The
Marinette and Menominee Amateur Radio Club
GROUND WAVE
Repeater Frequencies 147.00 MHZ & 444.075 Mhz
Club Net: Sunday 7PM 147.00 MHz
Simplex DX Spotting and Ragchew Frequency 146.55
Web Page: http://community-2.webtv.net/KG8CX/EdsHamDelicaciesand/
Officers
President: Jim Callow K8IR
Vice President: Ed Engleman KG8CX
Treasurer: Lynne Rynish N8OSK
Secretary: Gary Luthardt KG9AD
The MMARC Newsletter April 2001
APRIL WEATHER SPOTTERS/MEETING...
We
will meet at 6pm on Thursday April 12th in the Menominee Chamber of Commerce
building, at the corner of 10th & 10th (US-41). The purpose of the
meeting is mainly to update our weather spotting skills. The program will
be put on by the Marquette office of NOAA. Other county volunteers and
employees may also be there, as will Marge Bramschreiber, the Menominee County
emergency government director. If there is time at the end of the session,
we will have a short meeting. If the session lasts past 8:30pm, we will
probably hold off the meeting until the April 20th Fish Fry. Agenda
items will include updates on the VE Testing, August Special Event Station,
Field Day, repeaters, and summer meeting locations. It should be a brief
session.
The next club fish fry will be Friday, April 20th at the Riverfront Inn. We will be meeting in a private room so if we should need to conduct a business meeting, we will have some peace and quiet. Reservations are a MUST! Please contact Lynne, N8OSK, or Ed, KG8CX to make yours. You can make reservations on the Sunday Night Net, if you prefer. The deadline is Friday April 13th. Social hour at 5:30. Seating for dinner at 6:30.
MARCH FISH FRY/MEETING, SPECIAL EVENT...
Our
March meeting was held following the fish fry at Schusslers, with 34 members,
spouses and guests in attendance Although the environment was not too
conducive to holding a meeting, we did conduct some business. One of the major
decisions was to go ahead with a National Lighthouse special event station on
Saturday August 4th at the Menominee Waterfront Festival. This will give us
tremendous exposure, as 10,000 to 15,000 people regularly attend this event.
In order to make this, our most ambitious special event to date, successful, we
need the cooperation of the entire club. We will bring Amateur Radio to
the attention of thousands, and we want to do it in the most positive light.
Contact with other lighthouse stations throughout the US, and world, will
hopefully turn many on to the magic of ham radio. We will discuss this in
more detail at our May, June, and July meetings. But, the bottom line is,
we are committed. The Waterfront Commitee is looking forward to having us there,
as a unique attraction. Many thanks to Jim Callow, K8IR, for spearheading
this event for us.
W8HKY TO HOST MAY MEETING....
Remember
to circle Thursday May 10th on your calendars. That will be the date of
our May meeting to be held at the Northland Terrace apartment complex in
Marinette. Mike Anuta has secured the community room there for our
meeting. Come and meet our most senior member, and the subject of several recent
recognitions and magazine articles. It will be a not to be forgotten
evening. There’ll even be some refreshments, courtesy of Mike. We’ll have
directions for those needing them in the May Ground Wave.
APRIL
QST FEATURES W8HKY...
Those
of you who subscribe to QST already have read the excellent two page article on Mike in the April issue. If not, find a copy fast, or ask
someone to make a copy for you. A definite keepsake issue for everyone.
HAM
RADIO TRAINING ALREADY PAYING OFF…
We
are happy to report two newly licensed hams receiving their calls during the
past few days.
Congratulations
to Bill Overman of Oconto who is now KB9ZCZ.
Bill is the next door neighbor to his elmer, Dwight, W9YQ.
Also,
congratulations to Randy Zandt of Pembine, who is now KB9ZES.
Randy was in our radio class last year, and has also had the help of his
elmer, Bob, W9AMZ.
A number of other students are working with their elmers in anticipation of the upcoming testing date.
VE TESTING COMING IN APRIL…
The
M&M Amateur Radio Club will be conducting radio exams on Saturday, April
21st at the Stephenson Public Library in downtown Marinette. Registration begins
at 9:30 and testing to begin at 10 AM.
Pre-registration
is encouraged. Volunteer examiners will test for all classes including
Technician,General, and Extra Class. The five words per minute morse code exam
will also be offered.
