The Dummy Load. November 2009 Newsletter. Monthly Meeting Friday, November 13, Friday Harbor Firehouse NEW HAM LICENSES EARNED

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1 The Dummy Load November 2009 Newsletter In this Issue Monthly Meeting Friday, November 13, Friday Harbor Firehouse New Hams Licensed 1 Ready for More? 1 Net Control Checklist 1 RMS Station Configurations 2 Dummy Load History 3 Hams in the Pentagon 3 Code Notes 3 Ham is Nobel Prizewinner 4 2m Simplex Frequencies 5 Dummy Load Copyright SJCARS Editor N Lindenberg KD7IRD nrlindenberg@ rockisland.com Distribution D Hoyer KE7TLE KE7TLE@ arrl.net NEW HAM LICENSES EARNED On Saturday, Oct. 10, local residents Deena Barkell, Francis G. Smith, Audrey Wakefield, and Christen M. Giandomenico of Blaine, Washington took their first exams from the VEs of SJCARS at the fire station. They earned their Tech licenses, good for ten years, and just received their call signs from the FCC: Deena, KF7FIS; Francis, KF7FIQ; Audrey, KF7FIT; and Christen, KF7FIR. We look forward to hearing them on the air very soon! John Fleischer, KD7BTL, of Eastsound, was upgraded from General to Extra Class. The VEs for this session were Dan Drath, Ed Kelm, Charlie Lindenberg, Mike Sear and Jeff Struthers. Dave Vandaveer, our treasurer, acts as liaison to the FCC for the group. Congratulations to John and to the new Hams. We hope to see you on Nov. 13 and at our holiday party on Saturday, Dec. 12! Ed. READY FOR MORE? Winter is a good time to study and improve one s skills. We can work online in the comfort of our home: The ARRL Continuing Education Course registration is still open through Sunday, Nov. 22 for the following courses beginning Friday, Dec. 4, 2009: Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Level 1; Antenna Modeling; Radio Frequency Interference; Antenna Design and Construction; Propagation; Analog Electronics and Digital Electronics, as well as the Technician License. See the CEP course listing page NEW CHECKLIST FOR NET CONTROL CALL-OUT Dani Hoyer, KE7TLE, has come up with a new checklist of active members, which has proven very useful in calling the Wednesday evening net. Net Control can just run down the list, giving the call sign, and checking off the replies. This makes his job simpler, without the need to rapidly scribble the names and numbers. If you haven t received a list yet, just ask Dani next Wednesday..Ed.

2 Airmail Radio Link RMS Relay RMS Packet Internet Winlink 2000 Telnet Process RMS Station Configurations By Peter McCorison, K2SPR There are several possible configurations of the RMS Packet software packages, each having different effects on communications in the presence of possible failures of internet access. I'll describe the operation of the software, and some effects of the various installation options. The RMS packet software acts as an interface between, in effect, the Airmail packet clients which we use in SJC and the internet system. See the diagram above. Winlink2000 acts as a normal client to the standard internet mail system, and delivers mail to standard internet addresses. Things get interesting, though, when the internet connection fails. Now RMS packet cannot forward or receive s. What it does is tell RMS Relay to hold the radio traffic in a local database. This traffic is disposed of according to its destination: 1. If a station connecting to the RMS has traffic in the local database, that traffic is delivered to the connecting station. So local traffic connectivity is retained in the absence of internet connection. 2. When an internet connection is completed, any traffic remaining in the local database is forwarded to Winlink2000 just as it would have been if there had been no interruption. I don t know what happens to a message which has both local and distant addressees. One is allowed to hope that it is correctly handled. This is both good news and bad news. Local traffic and remote traffic are delivered as expeditiously as possible given the circumstances. BUT, suppose you send me a message and we are both local. If the internet connection goes away after you send your message and before I connect to the RMS station to pick it up, the traffic is unavailable, since it has been forwarded to a now-disconnected internet. If we do not include RMS Relay in our system and if there is no internet connection, RMS Packet simply refuses to answer the phone, issuing an immediate disconnect. We haven t eliminated the above problem, but now we have no expectations of handling traffic in the absence of internet. Alternatively, we could simply use the RMS station to provide a local hub for messages with local destinations. Now we have no expectation of connectivity to remote addresses, but we will not lose access to messages addressed locally. Since we already have that capability using Airmail in peer-topeer mode, the only advantage of using RMS this way is the convenience of delivering multi-addressed messages locally. Page 2

3 Organizations, with more resources than we have, find it useful to operate two RMS stations, one in each of the immediately above configurations, thus getting the maximum benefit that the RMS system can provide. We need to decide what configuration would give us the most benefit. This decision should take into account that when the OPALCO fiber build-out is complete, we will have access at Station 31 (and also at station 41) to an internet connection far more robust than the normal service provided through the phone company. MARS Cuts Ribbon on New Pentagon Station (Nov. 3, 2009) A military institution designed to provide emergency communications has moved to new quarters in the Pentagon. On October 21, John G. Grimes, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, cut the ribbon on the new Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) station, now located on the fifth floor of the Pentagon. The facility manned by the Pentagon Amateur Radio Club (PARC) is packed with amateur radios, radio-telephone patches, computers and data links. This is a great facility, manned totally by volunteers, Grimes told the crowd who came to see the new station. It s a crucial capability for our country. Did you know that during the presidential inauguration, the cell phone system was overwhelmed and the local hams provided backup? For the full story and photos, see Code Notes EARLY DUMMY LOADS? SEARCH YOUR MEMORY BANKS On the question of Volume and Issue numbers for the Dummy Load, we asked Babs McCorison, who produced the Dummy Load from 1996 until Dan Drath took over. She states that the Dummy Load was started about twenty years ago by Bill Boyd and John Deeds. These two founders also built the first repeater. Does anyone have any early copies from before 1995?.Ed. Morse Code is a method of representing letters, numbers and punctuation marks by means of a code signal sent intermittently. It was developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, in about He attended Yale College in New York, earning part of his expenses as an artist. CW means continuous wave. The character is transmitted by interrupting this wave, by on/off keying the radio-frequency signal. The first telegraph model was made from an old artist s canvas stretcher, homemade battery and wooden clockworks. The wooden arm rode across the metal saw tooth dies, representing dots and dashes, and printed out on a paper tape moved by the clockworks. Page 3

