NOVEMBER 2011 JARS Fest JARS Dallas, NC Winston Salem NC Benson, NC If you know of any hamfest that should be listed and Is not, please let me know so it can be included in the Next edition. Hamfests need your support and attendance to survive. Carthage. NC AUGUST 2011U The President s Corner August, hot weather, lots of rain, and fall is just around the corner. It is time to start thinking about the projects we need to do to get ready for the coming winter. It is particularly important this year to have everything ready to go, because the climbing sunspot numbers bode good reception this winter. But, if you do it, do it with a mind to staying safe. I don t want to read about another ham getting cooked by touching a power line, falling down an antenna mast or slipping off the roof. The next event is only weeks away. The Moore County Fair starts on August 30 and ends on September 4th. We plan to man a boot again this year, so be prepared to show off our radio skills. October is the Pinehurst Triathlon, we will need lots of people for half a day and the work isn t hard, so please plan on being there. I hope to start another round of Technician level classes in the very near future. Anyone who is interested see me or Bob Biamonte. If you know someone who might be interested, get them to contact us as soon as possible. I am having a bit of difficulty just now in keeping up with everything. As many of you already know, I had a big water leak due to improper plumbing and it caused a lot of damage. So far they have had to replace a shower, two walls and a lot of sub-flooring and I will need to replace the floor covering in three rooms as well. As a result I have had a hard time keeping up with calls and s and requests for help. I HOPE everything will be back to normal in the next few weeks. Right now I cannot find radios, much less use them. We will discuss the club patch, the county fair and the Triathlon at the coming meeting, and there may be information about the SET as well. See you at the meeting! 73s Charles Wackerman

2 NC4ML Repeater August Amateur Examina ons in Carthage Location: Moore County Health Department, 705 Pinehurst Ave., Carthage, NC (enter side door from parking lot) Test Dates: on the following Saturdays: Individuals wishing to take the test must have a valid drivers license or other valid government issued picture ID, a social security card, (and a copy of the front and back of both documents on a single page). If the candidate currently holds an amateur license issued by the FCC they must also bring the original license and a copy. No reservations needed but handicap candidates should call to assure that we are prepared to accommodate you. Cost $12.00 cash only. For further information contact: Butch Simpson, WS4H on or butch@atomic.net September 17, 2011 November 19, 2011 Time: 9:30 a.m. to 12 noon (room opens at 9 am) a Individuals wishing to take the test must have a valid drivers license or other valid government issued picture ID, a social security card, (and a copy of the front and back of both documents on a single page). If the candidate currently holds an amateur license issued by the FCC they must also bring the original license and a copy. No reservations needed but handicap candidates should call to assure that we are prepared to accommodate you. Cost $12.00 cash only. For further information call Charles Wackerman at or w3cy@arrl.net Tests administered by the Carthage/MOCARS VE TEAM CAPE FEAR ARS METHODIST COLLEGE SCIENCE BLDG rooms S-222 & S RAMSEY ST NORTH 401 FAYETTEVILLE, NC Check-in begins at 0900 Testing begins at 0930 October 8, 2011 Amateur Examina ons in ASHEBORO Randolph County Library :201 Worth St., Asheboro NC Bring a handheld calculator, a photocopy or original current FCC issued license, and $15 (cash) for the exam fee. Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM Saturday, October 15, 2011 at 10:00 AM Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 7:00 PM (Night Session) For further information contact: Pat, N4UGH, n4ughpat@aol.com On the corner of Worth and Cox Streets ground floor meeting room.

