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Santa Barbara ARDF Practice
by Marvin Johnston 21 Jun '03

21 Jun '03

The weather turned out to be almost perfect for the practice held on Saturday, June 21 at Lake Los Carnaros in Goleta, California. With overcast skys in the morning, the weather was cool and comfortable for running. There were a total of 9 transmitters; 5 2M transmitters for the ARDF Competition, 1 80M practice transmitter, and 3 practice transmitters about 100 feet from each other near the starting area. I layed out the course with a goal of a 35 - 40 minute winning time. The course length varied depending on the route, but the optimum was probably 1 2 5 3 4 which gave a course length of about 2.5 Km. Taking the order of 1 5 2 3 4 would have been a close second. Bob Cooley and Jay Thompson were both members of the US ARDF team and had competed in the World ARDF Championships. Scott Moore had competed both in the Albuquerque and Georgia US ARDF Championships. Most of the other hams were either planning on, or hoping to attend the US ARDF Championships in Cincinnati, OH this year. We had four beginners that enjoyed todays event, and we are hoping they will be attending more of these events! TWO METER EVENT Name Callsign Time Foxes Found Order Bob Cooley KF6VSE 38:50 5 1 5 2 3 4 Jay Thompson W6JAY 40:40 5 5 2 1 3 4 Jay Hennigan WB6RDV 49:40 5 1 2 3 5 4 Dean Dods KD6I 54:45 5 Scott Moore KF6IKO 1:00:42 5 1 2 5 3 4 Matthew Dods KG6EPB 1:12:09 5 Bill Smathers KF6HXX 1:43:45 5 Richard Thompson WA6NOL 1:53:10 3 Jim Whitted --- 2:37:10 3 5 2 4 Gab Knapp + --- 1:15:25 1 Chris Knapp + --- Matt Smith --- 80 Meter Transmitter Name Callsign Time Jay Thompson W6JAY 15:48 Bob Cooley KF6VSE 30:10 Several other went after the 80M transmitter but were not timed. Marvin Johnston, KE6HTS ------------------------------------------- ebaY's Security Breach and Coverup http://www.auctionguild.com/generic110.html SellYourItem.com - Your Member Driven Auction Community! http://www.sellyouritem.com

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ARDF Practice Saturday
by Marvin Johnston 16 Jun '03

16 Jun '03

Hi everyone! Just a reminder that next weekend on Saturday, June 21st, we will be having an informal ARDF (Amateur Radion Direction Finding and sometimes called Radio-Orienteering) practice. The location will be at Lake Los Carneros Park in Goleta, CA. The 2M hunt will begin at 9:00AM, will be around 3 - 3.5 Km in length, and I expect the winning time to be about 35 minutes. We will have standard 1:5000, full color orienteering maps available. I plan on being at the registration area about 8:30AM. The start times will be 5 minutes apart with each competitor starting when transmitter #1 first goes on as is standard in Championship events. There will be a starting chute to keep everyone starting out in the same direction. The start times for those people who just want to give it a try without being timed will be just after the last timed start. Right now, I would guess that would be sometime after 9:40AM. Standard orienteering punches will be used, and the transmitters will be identified with the standard Orance and White control flag. There are quite a few foxtails in the park, and gators might be advisable. For those of you who might just like an armchair idea of what this is all about, take a look at http://www.rain.org/~marvin. I copied this description from the web about 5 years or so ago. I have not been able to find the original author. Since this is an informal meet, there are no entry fees. However if you are planning on attending, please let me know. A map and directions can be found on the HomingIn web site at http://www.homingin.com. ------------------------------------------- ebaY's Security Breach and Coverup http://www.auctionguild.com/generic110.html SellYourItem.com - Your Member Driven Auction Community! http://www.sellyouritem.com

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Safety & Communications (kinda long) lessons learned
by Marvin Johnston 16 Jun '03