Candidates
should bring pencils, pens, paper, and a photo ID. Each test is $10. Checks
should be made out to ARRL/VEC.
For
registration and additional information, call Ed Engleman at 863-3477 or Paul
Drees at 735-7397.
A meeting for all VE’s who plan to administer the April 21st exams will be held on Sunday, April 8th, 6:30 pm, on the 147 repeater. At this time, we can discuss the upcoming session and address any questions. Hope you can check in. (From Paul, WC9E).
NEW ARRL EMERGENCY COORDINATOR FOR MARINETTE
COUNTY...
Stan Kaplan, the ARRL emergency manager for Wisconsin,
has announced that Jeff Rymer, N9PQU, has been appointed the official ARRL emergency
coordinator for Marinette County replacing Dottie, WB9NCT. Jeff has
plans for getting an ARES group started within the club. Anyone with an
interest in this should contact Jeff. Every county in Wisconsin except
ten, now has an official ARRL emergency coordinator in place. Jeff will be
working closely with Renelle Schaffer, KB9WKD, the Marinette County emergency
government director in any disaster scenario that may arise. This announcement
was the subject of a nice article in the Peshtigo Times.
440
REPEATER STILL ON TARGET...
For
those of you who are anxious for the new 444 repeater to go on the air, don't
despair. As soon as warm weather is here on a regular basis, and the
climber is available, it will go up. Thanks to Jim Swanson, KC8DOA, for
allowing another antenna on his tower. We all appreciate the fact that he
has allowed all of our repeater equipment to be situated at his site.
MICHIGAN QSO PARTY PLANS…
Once again the Bay Area Wireless Association (BAWA) club is planning on
putting Menominee County on the map in a big way for the Michigan QSO Party.
Like last year, they will be running
a multi-op multi-transmitter operation from AA9PB hunting partner
Mike’s camp.
This will be a “field day” type of
setup with all power from generators. They are hoping to have 4 stations
this year, all running power.
The contest is April 21st from 11am to 11pm Central Time.
(Yes, the same day as the VE Testing. It’s
going to be a busy day for some!)
They’ll again use the W8PIF call, and the scores of this and other
local operations will be entered under the M&M ARC.
Last year W8PIF won the multi–multi class and the M&M ARC won the
club competition and we received two plaques
Any club members are invited to get on the air, make a few QSO’s, and
submit your score on behalf of the M&M ARC.
Anyone interested in
participating in the multi-op station or who would just like more information on
the Michigan QSO Party can contact N9PQU, K0SN, or AA9PB.
BAWA MAKES
WISCONSIN QSO PARTY GOAL…
By Jim Mans,
AA9PB. Edited from the BAWA
Newsletter
The 2001
Wisconsin QSO Party was a challenge and fun for all who attended.
Well it all started about 9 months prior to the contest, when Jeff
{N9PQU} thought we should go for the title in the Multi-Operator,
Multi-Transmitter Class. That class has recently been won by the W0AIH Super
Contest station in LaCrosse.
Tom [K0SN] agreed to have the BAWA contest station at his place. And the
plan started to take come together. Over the winter months a number of new
towers, telephone poles, and antennas sprouted on the K0SN antenna farm.
A practice run using three transmitters was done in January during the
North American QSO Party.
As the Wisconsin Contest grew closer, Jim, AA9PB took on the
responsibility of organizing to make sure we would have all the equipment we
needed to set up 8 stations on the site.
Most of the equipment was set up the day before the contest, and some
testing was done. Everything seemed ready for the contest.
Then the big day was upon us. Sunday March 11th. The WIQSO Party.
At about 11 am it seemed to be going OK, but somewhere between 11am and
12 noon start, “Murphy” showed up as a guest operator.
