Current Guywire

Regina Amateur Radio Association
GUYWIRE

February 2006

Editor VE5SC sewert@sasktel.net

NEXT MEETING FEBRUARY 8TH 7:30 PM SCIENCE CENTER
IMAX Boardroom Use IMAX entrance.

Bill Smith will give an interesting presentation on antenna tuning and noise bridges.

If you would like to see an excellent close-up of Mars (82 ft.
radius) taken from the Mars Exploration Rover, go to:
http://tinyurl.com/ckkla

Question on a geometry test: Given a triangle with right
angle sides of 3 and 4 units each, find x, the length of the
hypotenuse. The answer from our favorite blonde is at:

http://earthsignals.com/add_CGC/Images/X.gif

This year the SARL will be sponsoring a mini-hamfest on July 8th. It will include a Flea Market and SARL General Meeting and will be held in the Manitou Room of the Manitou Springs Hotel just north of Watrous Saskatchewan running from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

Admission to SARL members is free. Non-members $5.00.
Tables at the Flea Market can be had for $5.00.
For further information contact Val VE5ACJ valve5acj@sasktel.net

Q. If a person fails an amateur radio exam, how long must he wait before he
can write the test again?

What minimum mark is necessary to pass the Basic Amateur Exam?

Regina Amateur Radio Association GUYWIRE February 2006 Editor VE5SC sewert@sasktel.net	The RARA WEBSITE can be found at www.sarl.ca/rara THIS IS THE NEW SITE - CHECK IT OUT The website contains RARA news, repeater lists as well as links to other amateur resources. Club meetings are held the 2nd Wednesday of each month, with the exception of July and August, at the Science Center.
The online publication of the REGINA AMATEUR RADIO ASSOCIATION is published monthly except July and August and is distributed free of charge as a service of RARA to all licensed hams in the Regina Area who have e-mail addresses. Anyone NOT wishing to receive future copies should send an e-mail to the editor and your name will be removed from the mailing list.	REGULAR MEETING THIS MONTH NEXT MEETING FEBRUARY 8TH 7:30 PM SCIENCE CENTER IMAX Boardroom Use IMAX entrance. Bill Smith will give an interesting presentation on antenna tuning and noise bridges.
PUBLIC SERVICE PUBLIC SERVICE Report from Terry VE5TLW I will be out of town on the date of the scheduled ARES meeting on February 21st. Therefore, the meeting is canceled. The only pressing issue at this point is to obtain new ARES ID's. I am in discussion with Warren Bobbee (City of Regina, Emergency Planner) as to the style of the new passes. There is also a movement afoot on a national scale to have a common ID on a Canada wide basis. There are two events this month that we have been asked to provide comms for: Klondike Hike (Jim Sandercock - VE5CS co-ordinator) and the Hypothermic Half Marathon (John Bradley - VE5MU co-ordinator). 73, Terry (VE5TLW) SARR NEWS For those interested, we are setting up a search exercise in the Regina Police Service Practice area and would be appreciative of any interest in providing communications support. I will ask John Bradley to coordinate your involvement. Scott Wright President - SARR Rm 125 - 3085 Albert St Regina Saskatchewan, S4S 0B1 W (306)787-4661 C (306)533-0260 H (306)586-9679 WEBSITE OF THE MONTH If you would like to see an excellent close-up of Mars (82 ft. radius) taken from the Mars Exploration Rover, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ckkla BLONDE GEOMETRY TEST Question on a geometry test: Given a triangle with right angle sides of 3 and 4 units each, find x, the length of the hypotenuse. The answer from our favorite blonde is at: http://earthsignals.com/add_CGC/Images/X.gif REPEATER MOVE COMPLETE The 146.64 repeater formerly located at McLean has now been relocated to a tower near Balgonie. Preliminary reports indicate good signal levels in Regina.	SASKATCHEWAN HAMFEST This year the SARL will be sponsoring a mini-hamfest on July 8th. It will include a Flea Market and SARL General Meeting and will be held in the Manitou Room of the Manitou Springs Hotel just north of Watrous Saskatchewan running from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Admission to SARL members is free. Non-members $5.00. Tables at the Flea Market can be had for $5.00. For further information contact Val VE5ACJ valve5acj@sasktel.net SATSUIT What is Satsuit? It is a used space suit that will be launched from the International Space Station with an attached SSTV beacon. SuitSat was deployed during a Russian EVA scheduled on Friday, February 3 at approximately 22:20 UTC. Those who hear SuitSat transmissions are asked to enter their realtime data on the SuitSat website, http://www.suitsat.org/>www.suitsat.org so that participants around the world can track the satellite. The SuitSat project is a free floating Unmanned satellite that will be running on Batteries Only! The life span of the project will be limited to the power in the batteries. SuitSat may last as little as 1 week or as long as 6 weeks. The SuitSat project will transmit, Telemetry, Pre-Recorded Voice messages and one SSTV image. The whole process will repeat approximately every 9 minutes. (Robot 36 format). All transmissions will be in FM mode and will be on the 2-meter amateur radio satellite band. The current frequency for SuitSat is 145.990 FM Downlink only (There is no uplink for this satellite). This means that the Doppler frequency drift will not be much of a problem and you will be able to use your existing 2-meter station or a police scanner to hear and decode the signals SuitSat. If you have already have been successful in working the Packet station or talked to the ISS crew on 2-meter voice, than you already have most of what you need. What's left is to connect your computer to the speaker of your radio and some SSTV decoding software, such as ChromaPix or similar software. See: http://www.barberdsp.com/ So have fun, find your best setup and start practicing how to decode SSTV on 2-meters. Other information on SuitSat can be found on: www.amsat.org www.rac.ca/ariss www.issfanclub.com http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48hour/threads.html