16 Jun '03

This was forwarded to me, and I thought the information presented here might provide some ideas of what we, as a club, could be doing. E-Box - Electronic Scoring box. Runners carry a finger "stick" they place in the EBox and that records the time and ID of the runner when they visit that control. HOC - Houston Orienteering Club. OT - Overtime OCAD - An Orienteering CAD (an excellent programming for drawing Orienteering maps.) For those of you who have seen the Lake Los Carnaros Orienteering Map, it was done in OCAD 5.0 (now offered as freeware.) ******************* Hi my name is Mike Urich and I'm a member of HOC and also a ham radio operator. We just finished up teaching our annual summer camp, Texas Junior Orienteering Camp, TJOC http://tjoc.us, where we were beginning to push the envelope of technology and orienteering some. TJOC is the vision of Maj Vidinha of LaPorte JROTC and is supported by the NTOA, HOC &ALOS clubs. We learned a couple of things from this years camp that I'd like to share. First we run this camp at the Sid Richardson Scout Ranch (SR2) in Bridgeport TX which is a 3000 acre facility that is longer than it is wide. >From the bottom of the map to the top is about 5 - 6 Km and we used the entire map over the course of the week. SR2 is a very rough and unforgiving so we felt it was necessary to have good communications in addition to good medical support, we had one RN and one Paramedic on site all week. Because my son, Chase, KC5MPK and I are ham radio operators and practice emergency communications we felt that it was necessary for us to have a map of the facility that was broken up into some type of a grid system so if needed we could call for medical at grid square "G12" and everyone who needed to respond could look at their map and know where to go without going into some long detail about where to turn off the road etc etc. We found that OCAD has a grid overlay (draw grid) feature and it worked perfectly for us. We actually printed 3 separate maps covering various areas of the main map (mainly so it wouldn't be too small) and had copies with both medical staff, myself (safety observer & communications supervisor) and the camp director. These came in handy when we had missing (OT) runners and had to mount a search. We could drop off people at different spots and tell them to go search a particular grid(s). We set the grids to 150X150 meters in size This was greatly enhanced by using good two way radios. If you scan through the pictures on the tjoc web-site you will see a gazebo which is one of the highest spots on the facility. We set up our fixed communications center (net control station or NCS) there On events where the courses were too long for reliable hand held to hand held communications we would man the (NCS). Any time we had a missing (OT) runner and had search teams out each team would be equipped with a hand held radio and the NCS would be manned as well as we had our medic in a vehicle with a radio. In HOC we are currently using MURS Ch5 (154.600 MHz) and we have 10 hand held and one fixed (base) station radio. Here's a couple of pictures of the antenna on top of the trailer and the radio inside the equipment trailer. Once the trailer is unloaded with meet gear we set it up for computations and NCS. These were from a local meet back in the spring. http://www.ka5cvh.com/arespix/tn014.jpg http://www.ka5cvh.com/arespix/tn015.jpg http://www.ka5cvh.com/arespix/tn015a.jpg Our next goal is to look into doing some type of data communications between start / finish & computations via packet (digital mode). We'll probably be using MURS Ch3, 151.940 MHz for data. What we want to be able to do is automatically update start list changes for finish and computations from start as they are made. We've also discussed how we could use APRS (another digital radio mode) to let us know who has punched an E-Box so we can evaluate where competitors may be on the course. Another benefit to the digital modes is having someone at a man control, like map exchange, sending bib #'s back to finish so the race can be "monitored" so to speak. We're also interested in talking with anyone who has come up with a PDA interface where we could go out and check E-Boxes to see if a missing runner has made it to that control or not. We are seriously interested in what other clubs are using for two way radios (if you do) at your meets, and if any other of you techno geeks have considered any of these other items too!. I have set up an email reflector for the purpose of discussing "license free" "personal communication radio services" including all digital modes and how we could apply them to orienteering. If you're interested in joining go to http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/murs and sign up. Mike Urich www.ka5cvh.com www.ka5cvh.com/democracy.htm ------------------------------------------- ebaY's Security Breach and Coverup http://www.auctionguild.com/generic110.html SellYourItem.com - Your Member Driven Auction Community! http://www.sellyouritem.com