Turmoil was an understatement at the start of the contest. We were lucky that 2 unscheduled operators showed up, Paul [WC9E] and Bob [AA9GZ] got free from prior commitments and came out to help. We were sure glad to see those guys show. We had planned and tested 2 rigs on 20, 40, and 80 meters, but “Murphy” made things bad. Our plan of 8 rigs was now down to 4. After a lot of head scratching we made a few moves and were up to 6 rigs on the air, but still could not get 2 rigs on 40 meters where we needed them. So back to building antennas. Someone suggested putting up another antenna for 40 as far as we could get it away from the others. Jeff had a roll of coax in his truck and Tom had a dipole cut for 40 in the shed. After soldering ends on Jeff’s coax, Eric, KG9GH, and the two Jims, K8IR and AA9PB put it up in a tree as far away as the coax let us. It worked! Now, two hours into the seven hour contest, we had seven stations on the air, all running. As the day wore on it seemed we were not as busy as we had hoped. At one end of Tom’s garage, Dave, KB9WBP, and Bob, AA9GZ were having a hoot of a time on 10 meter ssb, while Dwight, W9YQ was falling asleep trying to make contacts on 10 and 15 cw. On the other side Jim, K8IR was working 40 ssb for all it was worth while Jeff, N9PQU ran on 20 ssb. Mary [KB9TPC] looked for mults from her and Jeff’s home QTH and gave us spots on 2 meters. Meanwhile downstairs in Tom’s shack Scott, W9SF ran 20 cw working DX just to make contacts. Tom, K0SN, was running 40 cw with not much heavy action, while Ed, KG8CX kept calling on 80 ssb, without much success.
Somewhere around 5pm we decided to make another move. We put Jeff on 80
ssb and Ed on 20 ssb, somewhere in the meantime I managed
to get in the 20 ssb chair and the brats
were burning on the grill. Soon after, we put Dwight on 80 cw and he got his smile back and a nice run to
finish out the last of the contest.
The big surprise was how well 10 meters held up. Dave had worked it for
all it was worth. Tom’s home-brew
monobander really
played on 10.
The whole team pulled together and overcame adversity. Everybody that showed up played an
important role and nobody got much of a chance to relax during the contest. But
when it was over we had logged about 1400 contacts. Now
that’s a lot of calling CQ
contest in 7 hours.
But all the work and preparation may have paid off.
AA9PB got an e-mail from W0AIH saying they were at 283,140 points.
Thanks to the 1.5 multiplier for running low power, it looks like the
BAWA score will be about 330,000, hopefully good enough for a first place finish
and a new record in multi-multi. Of
course, we won’t know for sure until the scores come out in several months.
Thanks to all involved.
Operators: K0SN, N9PQU, W9YQ, KB9WBP, AA9GZ, WC9E, K8IR,
W9SF, KG9GH, KB9TPC, KG8CX, AND AA9PB
NEW WEB PAGE LINKS…
Three new sites are now on the KG8CX/ M&M ARC webpage...the first two are the official sites for the cities of Marinette and Menominee (we are listed in the Marinette site in the "Tourism & Recreation" under * Clubs and Organizations *). Also Ed has added a "storm spotter" site in the weather bar section. That is really useful. Also remember to click on "Eric's Weather Page", for up to the minute radar views and other neat weather related stuff compiled by KG9GH.
UP HAM DIRECTORY AVAILABLE…
Anyone wishing to purchase a UP Ham Directory from the Copper Country ARC, may do so by getting a check in the amount of $3.00, made payable to Copper Country ARC to Lynne, N8OSK by April 12th. This directory will include info on over 1400 UP hams, UP repeaters and frequencies, emergency numbers and information which has not been published in previous directories. They only intend to print 100 copies of the directory, so order early!
WORLD AMATEUR RADIO DAY....
April 18 has been set
aside as a day commemorating amateur radio and its service to the world community. The theme this year, is "Providing
Disaster Communications in the 21st Century". A special program will
be aired on shortwave, April 18, 0200-0255 UTC (8:00 - 8:55pm) Check 9585
KHz shortwave, as this is the frequency and time the program will be beamed to
North America.
WISCONSIN SALUTES HAMS…
Wisconsin Governor Scott
McCallum is proclaiming April 19, as Amateur Radio Operator Awareness Day in
Wisconsin in recognition of the public service provided by hams.
LOCAL/REGIONAL NETS TO ENJOY...
