Everything Else

Got all the gear you need? Then, have your significant other buy you a Morse code watch for Christmas. It’s a bit on the pricey side, but think of all the fun you’ll have at club meetings being the CW geek.

Well, last weekend started out poorly here at KB6NU, as I got word that I had failed to win the election for vice director of the Great Lakes Division. As several people pointed out to me, though, my opponent had previously been elected to the position (although he wasn’t the incumbent), and had even served as director for a time. So, lots of people knew his name, whereas I was much less known throughout the division.

The final tally was 3,033 to 1,263. The shame is not so much that I lost, but that so few members actually voted. By my reckoning, 4,296 is about 30% of the members in the division. I garnered about 30% of that vote, which I guess isn’t so bad.

I did learn a lot, though. For example, If I choose to run again, I’ll ask people to donate to my campaign to fund mailings and other election materials. I’ll also start earlier and make more of an effort to visit more clubs and more hamfests.

Now, it’s back to work being the Affiliated Club Coordinator of Michigan….

Off the Air
The rest of the weekend was spent visiting a friend in North Carolina. I took along my 2m radio just in case I needed it, but never did pull it out. I spent the entire weekend, as well as Monday and Tuesday, off the air.

Ending on a High Note
The weekend did end on a high note, though. In the pile of mail I dug out of my mailbox Tuesday evening was an envelope from W2WJO. That call didn’t ring a bell, so I was pretty sure I hadn’t worked him, so I was curious what might be in the envelope.

When I opened it, I was surprised to find a certificate for having the top score from the state of Michigan in the Mid-Atlantic QSO Party. Yet another certificate attesting to my championship contesting skills (he says with tongue firmly implanted in his cheek.)

Dennis, KT8X, really hates QSL cards. Some of that has to do with his battles with the 8th district QSL bureau, but some of it has to do with his dislike of paperwork. I share his dislike of paperwork, but I do like to get QSL cards.

Last Saturday, I got two cards for my collection of QSLs from stations whose callsigns spell words:

W7WHO
KE4RUN

I also received an envelope full of QSLs from the FISTS QSL Bureau. I was kind of surprised to find four DX QSLs in the pack, including cards from G3CWW, G3UAA, PA0OI, and PY1MK. There were also 11 U.S. cards in the pack, several with very colorful pictures on them.

Last night, I was scheduled to give a talk on amateur radio at a meeting of the local section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Being engineers, I thought that I’d skip a lot of the preliminaries and launch right into some of the cool, new things about amateur radio, including PSK31, computer control and logging, antenna modeling, etc. I figured that I could snag them more easily by dazzling them with the cool, up-to-date technology. I even titled the talk “Not Your Father’s Ham Radio.”

Boy, was I wrong. Almost immediately, one of the attendees piped up, “Why don’t you start from the very beginning….” So, I did a bit of slide shuffling, and instead of talking about the fancy technology, explained some of the basics of ham radio and the licensing structure first.

I’m going to have to work on this presentation to include more of the basics, such as the purpose of the service and basic ham radio activities. At any rate, here’s the presentation in its current form: Not Your Father’s Ham Radio.

Mike, WM4B, posted this to the Second Class Operator’s Club mailing list. Truly second class, Mike!

• 10⁶ bicycles = 2 megacycles
• 500 millinaries = 1 seminary
• 2000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbirds
• 10 cards = 1 decacards
• 1/2 lavatory = 1 demijohn
• 10^-6 fish = 1 microfiche
• 454 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
• 10¹² pins = 1 terrapin
• 10²¹ picolos = 1 gigolo
• 10 rations = 1 decoration
• 100 rations = 1 C-ration
• 10 millipedes = 1 centipede
• 3-1/3 tridents = 1 decadent
• 10 monologs = 5 dialogues
• 5 dialogues = 1 decalogue
• 2 monograms = 1 diagram
• 8 nickels = 2 paradigms
• 2 snake eyes = 1 paradise
• 2 wharves = 1 paradox
• 10^-6 phones = 1 microphone
• 10⁶ phones = 1 megaphone
• 10^-2 mental = 1 centimental
• 10^-1 mate = 1 decimate
• 10¹² bulls = 1 terabull
• 10^-12 boos = 1 picoboo

I got started in radio by listening to shortwave radio broadcasts on my grandparents’ old Philco console radio, and I still enjoy listening to shortwave broadcasts. So, I was kind of surprised when I got an email from Karl KG8LD, inviting ARROW members to a tour of some local radio stations being sponsored by the Michigan Assn. of Radio Enthusiasts (MARE). Here’s the text from their membership application page:

Introduction to MARE (the Michigan Area Radio Enthusiasts)

Did you know there is an honest to goodness “local club” in the Great Lakes area for radio buffs? We publish a bi-monthly bulletin, have regular meetings of the members (held in Southern Michigan), and we also publish (since January 1994!) an e-mail “TipSheet” (ISSN 1075-2471) for members only. It appears weekly in the winter, less often during other seasons.