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Field Day Request
by steve hammer 09 Jun '03

09 Jun '03

Dear SBARC Members: I am writing to the general membership today to ask for a favor. As you know, the 28-29th of June is Field Day. KG6JMJ and I are running the HF Phone Station. We had this bright idea of getting a car dealership to lend us their blimp for Field Day operations. It appears that we have been successful and expect to have a 17 foot blimp flying above the Phone Station. What could be more exciting? We need two things and we thought that we would appeal to the membership for help. We need: 1. Ladder Line. 450 ohm 14 gage 1 inch ladder line is preferred. 2. Ideas about what antenna would take the best advantage of the blimp (maximum elevation is 190 feet). If you have some ladder line you would like to LEND (you will get it back), please let us know. We would like to obtain about 300 feet in total. It can be in many pieces...anywhere from 25 foot sections to 100+ foot runs. If you have an antenna idea, we'd love to hear it. If you have an antenna you would like to lend and see it fly high above Santa Barbara, we'd like to hear that too! With the solar conditions poor, we need to concentrate on 40-80 meters. Having the blimp will allow us to get a long wire high in the sky. As a skyhook, we can suspend most any design. Looking through the ARRL Antenna book brings several good choices to mind, including a tilted half rhombic. So, if you'd like to help us field day operators out, please let us know. Please send email to kg6ena(a)sbarc.org do not reply to this email as we used the list server. Thanks for your time. KG6ENA, KG6JMJ Steve Hammer Ken Mueller

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Orion Wish List
by steve hammer 09 Jun '03

09 Jun '03

Here is my short list: Orion Feature Wish List (software defined) 1. manual transmit key 2. bandscope active on all receivers, main, b and sub; switchable 3. two bandscopes: 1 for A, 1 switchable between B and sub 4. programmable step sizes other than the presets 5. memory positions for rx audio settings that does not require a reset of other radio functions. recall would be instant. 6. the external speaker output on the rear panel should be a STEREO plug and not a monaural plug. this would allow us to connect two speakers so we could enjoy the binaural and diversity reception. 7. separate control of both compression and alc in the speech processor. 8. display of transmit audio signal in real time. 9. ability to reassign features to buttons we may not use. for example, item 5 above could be assigned to VOX button. multiple pushes would cycle different settings (as the AGC button does now). cheers! steve kg6ena

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SBARC Field Day Request
by steve hammer 09 Jun '03

09 Jun '03

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ARTICLE ON AMERICAN PIANO MUSEUM! SMILE!
by Dennis Schwendtner 08 Jun '03