3 3 August 2011 NC4ML Repeater Meeting Minutes 21 July Moore County Health Department, 705 Pinehurst Ave, Carthage NC Attendance 14 members, 0 guests Call to order/pledge of Allegiance 7:00pm by, president Secretary s report for June, approved as published in Newsletter, thanks to Jimmy Brock for taking minutes Treasurer s report approved as presented Announcements/Introductions VEC testing Saturday, 23 July, Moore County Health Department, 705 Pinehurst Ave, Carthage, NC. Licensing classes planned for Technician beginning in August and General beginning in October, several interested students have inquired, contact Charles Wackerman or Bob Biamonte for details. Donations an older ham donated his equipment to the club including a dual band antenna, an ICOM-2340H transceiver, an Astron RS12A power supply, 2 sets of headphones, several coax cables, a jar of PL-259 connectors and an ARRL amateur radio handbook-1978, all to be auctioned off at next meeting Peach Festival attendance excellent as were peaches, better location, joint activity with Montgomery County hams. MOCARS Newsletter - Charles always needs noncopyrighted material for newsletter. Old Business Field Day recap report submitted to ARRL but final results not confirmed, expected to be several hundred points better than 2010 Club Seal/Emblem Bob Biamonte will revise, colorize and put on club website for comments. New Business Dog Hunt a local animal advocacy group in Pinehurst has been trying to capture a female, feral dog. With the help of a local veterinarian another attempt to tranquilize and capture the dog has been scheduled. MOCARS has been asked to participate in radio tracking. Dues Adjustment Moore County has asked MOCARS to assume responsibility for the radio equipment provided, approximately $18,500 in value. To cover the additional insurance, Lionel Bryson-treasurer recommended a dues increase to $20.00 per individual and $25.00 per family, per year to cover. After some discussion and a decision to insure only the major items, the increase was approved effective January 2012 Next Activity Moore County Fair, 30 August - 3 September, 2011 Future Activities suggested Farmers Day, Robbins July, in conjunction with Health Department Buggy Festival, Carthage - May SpringFest, Southern Pines April Boy Scout Jamboree Tour de Moore - April Banner Jim Johnson suggested purchase of a larger club banner approx 3ft x 8ft, estimated price $200.00, to include club name, call sign, club logo, ARES logo, ARRL logo, Jim Johnson to secure formal quotes. ARES logo Bob Wittman, Moore County Health Department requested qty-2, AREA logos for the Health Department trailer Adjourn 8:10pm The next meeting will be held at the Moore County Health Department, 705 Pinehurst Street, Carthage on Thursday, 25 August 2011 at 7:00pm. Monthly Meeting for August is on THURSDAY August 18th at 19:00 at the Moore County Health Dept. 705 Pinehurst Ave. Carthage DINNER before the meeting is at Mexican Restaurant (across from City Hall) on the Carthage by-pass AT 17:00

4 NC4ML Repeater August Proposed Club Seal Bob Biamonti, WU1W proposed a club seal which we discussed at last month s meeting. Certain changes were suggested and we requested that he suggest a color scheme for the design. The revised seal with suggested colors is printed below. We will discuss this at the August Meeting. ; Bob has suggested that we might want to consider a darker blue for the outer ring of the seal. By: JOHN - WY2J wy2j@arrl.net A Portable Vacation Station with High Sensitivity Modes Part 1 of 2 Each summer in mid August our family spends 2 to 3 weeks in Ocean City, NJ. For the last 5 years I have taken my Yaesu FT watt 2 M + 70 cm FM rig, a 10 amp switcher PS, a 2 M ground plane with an integrated 70 cm J pole, 5 ft of mast and two brackets that I made to clamp the antenna on to the front porch railing. The house is on the first floor but elevated on pilings so my antenna is about 15 ft. above ground level. This station has done well in reaching 15 to 20 repeaters out to about 30 miles. But like most VHF/UHF machines they are very light on activity most of the time. Without the Bears (W3BXW) 16 repeater linked UHF network and access via their machine in Vineland I would have dead air most of the day. So I decided to do something different for the 2011 season vacation, add HF to my vacation station. This two part article is a description of the strategies, performance predictions and problems I encountered in designing a small HF/VHF/UHF station that would let me make a more diversified and greater number of QSO s from a highly constrained environment. As a minimum I wanted HF to include 20, 17 and 15 with a goal of adding 40 and 30 meters if I could solve the severe antenna limitations at this site. I had learned from previous years of operation that 5 watts on 2 meters and 70 cm FM was adequate if the transmission line to the antenna was kept short and the loss low. My first thought on the HF antenna was to use a ground mounted vertical. This meant easy access for young children dripping wet in salt water and standing in their bare feet on the ground next to a ground mounted vertical, a definite RF hazard with anything above QRP power levels. So I decided last winter that the 2011 vacation station would be QRP, 5 watts maximum on all bands. Rig selection was easy because there is not much out there in QRP rigs that cover 5 HF bands plus 2 meters and 70 cm. After reviewing the modes that I may want to use, the Yaesu FT 817ND was the only candidate. I put it on my Christmas list in 2010 and my wife saw to it that it was under the tree. Of course I made sure that a new Apple ipad was there with her name on it. I also bought a 2 ¾ pound Dell Inspiron model 1012 Net Book computer because I got it new for $275 and it was loaded with Windows XP SP-3. I wasn t ready to dive into the problems of Windows 7 with a lot of old Ham Radio SW designed for XP and earlier. Late winter was spent learning what my new rig and computer had and more significantly what was lacking. First was the lack of a CW bandwidth filter in the 817. Now QRP = CW like apple pie and ice cream. I found a 3 rd party 300 Hz Collins mechanical filter mounted on a plug in daughter board at W4RT Electronics for $120 that works like a charm. The AC adapter for the 817 will only slow charge the included battery but not allow rig operation at the same time. MFJ to the rescue with a $50 nifty miniature 3 amp switcher PS made to solve this 817 problem. Now of course everyone knows that the 817 is designed to work into 50 ohm antennas. It s just that most HF antennas aren t 50 ohms. No fear LDG Electronics has taken care of that for only $140 with their Z817 battery powered automatic antenna tuner and it works great. But wait the tuner has no balun for balanced line fed antennas. MFJ has a great one for $40 that allows switching between balanced 50 ohm and 200 ohm output. I am still pleased with the 817 even after the $600 rig morphed into a $950 rig. It is easy as pie to connect it to the computer sound card using a West Mountain Radio $100 plug and play interface that connects to the 817 AFSK data port,