Radio hobbyists are usually a solitary bunch, but if you haven’t met others who don’t look strangely when you say “The BBC had a neat game show on last night”, “the local cops have just gone to a Motorola Trunked System” or “60 metres was REALLY hot yesterday”, you really don’t know what you are missing. Just putting a face to the names you see on USENET or in the club bulletins is a treat in and of itself, and you will find that Michigan has a group of very active DXers and SWLs unlike any other similarly populated area in North America. [Southern Californian DXers may be more numerous, but we have it all over them in the “heart” department! ;)]

Some more info on us: The bulletin, The Great Lakes Monitor, (ISSN 1054-1071) is published every other month, and is provided as a part of the membership dues. A sample is available for US$2.00 from the address below.

Some of the columns in The Great Lakes Monitor include:

• HQ edited by Harold Frodge, publisher and MW DXer extraordinaire. This area highlights the coming events of the club — such as meetings and DXpeditions, as well as other “local” (ie within the Great Lakes area) radio events, and has a section of “MARE Bits” — little items of note that don’t quite fit elsewhere.
• Q&A edited by Ken Zichi, SWL & SW/MW/TV DXer who’s been around as long as dirt (or so it seems). This column is an “open forum” for members’ tech- nical (and non-technical!) questions and to help us all learn more about radio hobbies.
• Shortwave Space edited by Larry Russell. SWBC Station schedules. *PSB Channels edited by Ira Paul. This column provides info, loggings and tips for stations broadcasting above 30 Megs.
• Medium-Wave & FM/TV edited by Neil Wolfish, MW DXer of some infamy. Loggings and station news for domestic stations in the Great Lakes area.
• QSL/Verifications edited by Mark Humenchyk, QSL Hound of some notariety. This is MARE’s “bragging place” for members to share their latest QSLs.

MARE also organizes regular “face to face” meetings, roughly every other month from September to June. We usually have one or two picnics, a couple of informal meetings, a couple of “formal” meetings (with a topic and/or guest speaker) and we hold at least one (and often more) “DXpedition” per year. We also occasionally have a special event such as a station tour. [In the past we’ve toured WJR’s studios in Detroit, the VoA Bethany Ohio transmitter site, and the WKBD (Channel 50) studios and transmitter.]

If you would like to learn more about Michigan Area Radio Enthusiasts, Inc., (a Michigan non-profit Corporation) founded in 1984, write to:

MARE, Inc.
PO Box 200
Manchester, MI 48158
United States of America

Annual membership dues are US$11.00 in the USA and Canada (more from outside North America — but our emphasis is on members in the Great Lakes area). A sample newsbulletin is available for US$2.00. If you are at all interested –check us out. For less than the price of a pizza, you can get a whole year’s worth of information to make your hobby time more enjoyable!

If you’d like to receive a couple of the E-mail tip sheets to see what kind of information we put out, drop us a note at [email protected] and we’ll see that you get the next couple of issues.

At only eleven bucks, this is a great deal. My check’s in the mail.

One of the cool things about ham radio is that you learn a lot more than just radio. I just finished a QSO with Doug, VO1DD, who lives in Heart’s Delight, Newfoundland. Having my laptop handy, I did a quick Google search for Heart’s Delight. One of the websites I found had the following tidbits of information:

There are no snakes, skunks, deer, porcupines or groundhogs on the island of Newfoundland.

I offered to send him the two in my backyard, but he politely refused. He did say that although there were no deer on the island, there were plenty of moose. And apparently, coyotes are making a comeback on the island.

This isn’t really amateur radio related, but Ralph KB8ZOY thought this item about a kid building a hamster-powered cell phone battery charger was amusing. He says, “The bummer is the grade this kid got for his project.” (He only got a C for this project and a D for the course.)

My question, though, is what’s a sixteen year old kid doing with a Winnie-the-Pooh cellphone?