The Indianapolis Radio Club Newsletter Founded 1914 “The oldest continuously operating Amateur Radio Club in the United States” February, 2007 Newsletter [][] Upcoming Meetings: March 9, 2007: How to get certificates and awards, such as WAS, DXCC, etc… April 13, 2007: Jack Parker, W8ISH, presentation on digital television May 11, 2007: D-Star digital radio presentation June 8, 2007: Annual equipment auction June 8 – 10: & USS Indianapolis “Museum Ships OTA” Station;sponsored by IRC,IRL & RCAC [][] Highlights of the February 9, 2007 General meeting: >To start off the evening, club president Tom Chance, K9XV, started introductions around the room. There were 54 in attendance at this meeting. Then, Tom asked how many were Technician licensees that were interested in upgrading to General. Following the great show of hands, Tom announced that the Radio Club would be sponsoring an “express” upgrade class. Details are located elsewhere in this newsletter. Tom also announced that the club was going to be having another bus trip to Dayton on Saturday, May 19. Details of that are further down in this newsletter. >Bob Blake, N9FIM, made an announcement regarding Weather Spotter Training (details under “Ham Radio News”). Larry Mitchell, KB9GIE, announced that there was a 100’ free-standing tower in the Broad Ripple area that is available for the taking. >Hank Wolfla, K9LZJ, talked briefly about some new SDR kits that are available. They are priced at $32, and put out 2 watts in CW or SSB modes. There are a couple of different models available in different bands. >Next Dave Miller, K9RTT, introduced the program for the evening, titled “Boat Anchor Heaven”. The first presentation was from Chuck Crist, W9IH, with an interesting history of the Indianapolis Radio Club. Chuck had several interesting documents that he passed around. He stated that the club was started in 1914, at that time, it was actually two clubs, the Hoosier Radio Club and the Scout Radio Club. They combined to form the Indianapolis Radio Club. They originally met in members’ homes, with their first meeting being on October 28, 1914. >Next, Hank Wolfla, K9LZJ, talked about being a teenaged ham in the 1950s. He told of being introduced to ham radio, and being mentored by a ham in his neighborhood. He told how the Novice exam was administered by a General Class ham, and then the General Class exam was administered locally by the FCC, that tested quarterly at the Federal Court House in Indianapolis. There was the 13 wpm code test, and then the written exam, where the applicant had to draw schematics of different types of circuits, among other things. Hank was a student at Westlane Jr. High when he got his license. At that time, young hams were not considered “nerds”, they were looked up to by other students. Hank and some other hams at Westlane formed a radio club at the school, and had a station there. They had a 75 meter phone net for teens. Hank said that he learned a great deal from the older hams, not only about radio, but about life, and values in general. He also talked briefly about his manual calculator (slide rule). >Next Jim Rinehart, K9RU, gave a very interesting presentation about early mobile operation, including several pictures of old rigs. >Next, Bob Begeman, W9KVK, told of his history in ham radio. Bob got into ham radio after VJ day in WWII, when he was a radioman in the US Navy. He told of working at Electronics Research in Evansville in 1949, and his experiments in mobile 10 meter comms with another ham that worked there. >Finally, Ron Cooper, WB9DKL, demonstrated tuning a tube rig, using a light bulb as a load. All in all, it was a very entertaining and interesting evening of going through radio history, as was reflected by the audience. >Tom, K9XV, and Dave Jarvis, N9KZJ, conducted the door prize drawings, in the absence of Bob Osterhous, W9PSE, who is hoped to be back for next month’s meeting. [][] Ham Radio News: []Marion County Weather Spotter Training Scheduled >Mark your calendar for Saturday, March 10, at 9:00 a.m., for the annual Severe Weather Spotter training. The training will be held at the Indianapolis Training Center, 2820 N. Meridian St. David Tusick from the National Weather Service will present the training session on severe weather identification and spotting. Also at this session, Robert Blake, N9FIM, will discuss Severe Weather Amateur