5 5 August 2011 NC4ML REPEAT- Vanity the computer Call Sign audio Fee jacks to and Go a Up USB in September port used for control and power. By the way the $275 Dell Mini only took $415 of upgrades to make it useful bringing it to $690. Total station investment is $1,740 and I still need an antenna. Thank goodness I had a good set of CW paddles. Part of this station is shown in Figure 1 running 5 watts to a dipole in PSK-31 mode with everything on battery power. in Pontassieve, Italy. UA1ZGI and CX4CR have signals that are 20 and 21 db respectively below the noise in a 2 KHz SSB bandwidth. Fig 2. JT65-HF Operator Screen on 20 Meters Fig. 1 QRP Vacation Station in Test on 20 M. HF modes that I plan to run on this station are all being selected based on sensitivity and wide HAM usage. If you compare this station to the classic 100 watt SSB station with a 40 ft. high tri-bander on and 10 M and an inverted VEE on 40 M, there are a lot of db that are lost and must be made up. The QRP power is 13 db down from 100 watts. There is at least 6 db and probably closer to 10 db loss in antenna gain at desirable DX launch angles due to the use of simple reduced height temporary antennas at a portable site. This 19 to 23 db loss has to be made up in the sensitivity of the selected modes relative to SSB voice to achieve equivalent QSO performance. CW and PSK-31 are definitely included in the mode library, SSB is out and if I can solve a few software problems, JT65-HF will be included. I would like one more, possibly DominoEx. JT-65HF is a new mode extending the work of Joe Taylor s (K1JT) JT65-A EME mode. Joe is not doing the work on this mode but his JT65-A is the core engine of a totally new mode by John Large W6CQZ that is designed to deliver extreme sensitivity on HF. There is a summary description with Web links on page 45 of the April 2011 QST. JT65-HF is not a conversational mode like PSK-31 rather it transmits the bare minimum of information to qualify as a valid QSO. Call sign, grid square & signal strength are sent using 72 data bits encoding just 13 to 18 characters plus 306 error correction bits in a 47 second transmission modulating 65 frequencies each minute. This makes it real time software, something that Windows doesn t always do well. I have it running well on my Dell XPS-210 base station computer but not yet on the Dell Mini Net Book. Fig. 2 is a photo shot of the main operator screen taken on 2 July 2011 at 17 hrs, 17 min, 10 sec UTC with 12 stations received over the previous 4 minute period on 20 meters. Included are: UT4UF in Kiev, Ukraine, UA1ZGI in Parkovaya, Russia, CX4CR in Montevideo, Uruguay and IK5UIM Next month I will cover a couple of practical antennas for a portable station, complete the mode work and report on the anticipated performance for each mode. After I return from Ocean City you will find out how well this station worked in the real world in a future HAM TECH column. VANITY LICENSE FEE GOING UP On August 10, the FCC announced via a Final Rule in the Federal Register that the cost of an Amateur Radio vanity call sign will increase 90 cents, from to $13.30 to $ The new fees take effect 30 days after publication, making September 9, 2011, the first day the new fee is in effect. Earlier this year, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Order (NPRM), seeking to raise the fee for Amateur Radio vanity call signs. The Commission tries to keep the regulatory fee for Vanity call signs as minimal as possible, explained the FCC in its Final Rule. Between FY 2007 and FY 2010, the regulatory fee for Vanity call signs increased from $1.17 (per year) to $1.33 (per year), an increase of $0.16 per year or $1.60 over a ten-year license period. We do not believe this increase is inequitable, and the Commission will continue its efforts to keep this fee as minimal as possible. The fees that are collected from Vanity call signs are used to offset the cost of monitoring and researching new call sign requests to prevent the issuance of duplicate call signs. The vanity call sign fee has fluctuated over the 14 years of the current program -- from a low of $11.70 in 2007 to a high of $70 (as first proposed in the FCC s 1994 Report and Order). In FY 2011, the FCC expects to grant 14,600 vanity call signs, bringing in $207,320 from the vanity call sign program, and looks to recover a total of $336,599,048 in fees from all the Services that it regulates. The vanity call sign regulatory fee is payable not only when applying for a new vanity call sign, but also upon renewing a vanity call sign for a new term. The first vanity call sign licenses issued under the current Amateur Radio vanity call sign program that began in 1996 came up for renewal five years ago. The FCC is authorized by the Communications Act of 1934, As Amended, to collect vanity call sign fees to recover the costs associated with that program.