Here is a brief rundown
on 2 meter and HF nets for you to listen to and/or check in to:
2 meter--
147.210 - Door Co. GM net, 8am, Mo-Sa
*145.470 - YoYo net, Crivitz, 8pm, Sa
*147.270 - PASS net, GB, 8pm, 1st/3rd Tu
Packerland Area Storm Spotters
*147.120 - Mike/Key club net, 8:45pm, We
146.550 - BAWA net, 7pm, Mo
147.000 - M&M (Candy net), 7pm, Su
Skywarn net when
activated
(*) indicates a PL of 107.2 for access
HF nets--
3920 - U.P. Net, 4pm(cst), daily
3985 - Wisconsin Wx Net, 6:00-7:15am daily
3985 - Wisconsin SSB Net, 5:15pm dly
14.300 - Maritime Mobile Net (some exciting action can occur here)
14.325 - Hurricane Watch net(starting June 1)
APRIL ANNIVERSARIES/BIRTHDAYS...
4th
- Tanya and Lou Parkansky; 5th - Diane and Jim Mans.
10th - Tom Rynish; 11th - Dottie Staffeldt; 14th - Bob Schrader.
Enjoy your special day.
Paul,
WC9E, has varied lengths of #12 solid insulated copper for antenna
installations. The wire comes in various colors, and lengths may be 100 feet or
so. If you are planning a dipole or any other wire antenna, now is your chance.
The price is FREE Contact Paul at 735-7125, or pdrees@webcntrl.com.
Jeff
, N9PQU is looking for any radio or test equipment that you may want to sell.
You can call him at 920-897-4561, or email him at jrymer@ez-net.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE…
Thanks to everyone who contributed to The Ground Wave. This is our biggest issue in several months, and several submissions ended up being saved for future issues. As always, any and all submissions are welcome. –K8IR jcallow@mari.net
CREDITS…
Thanks to Peninsula Office Equipment of Menominee for printing the Ground
Wave.
Thanks to Jim, KC8DOA for hosting the W8PIF Repeater on his tower.
MARINETTE AND
MENOMINEE AMATEUR RADIO CLUB MINUTES FOR MARCH 9, 2001
The
March meeting of the Marinette and Menominee Amateur radio club was called to
order Friday March 9 after the fish fry by the president Jim K8IR at 7:33pm at
Schussler's in Peshtigo. There was no official meeting held for the month of
February due to the severe winter weather Thursday night February 8. February 10
the date of the Charter Night Banquet K8IR did go over a few items.
For
correspondence K8IR reported receiving a letter from Mike Anuta thanking
everyone for celebrating his 100th birthday.
The
repeater report KG8CX reported that when the weather is at 40 degrees the 440
antenna will go up on the tower of KC8DOA Jim Swanson. For the Sunday net Ed
reported it is averaging over 20 checkins.
OLD
BUSINESS;
April
12 is the date of the weather spotter's training starting at 6pm at the Chambers
of Commerce Building in Menominee taught by the Marquette Weather Bureau. The
April meeting will be held after the training session.
NEW
BUSINESS:
After
much discussion it has been decided to have a special event station during the
water front activities in Menominee. This is the same time as the lighthouse
weekend will be taking place plus this will bring out ham radio exposure to the
public attending the waterfront activities.
Field
day again will be at W9YQ.
Paul
WC9E reported ham classes are doing well and this is one on one instruction and
test session April 21.
Wisconsin
QSO Party is Sunday March 11 noon to 7pm. BAWA is having a multi multi station
with 8 stations and 9 operators asking for help from members at the meeting
tonight to help out.
K8IR
reported the April meeting will be at the chambers of commerce building in
Menominee. The May meeting will be at Mike Anuta's location and June and July
meetings at Henes Park in Menominee? August should be back at BAMC.
Emergency
Management Director, Renelle Schaffer reported on the upcoming exercises for the
Peavy Hydroelectric dam failures. There are two exercises the first one is a
tabletop exercise on May 16 and the functional one on May 19. They will be held
in Iron Mountain and anyone interested should contact Renelle at 715-735-7660 or
egov@marinettecounty.com and she will make sure you get further information on
the exercises. Renelle also mentioned the sirens and the press release that was
sent out to the papers that stressed the importance of getting your own weather
radio. This would provide a majority of residents alerts for weather warnings.
She is trying to get a weather tower set up in Marinette County to cover the
vacant reception in the middle of the county. Renelle reported for those HAMs
that are interested in weather spotting training and cannot make it to the April
12 meeting another training session is most likely to be held on April 20 at the
courthouse for Oconto and Marinette County residents. If anyone is interested
please give Renelle a call.
Meeting
adjourned at 8:00pm by Jim K8IR
President
Submitted by Gary W Luthardt KG9AD, Secretary