4 NEW JERSEY HAM IS NOBEL PRIZE WINNER GEORGE E. SMITH, AA2EJ, WINS PRIZE FOR PHYSICS Around 5:30 in the morning on Oct. 6, George Smith of Barnegat, New Jersey, got a phone call that changed his life: he had just found out that he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit the CCD sensor. The 2009 Nobel Prize in physics honors the invention of the imaging semiconductor circuit the CCD sensor used in digital cameras, the Hubble Space Telescope, and many other scientific and consumer devices. It was no great surprise to learn that one of the Laureates, George Smith, is also a radio amateur. Amateur radio has always attracted individuals who want to understand and exploit nature s laws, fellow Laureate Joe Taylor, K1JT, told the ARRL. These are characteristics for first-rate scientists, as well. Smith will share the prize money with two other recipients: Charles K. Kao, of Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in the United Kingdom and Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Willard S. Boyle, of Bell Laboratories. Each recipient will get a diploma, a medal, and a document confirming their share of about 1.4 million US dollars. Kao will receive 50 percent, while Smith and Boyle will each receive 25 percent of the monetary award. See prizes/ physics/laureates/2009/index. San Juan County October 2009 ARES Report ARES Members 22 ARES Nets Active 4 Drills, Tests & Training 16 Person Hrs 70 Public Service Events 0 Person Hrs 0 Emergency Operations 0 Person Hrs 0 Team Miles Driven 225 2m Simplex Frequencies B Hoyer, KG6GEU Simplex is the mode of choice for operations in a restricted area where the terrain makes it possible. We operate simplex for the marathon, 8.8k race and the white box drills, as well as using it for personal communications around the island whenever a repeater is unnecessary. Here in San Juan County we have assigned a few tactical channels for simplex use during both public events and emergencies. They are: TAC10 TAC11 TAC12 TAC MHz MHz MHz MHz During both the 8.8k race and Tuesday morning white box drills there has been various traffic and nets on these channels. I decided to investigate both the band plan and local usage for 2m simplex operation. Page 4

5 According to both the Western Washington and ARRL Band Plans, 19 Frequencies are available for simplex operation. These are at 20KHz spacing from MHz to MHz and MHz to MHz. Of these frequencies 2 have special usage MHz is the national calling frequency and MHz is used for cross-band linking. Looking at our TAC channels, TAC10 is the National Calling frequency and TAC11 is in the amateur satellite sub band (although no satellites currently use this frequency according to AMSAT). This leaves just 2 channels for drills and public events. I asked Dan Drath, N6AU, to set up his automated monitoring equipment on the simplex channels. the frequencies of interest were monitored for 19 consecutive days and the accumulated squelch breaks are shown in the table. The data was taken at 10KHz intervals as British Columbia is on 15KHz spacing and we wanted to include near channel interference. It is clear from the data that although a few channels experience heavy usage including TAC13, there are many others that show intermittent usage at least from south San Juan Island. I invite all hams to monitor some or all of these frequencies in order to compile recommendations for good candidates for additional frequencies to add as tactical channels in the future. Thanks to Dan Drath for setting up the experiment and providing the data. FREQ CHANNEL SQ BRK Notes SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX 5 99 TAC SPLX TAC SPLX TAC SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX SPLX 19 0 XBAND Page 5

6 The San Juan County ARES Nets Every Wednesday Local Time 19:00 - SSB Net 3944 KHz +/- QRM 19:30 - CW Net 3555 KHz Check in! Take the Callsign Challenge 20:00 - VHF Net MHz, -600 KHz offset, tone , +5 MHz offset, tone In the event of repeater problems we shift to: First: Repeater Output MHz simplex, tone Second: TAC MHz simplex, tone White Box Drills every Tuesday, 9:30 A.M. at a White Box near you! Net Control Schedule Please arrange a substitute if needed November 04 November 11 November 18 November 25 December 02 December 09 December 16 December 23 December 30 Ted L, KE7KRR Nancy L, KD7IRD Dani H, KE7TLE Clare K, KE7WQY Mark D, N6CSM Dan D, N6AU Dave V, K9MRQ Wayne R, WA6MPG Bryan H, KG6GEU Nov. 13 Dec 12 Upcoming Events Monthly Meeting, 11:30 A.M. Friday Harbor Fire House Saturday: Christmas/Holiday Party/ Potluck Friday Harbor Fire House Everyone welcome! The Dummy Load c/o Nancy Lindenberg 59 Tarte Road Friday Harbor, WA First Class Mail