6 NC4ML Repeater August Weekly Listing of Regional Nets on 6 meters, 2 meters and Meter SSB`Nets ALL M-F MON am EST 10pm 9PM W4ROG KR4EO WA4NJ WA4JNL Richmond Huntsville Georgia Lynchburg TUES PM K4IRT Lexington Statewide Traffic and Emergency Nets TYPE TIME FREQ. MODE NCAM Traffic ssb NCPM Traffic ssb WED PM KE4UWJ Georgia THUR SAT SUN Meter SSB Nets 7:30pm 8pm 8AM 8PM 8PM 8PM KK5IX KJ4RB KD4MYE KI4AYZ K4KXY KI4OCN Sunday: Roanoke Va Monday: Richmond Va Tidewater VA Tuesday: Greensboro NC Friday: Pink Hill NC * 2 Meter FM Nets (on repeaters) Arkansas Pink Hill Wake Forest Bristol, TN Georgia Sherills Ford NC Sunday: Carthage, NC Wednesday Carthage, NC Thursday Mt.Giliad, NC Carolina Net (early) TarHeel Emergency Carolina Slow Carolina Net (Late) Traffic CW 20/22 wpm ARES ssb Traffic Cw 8/10 wpm Traffic Cw 15/18 wpm 440 SSB Nets Wednesday: Locust NC *** May be off the air temporarily due to antenna problems. If you know of a net that should be listed, a net that is no longer in operation, or any corrections of days, times and frequencies please notify the editor at W3CY@arrl.net. Submit articles, items for sale, want adds, and notices of upcoming events to W3CY@arrl.net. The NC4ML repeater operates on with an offset of and a pl tone of Please Attend the MOCARS Monthly Meeting on Thursday August 18th at 19:00 at Moore County Health Dept. 705 Pinehurst Ave Carthage Pre meeting supper at Mexican Restaruant in Carthage at 17:00

7 NC4ML Repeater August JULY 2011 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Independence Day Holiday Meeting VE SESSION August 2011 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat MEETING

8 MOORE COUNTY AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY 753 LAMMS GROVE ROAD CARTHAGE, NC FIRST CLASS Moore County Amateur Radio Society 753 Lamms Grove Road Carthage, NC MEMBERSHIP REQUEST Meetings are held at the Moore County Health Department, 705 Pinehurst Avenue, Carthage each month (except December) at 7:00PM. Meetings usually last about an hour. Licensed Amateur Radio Operators and those interested in HAM radio are invited to join. Annual dues are $20 for an individual or $25 for a family membership. If you are interested in joining the club and ARRL at the same time, call Charles at first as there may be a special deal. To join, return this form to the address above together with a check written to Moore County Amateur Radio Society for the required amount. Name Call Class Address Phone City State ZIP address Are you a member of ARRL If not currently a member, have you ever been If you are a former ARRL members, approximately when did your membership expire