08 Jun '03

Here is an article that you may enjoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: Museum of the American Piano Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 7:57 PM Subject: Pianomuseum in the NYTIMES The Museum made the front page of the New York Times Friday's (5/6/03) edition in the Weekend section, page E29!! Please read it and pass it along to your friends. If you would like to get a copy, please let us know. June 6, 2003 Fanfare for the Uncommon Piano By DIANE COLE Love a Piano," Irving Berlin's anthem to the keyboard, has been music to my ears ever since I began tickling the ivories at the age of 8. But New York's love affair with the keyboard has been going on a lot longer, as several museums, a landmark showroom and this country's most famous piano factory all attest. In addition, gala concerts at Carnegie Hall this weekend commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding, in New York, of Steinway & Sons. But while that venerable piano manufacturer may be the best-known symbol of the instrument in New York, there are other places connected to the piano that can delight the casual visitor and surprise even the connoisseur. The best place to begin exploring the piano's extraordinary popularity in the United States and its advent as a status symbol in this country is at the Museum of the American Piano, at 291 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Entering this compact, basement-level institution, founded in 1984, is like walking through an auditory time machine and hearing the unusual plunk and plink of keyboards made 200 years ago. Many once-popular piano makers displayed here - Knabe, Chickering, Osborn, Geib and Nunns, Clark & Company, among others - no longer sound familiar because they have gone out of business. But more than a century ago hundreds of manufacturers proliferated across the country. Piano ownership conveyed a sense of middle-class refinement and domesticity, and such was the demand that by 1850 about 60 piano manufacturers existed in the New York area alone, making it an important local industry that provided factory work for new immigrants and created jobs for salesmen, tuners, movers and music teachers. By the end of the 19th century, about one in six New Yorkers worked in some piano-related job, says Kalman Detrich, the museum's founder and executive director. (Mr. Detrich or an associate will provide a guided tour if you call in advance.) As you walk through the two chronologically arranged galleries, don't be surprised if you find yourself rubbing your eyes as you count only 61, or in some cases 73 or 75 or 85, cream-colored keys on instruments of earlier eras, rather than the standard 88 of pianos today. One eerily glistening keyboard has keys made from mother-of-pearl. The foot pedals are not always where you expect them to be, either; on one instrument there is one each on opposite ends of the piano. In some instances, you might not even realize that the once-fashionable but now obscure-looking piece of furniture before you is a parlor piano of yore.One such oddity is the giraffe piano, essentially an upright with a grand's harp-shaped frame with strings standing atop it. These pianos became popular in the 1880's, promising to provide the resonant sound and high-classed�cor of a grand while taking up much less space. One catch: no stand for sheet music. Another 19th-century space saver is displayed: a piano whose music desk folds up and disappears, allowing the piano to masquerade as an exquisitely carved rosewood cabinet with no telltale keyboard, pedals or strings in sight. Still another obsolete style well represented here is the so- called square piano, whose actual shape more closely resembles an elongated rectangle. One intricately carved 1815 example is supported by six fluted legs. No wonder this style's massive size, compared with the more compact upright, led to the square's extinction by the end of the 19th century. A 1920's Player Piano On his tour Mr. Detrich saves the most novel item for last: a 1920's Nickelodeon Company player piano that also encases a mechanically operated tambourine, cymbal, bass drum, triangle and accordion. Although the museum also offers examples of French, German and British pianos, the emphasis on American ones highlights the fact that the piano was the first American product to supersede its European counterparts, Mr. Detrich says. The turning point, he explains, came in 1850, when the American-made Chickering piano beat out European competitors to win a gold medal in Paris. The piano industry also presaged today's trend toward globalization, Mr. Detrich said. Exotic woods like rosewood originated in South America, ivory was imported from Africa, felt for the hammers came from New Zealand and Australia, and shellac and finishing materials were made in Asia. More piano history - and additional exotic pianos - can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's musical-instruments collection, which houses the oldest piano in existence, built in 1720 by the Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori. In outward shape, Cristofori's unornamented, slim- cased, fragile-looking wooden instrument with yellowed keys resembles a harpsichord. But his interior music-making mechanism was revolutionary, essentially replacing the harpsichord's string-plucking quills with fast-striking hammers. The keyboard on this piano, though only four and a half octaves, could produce a wider range of sound, high and low, and could play, as suggested by the instrument's new name - the gravicembalo col piano e forte - soft and loud. By the end of the 18th century, five octaves had become standard, and pianos were so popular that wealthy music lovers were commissioning ornate, custom-made instruments. Around 1790, for example, Ferdinand Hofmann of Vienna built an elegant cherry grand, with delicately carved arcades above an ebony-and-bone keyboard, and a music rack with a tall Gothic-arch window design. Mozart, Haydn or their contemporaries might have played such an instrument. By the time Beethoven died in 1827, the octave range had grown even larger and, thanks to the use of steel to reinforce the previously all-wooden frames, pianos could withstand greater wear and tear. Such are the conclusions to be drawn from the far heftier, heavily legged Brazilian rosewood grand piano built by John Broadwood & Sons of