Net operations. Please try to arrive a little early. The session should conclude well before noon. []2006 Indiana QSO Party Results Available >Mel Crichton, KJ9C, reports that the 2006 Indiana QSO Party results are available at http://www.hdxcc.org/. He also reminds us that Saturday, May 5, is the date of the 2007 QSO party. Rules are at the same web site. []Morse Code Elimination effective February 24, 2007 >As expected, the FCC posted its ruling on the elimination of the Morse code licensing requirement in the Federal Register today. The change becomes effective on 24 FEB 2007. For some of the details, see the story on the ARRL website at: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/01/24/100/?nc=1 >Special VE Test Session Scheduled in Anderson; In anticipation of the “no-code General” rules change going in to effect, there is a special VE test session scheduled on Saturday, February 24 in Anderson. Contact Al, WB9AL, at (765) 642-7291 for more information. [][] Health and Welfare Updates []Dave Gingrich, K9DC, had a stent implanted after suffering a heart attack in the middle of January. He started back to work the week of January 29, and is doing very well, just having to get used to the adjustments to his diet. [] Bob Osterhous, W9PSE, had colon surgery on Jan. 29, and I received this message from him regarding his progress: >Hello fellow IRC Hams.    I was operated on at  8AM Monday Jan 29th and spent the week thru Friday 3 PM at St. Vincents - Carmel Hospital. (Private Rooms)   The colon surgery took out 12" and also a small growth.  The great surgeon Dr. Scott Pittman who is one of top colon surgeons in Indy did a great job. The pain was well controlled and some great night nurses help me understand and get thru the week. Home resting.  No car driving for 10 days, no lifting over 20 lbs for  6 weeks and future reviews of condition.  Thanks for all your thoughts and good wishes.  (Phone calls at hospital were fine although everything is busy and hectic! My two regular schedule contacts visited  Bill  W9WA  and Jeff Kb9WZH   Feel better each day "it only hurts when I move"Listening on  442.650  146.52 and  146.88  afternoons 3 - 6 PM as usual, and randomly during the day as I feel better. Maybe some 20 Meter PSK by next weekend (2/10). 73..   Bob  W9PSE [][] ARRL Board accepts National Emergency Response Planning Committee report The ARRL Board of Directors accepted the Report of the National Emergency Response Planning Committee (NERPC) when it met January 19 and 20 in Windsor, Connecticut. Among other things, panel members evaluated the responses and actions of ARRL and the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) during Hurricane Katrina as well as lessons learned. >Among the report's wide-ranging recommendations and suggestions: * enhance ARRL and ARES training in basic message handling. * develop a continuing education course covering installation, configuration, and use of Winlink 2000 for e-mail. * formally establish a national ARES volunteer database for use during major disasters and establish training criteria. * institute a Major Disaster Emergency Coordinator (MDEC) function to coordinate responses to large-scale national or regional disasters or emergencies. * become better acquainted with the emergency response needs of distant ARRL sections, such as Pacific, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Alaska. * improve working relationships with national-level served agencies. * ensure ARRL staff training in the Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS) and, as necessary, adapt ARRL's emergency response structure to the Unified Command model. [] New ARRL “Emergency Radio” web site The ARRL has unveiled their new “Emergency Radio” web site, at http://www.emergency-radio.org/. The web site is primarily an introduction to ham radio, with several diagrams and “real world” examples. [][] Welcome New Members! The Indianapolis Radio Club would like to welcome the following new members: >Rob Knight, AB9DF >Charles Dawson, KC9IFU >Noah Dawson, KC9IFV (12 year old EXTRA!) [][] Area Radio Classes >If you or someone you know is interested in upgrading, the Indianapolis Radio Club will be sponsoring an “Express Upgrade” class covering element 3 (General Class). It will meet tentatively at 6:30 p.m. on the evenings of March 30, April 2, 4, and 6, with testing being on