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE BAND IS FLAT When the HF bands fizzle, such as they have recently, why not keep your radio interest up by becoming a Lowfer. A Lowfer is a Low Frequency enthusiast and there are several fascinating avenues to explore. The easiest is to log beacon transmitters in the band 200 to 530 kHz. You would be amazed at how many you can hear. There are thousands of aeronautical beacons typically running from 25 to 400 watts. These beacons are a backup to the GPS navigation system but you best tune them in now, because when the Galileo satellite system becomes operational, it will be the backup system and beacons will be phased out and may disappear by 2014. Canadian beacons are easy to spot because they typically identify in slow morse code with a long dash separating the ID. American beacons just repeat their ID. Beacons usually transmit upper sideband with a 400 Hz modulating frequency, allowing transmitters to be placed at 1 kHz intervals. Because of this, you often can hear 2 or 3 beacons on the same frequency. Picking them out is a good way to sharpen your contesting skills. The range of these beacons is astounding. It is not uncommon to hear a beacon 750 miles away at high noon. Of course the band really gets interesting at night. On any given frequency you may hear a different beacon every day of the week. I have personally logged 215 beacons from Nunuvut to Cuba to New Mexico. Most modern transceivers can receive LF signals. For best results use the narrowest filter position. The challenge is in the antenna. At those frequencies a half wave dipole would have to be half a mile long. This is where innovation comes in. Some people build fancy loops, but a quick and dirty way of doing it, is to use a 80 or 40 meter antenna and just connect the center coax connector on the radio without screwing on the barrel. Your antenna will then act like a random length wire. Putting a 1 mH choke in series may also help tune the antenna. The easiest beacons to pick up here are the 4 Regina beacons. They are located approximately 5 miles off the end of each runway. You can hear ZRS (NW of the city) on 219 kHz, QR (SE of the city) on 290 kHz, ZRG (West of the city) on 414 kHz and ZQR on 204 kHz which is located within city limits in southeast Regina. Then try for BKU Baker MT on 342 or SDY Sidney MT on 359. More info on beacons can be found at: http://frodo.bruderhof.com/ka2qpg If you want a more active approach to being a Lowfer, you can actually transmit on 160-190 kHz (without a licence) providing you use less than 1 watt and an antenna of less than 1 meter in length. Talk about challenges. But here is good news. Many european countries have already approved an amateur LF band at 135.7 to137.8 kHz and things are in the works to get it here as well. It would allow power levels of 200 watts and better antennas and a whole new area of experimentation. More information on this can be had at: http://www.rac.ca/opsinfo.longwave.htm	THE LAST TELEGRAM After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams. On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible: "Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative." The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long- distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. E-mail could be counted as the final nail in the coffin. Western Union has not failed. It long ago refocused its main business to make money transfers for consumers and businesses. Revenues are now $3 billion annually. It's now called Western Union Financial Services, Inc. and is a subsidiary of First Data Corp. The world's first telegram was sent on May 24, 1844 by inventor Samuel Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought," was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. In a crude way, the telegraph was a precursor to the Internet in that it allowed rapid communication, for the first time, across great distances. Western Union goes back to 1851 as the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. In 1856 it became the Western Union Telegraph Company after acquisition of competing telegraph systems. By 1861, during the Civil War, it had created a coast-to-coast network of lines. Other company highlights: * 1866: Introduced the first stock ticker. * 1871: Introduced money transfers. * 1884: Became one of the original 11 stocks tracked by the Dow Jones Average. * 1914: Introduced the first consumer charge card. * 1964: Began using a transcontinental microwave beam to replace land lines. * 1974: Launched Westar I, the first U.S. dedicated communications satellite. - Courtesy KD7KH

LAST MONTHS PUZZLER Q. If a person fails an amateur radio exam, how long must he wait before he can write the test again? A. They can rewrite the exam anytime that they can make arrangements with a volunteer examiner.	THIS MONTHS PUZZLER What minimum mark is necessary to pass the Basic Amateur Exam? Answer next month.