London in 1827. The prize for showiest instrument goes to the splendiferous, honey-colored satinwood grand built in 1840 by Erard & Company. It has a Louis XV-style inlaid wooden case with elaborate gilt trim, massive sculptured legs and painted scenes of lutenists, singers, birds, lions, floral arrangements and nudes. More down-to-earth keyboards are also on view at the Metropolitan, however, and not just in the musical-instrument collection. In the painting galleries, two canvases by Renoir, for example, display upright pianos - ubiquitous in middle-class homes throughout Europe and the United States by the 1890's - surrounded by sweet-faced girls eager to show off their musical accomplishments. Temples to Music-Making While the antique, handcrafted pianos at the Museum of the American Piano and the Met may be rarities, the skills that go into piano-making have not been lost. A glimpse of this can be gleaned at Steinway & Sons, at 19th Avenue and 38th Street in Long Island City, Queens, where piano manufacturing is still a respected craft honoring the spirit of that company's founder, Heinrich E. Steinweg, who was a master cabinetmaker before he came to the United States in 1850 and Anglicized his name. New York remains the very place to learn a fine way to treat a Steinway, as Berlin wrote - especially this year, the 150th anniversary of that piano manufacturer's founding. To celebrate, Steinway & Sons is sponsoring three gala concerts at Carnegie Hall this week, the final two tonight and tomorrow, with each performance intended to highlight a different musical style. Tonight's concert is to feature the jazz pianists Herbie Hancock, Ramsey Lewis and Ahmad Jamal. Tomorrow night the spotlight is on pop, with a bill that includes K. D. Lang, Peter Nero and Roger Williams. Tickets for these events can be pricey, but the Steinway factory - in Astoria, Queens, since 1870 - offers free tours showing workers as they assemble the approximately 12,000 parts that go into a new concert grand. You can see the finished product by stepping inside Steinway's Manhattan showroom at 109 West 57th Street, a building whose 1925 Beaux-Arts exterior and ornate interior rotunda were designed by Warren & Wetmore, the same firm that gave New York its Grand Central Terminal. Grand is indeed the word for the multitiered Waterford chandelier that dangles from the domed ceiling of the main room, which is graced by tall marble columns and oversize paintings of heroic-looking composers. The two lower floors of this 16-story structure have the feel of a private mansion, but with a difference. The cathedral-like main room, where a polished black concert grand sits regally in the center, can also double as a recital room for private performances, often by piano teachers and their students, and for occasional public seminars. Only slightly less intimidating are the five salons down the hall, each filled with at least a half-dozen grand pianos in different sizes and models. You would think you are in a hall of mirrors except that each instrument differs slightly from the other, in wood type (satinwood, rosewood, dark cherry, mahogany, pear and ebony, to name a few), style (compare the elaborately decorated, stubby- legged retro Victorian model with the austere, pared-down lines of Karl Lagerfeld's design) and vintage (the oldest, from the 1890's, have 85 keys rather than today's traditional 88). Each instrument sounds different, too. You can hear this in the jazz riffs and rippling arpeggios, some passages more mellow, others brighter, that float through the building, a cacophony provided by piano shoppers happy to test the merchandise. If you put your hands to the keyboards you can feel the different resistance in each action as well. As you roam you might also see the former company president, Henry Z. Steinway, the 87-year-old great-grandson of Heinrich Steinweg, who established the firm on Hester Street, on the Lower East Side, in 1853 before moving to Astoria in the 1870's. Wearing a natty bowtie and a dark suit with Steinway's trademark lyre on a lapel pin, the white-haired Mr. Steinway reports every day to the second-floor office he calls his "very own Old Curiosity Shop." This is a conference room lined with metal file cabinets and graced with memorabilia like a framed lock of Liszt's hair; a beige doorman's hat bearing the Steinway & Sons insignia, dating from more gracious days when businesses employed doormen; and a fire helmet with the Steinway name, from the 1890's, when the Astoria factory had its own fire company. "I'm the last Steinway, a sort of icon they show off from time to time," Mr. Steinway said, introducing himself. The family no longer owns or runs the company; it was sold in 1972 and since 1995 has been part of a corporation known as Steinway Musical Instruments Inc. These days, Mr. Steinway observed, his chief duty is autographing pianos, a task he performs with the single flourish of a black-inked laundry marker. Oddly, he never learned to play the piano himself. "I had a few lessons, but they never really took," he says. The procession of distinguished musicians associated with Steinway began in 1872, when the company sponsored the first American tour of the European piano sensation Anton Rubinstein. Another 19th-century matinee-idol pianist, Ignace Paderewski, played the inaugural concert at Carnegie Hall in 1891. Since then it has been host to more than 520 additional pianists in solo performances. This is the focus of an exhibition paying tribute to those great pianists, which is on display at Carnegie Hall's Rose Museum through July 3. Concert programs, posters, autographs, photographs, sheet music, record covers and newspaper clippings document the parade of pianists who have played at Carnegie. Most notable is the continuously playing videotape of piano performances by, among others, Artur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin and Eubie Blake, who all knew how to get to Carnegie Hall. And even if, as hard as we practice, we can't, we can always hum along with Irving Berlin. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company _______________________________________________ pianotech list info: http://www.ptg.org/mailman/listinfo/pianotech ***** Remember, an out of tune piano makes noise, not music! ***** ***** E-MAIL: dennis(a)rain.org . ***** http://www.rain.org/~dennis *** Dennis Schwendtner *** WB6OBB ***