Saturday, April 7. All of this will be at the ITC, same place as the IRC meetings. []Following are some other classes scheduled in the Central Indiana area: >Hendricks County is having radio classes, meeting on Wednesday evenings, running from 7:00 to 9:00 at the Senior Services Center, just north of the Hospital in Danville. Technician, General, and Extra classes are available. Contact Dr. Jay Wright, KK9L, by email at jay@southwesternelec.com, on the 147.015 (Belleville) repeater, or by phone at (317)203-3335 for more info. >In Johnson County, the Mid-State Amateur Radio Club will be holding classes beginning February 21 at 7:00 p.m. The classes will meet in the Community Room at the White River Township Library at SR135 and Smith Valley Road. There will be 8 classes over an 11 week period. Point your browser to http://midstatehams.org/ for more info. >Also, the Madison County ARC will be having classes to prepare for upgrading to General. Detailed information is available at http://www.w9vcf.org/, or you can contact Mike Brown, K9MI, at mike@k9mi.com. [][] Scholarship opportunity for Amateurs >The non-profit Foundation for Amateur Radio (FAR) now is accepting applications for 56 academic year 2007-2008 scholarships to assist radio amateurs pursuing higher education. The deadline to apply is April 30, 2007. >FAR fully funds three scholarships and administers 42 others without cost on behalf of various club and individual donors; grant income funds the remaining 11 awards. Amateur Radio licensees pursuing a full-time course of study beyond high school and accepted by or enrolled in an accredited university, college or technical school are eligible to apply. Request more information and an application form via e-mail mscholarships@farweb.org or by sending a QSL card by April 30 to FAR Scholarships, PO Box 831, Riverdale, MD 20738. [] New Castle Repeater has new tone The 145.45 machine in New Castle now needs a 131.8 tone to access it. [] FCC Resumes issuing Vanity Calls As of February 8, the FCC started issuing Vanity Call Signs again, after corrections to the software used were completed. The FCC expects to have the backlog worked through by Friday, February 16. [] Changes to local IRLP nodes Due to some abuse problems, Dave Gingrich, K9DC, has had to make some changes to a couple of local nodes. Point your browser to http://dregs.us/ for more details. [] Signals from the Past: >From the February, 1977 Amachewer: NEW PREFIXS (sic) It’s getting tougher to keep up with all these new calls, you can’t be sure of a local vs a DX station. I just worked N4EM thinking I had some rare new one and it turned out he was in Alabama and is one of the new 1X2 calls just being issued. W9BR. [][] Editor’s note: Late last year, I received a box of IRC history from the late 50’s to late 70’s. I plan to post excerpts from the Amachewers as I can. I am also planning on making PDFs of these old newsletters to try to preserve our past. [][] Upcoming Area Radio Events: * Bus Trip to Dayton “Hamvention” Saturday, May 19 ;Tickets for the bus trip are $25, and non-refundable. They are available at the club meetings. see http://www.IndyRadioClub.org for Bus trip INFO. >NOTE: This only covers the cost of the trip, tickets for the show need to be purchased separately. Point your browser to http://www.hamvention.org/ for ticket information. * Indy 500 related events Mike Palmer, N9FEB, is filling slots for volunteers for Race related events. Go to Mike’s web page at http://indyhams.org/seg/events for details. * USS Indianapolis “Museum Ships OTA” Station;sponsored by IRC,IRL & RCAC June 8 – 10 (local) Stations will be set up close to the USS Indianapolis Monument, same location as 2005. Go to http://www.indyradioclub.org/ussindy.htm for more information. Current IRC Club Officers: * President: Tom Chance, K9XV - ..EMAIL k9xv@arrl.net * Vice Pres.: Dave Miller, K9RTT - ..EMAIL dmiller@ivytech.edu * Sectretary: Ken Bandy, KC9GLQ - ..EMAIL kc9glq@arrl.net * Treasurer: Judy Gardner, AA9GW - ..EMAIL aa9gw@juno.com * Chief Operator: Dave Craig, N9QVO - ..EMAIL slough@svs.net * Dir. at large: Bob Osterhous, W9PSE - EMAIL rosterhous@iquest.net * Dir. at large: Tom Price, WB9UNG – EMAIL pricetr@comcast.net * Dir. at large: Hank Wolfla, K9LZJ – EMAIL hwolfla@insightbb.com If anyone has any items for the newsletter, please send them to Ken Bandy at kc9glq@arrl.net 73