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New 60-meter band becomes available July 3
by Darryl A. Widman 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

QST de W1AW ARRL Bulletin 38 ARLB038

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Jerry Schmitt, KK6YY SK
by Marvin Johnston 31 May '03

31 May '03

For those of you who remember the 1997 Hamfest, Jerry was the person who gave the satellite communications demo in the Elks parking lot, and made a contact with Alaska on a handheld antenna. * Gerald G. Schmitt, KK5YY, SK: Jerry Schmitt, KK5YY (ex-KC5EGG), of Los Alamos, New Mexico, died unexpectedly May 23 after an apparent heart attack. He was 60. Schmitt was especially well-known within the AMSAT and APRS communities and was the designer and primary promoter of the portable Arrow antenna used for satellite work; he also had a hand in developing antennas for AO-40. "Jerry was a very good friend of AMSAT's," said AMSAT President Robin Haighton, VE3FRH. At Hamvention 2003 Schmitt assisted at the AMSAT booth and did a live ham satellite demonstration. "He was just a great guy all around and full of humor," Haighton said. "We're all going to miss him." An ARRL member, Schmitt served as a net control operator for the New Mexico Swapnet and took part in providing ham radio communication during the Cerro Grande fires in New Mexico. In 2001, Schmitt managed Earth-station duties during an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school group contact from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque. He was nearing retirement from Los Alamos National Laboratories and planning to move with his wife, Barbara, KD5CGU, to Alaska. Arrangements are pending.--Brian Mileshosky, N5ZGT, provided some information for this report -- ------------------------------------------- ebaY's Security Breach and Coverup http://www.auctionguild.com/generic110.html SellYourItem.com - Your Member Driven Auction Community! http://www.sellyouritem.com

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Kona, tha ATV Wonderdog!
by rod＠sbatv.org 31 May '03

31 May '03

How about a very nice ham radio dog as a pet? Paul Sheffield's (W6VLM) dog Kona (no callsign yet) is at a local shelter and is available for adoption. He's neutered and is a Husky or Malamute mix (see the link below). He's been on ATV (Paul taught him all about it) and he will try for his ham license as soon as the FCC allows! Another potential SBARC member!!! Pass the info on to your friends. The shelter is near Patterson (see the link) and is open 9-5, seven days a week. Rumor has it, Kona knows Morse Code. http://www.allforanimals.com/dogphotos.sb.htm 73, Rod, WB9KMO

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