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The Pres’ Says:

July 2012

VOX

VOX Monthly Newsletter of the Huntsville Amateur Radio Club

Greetings everyone! I want to tell everyone thanks for hav-ing faith in me and electing me to the Presidency. I find this

I always thought that it takes only one person to be a presi-dent but that is not the case. It is very much a team effort, and would like to thank everyone who sees a need and vol-unteers without a second thought. With a great team like HARC we can make this the best year ever. I'm writing this after field day and man what a successful field day. We have some amazing numbers no injuries and fun was had by all. Let’s not forget one important thing the PICNIC! One of my favorite parts! We had excellent or-ganization, great station managers, donated towers, power worthy of a professional utility company, publicity and all this contributed to the fun. I won't pretend to try to

name all who helped for fear of leaving someone out, but everyone did their jobs so seamlessly it looked like magic to the untrained observer. We all know it was good plan-ning and flawless execution that pulled it off though and thank you to all that made it possible. Boy how about that heat! I sure am glad Field Day happens before it gets hot. We have the All You Can Eat Century bike ride coming up in Septem-ber and Woody has the sign-up sheet. I hear the food is always great so sign up and come on out. We also have the event we all wait for every year (some of us plan a year in advance) the Huntsville Hamfest. It is always the third weekend in August so that’s an easy way to remember the date! The date should be the 17,18,19th of August if my crusty iPhone can be trusted! Charlie is signing up people now and the form is accessible at the ham-fest website. Sign up Chicago style, early and often. I hear the good shifts go fast so get yours now before they are gone. But wait there's more.... maybe too many infomercials. Come on out and support the hamfest. It gets better every year. I probably skipped over many topics, but this is probably enough for now so happy DX ing and 73, Paul WB4UEE

Inside this issue:

Meeting Minutes 2

Field Day Stories & Photos 3,4,7-9,

11-13,15

License / Exam Info 5

Program / Project Mgr’s 5

ARES / RACES Meeting minutes 6

Club Calendar 10

Hamshack of the Month 14

History of HAYLARC 14

a particularly daunting task since I am following one of the best presidents ever. I want to thank Mark for all thework he has done and continues to do.

Meeting Minutes by Tom Duncan KG4CUY

The Huntsville Amateur Radio Club

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ing a camper for that.

Old Business:

Bill Bathgate announced tht additional verbiage must be added to our constitution and/or bylaws to meet 501(c)3 require-ments, specifically dealling with business ethics and conflicts of interest. He will make these modifications and present them to the board of directors, who on approval will then submit the changes to the membership for a vote of approval before pro-ceeding further.

David Stephenson is still looking for trailer haulers for Field Day. Volunteers with a 2” trailer hitch ball and arsenal access please contact David at [email protected] .

New Business:

Warren asked “what equipment is provided at the Field Day stations?” A discussion ensued indicating that phone ops are advised to bring their own headsets, and that hand-held mikes are inadvisable.

The meeting adjourned at 7:58 pm.

The June 15th meeting of HARC was called to order at 7:30 pm by president Paul Paelian, WB4UEE, with 28 in attendance. Paul began by thanking everyone for their support in electing him as president.

Announcements:

Tom Hatter, K4AKC reported working UA3TCJ on 10W SSB. Great job!

Dave Stephenson KJ4OKJ has replaced Warren Alford KJ4RAQ as public information officer.

Bill Bathgate KD8IGK volunteered to pick up the Bosch electric jack hammer at the Madison Home De-pot to drive anchors for Field Day.

Tim Williams K4AEE announced that he had received an email from the Vice President and Chairman of the Pike’s Peak Amageur Radio Club (CO), who will be visiting our area during Field Day and will stop by the site. Tim also announced he has heard nothing about a satellite station, and that we will therefore not be rent-

Paul Paelian WB4UEE President [email protected]

Tim Williams K4AEE Vice President [email protected]

Tom Duncan KG4CUY Secretary [email protected]

Heath Thorson KC4HRX Treasurer [email protected]

Johnny Winter KR4F Officer at-large [email protected]

Jack Hemby W5WQQ Officer at-large [email protected]

Bill Bathgate KD8IGK Officer at-large [email protected]

Visitors welcome at all meetings.

Club callsign: K4BFT (http://www.qrz.com/db/K4BFT)

Website: www.harc.net

Mail reflector signup: follow the link below the HARC logo on the home page

Club Officers & Info

Meeting location: Red Cross Building, 1101 Washington St. Huntsville, AL 35801

Meeting time: Every Friday, 7:30 PM (except on major holidays)

Mailing address: HARC, PO Box 423, Huntsville, AL 35801

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Field Day - Stories & Photos

Tim K4AEE – FD Chairman & Vice President

Field Day 2012

has come and

gone and

we’ve made

some progress

from last year.

We had three

new station

managers this

year with one

returning from

last year and

each did a fine

job. We had

the loan of a

new portable

tower from

U.S. Tower

and we had a

station with corporate sponsorship this year!

Mr. Johnny Winters KR4F was our only returning station

manager from last year running the 80/20 CW station

and they made 1193 contacts, only 22 shy of an-

other all time record. Great job! We had a return-

ing station manager from the past Chris Reed

KF4MMF to pick up the 40/15 SSB station and

with the help of Robby Sperr KF4LFQ who through

GigaParts supplied the operating equipment and

made that station a great success as well! Jim

Spikes N4KH moved from last year being a part of

the 40/15 SSB station over to running the 40/15

CW station proving he is a well rounded operator

and he had a ton of help from past station manager

Tom Russell N4KG they turned in 1256 contacts

which sets a new record for that station. Jim got a

big surprise when Craig Behrens NM4T was able to

secure an RMTU-656 from U.S. Tower for use by

(Tim’s articles continues on Page 15)

Robby KF4LFQ

I had a “most memorable” experience this year, actually.

I left the house at 3:30am on Saturday morning and

headed to GigaParts to do some last minute testing of the

battery backup before hauling everything over to the

Field Day site and setting it up. I had everything working

in the camper by dawn, and left the antennas to the sta-

tion manager while I headed home for some rest. I re-

turned to Field Day at 12:50pm, 10 minutes before the

contest was to start, to find three Extra-class hams work-

ing diligently on the second of two wire antennas they

were stringing up. I walked up to the group huddled in

the shade around the antenna analyzer and learned that

the SWR was ridiculously high on its intended band.

Then, one of the group began walking toward the tower,

following the coax laying in the grass. He leaned down

and said, “I found the problem!” Apparently they had

been short one barrel connector, so a square knot was

used to join the two lengths of coax instead. If this was

an experiment in coupling through inductance, it wasn’t

working. We located a barrel connector, the antenna ana-

lyzer was pleased, and we were on the air at 1pm strug-

gling to find an unoccupied piece of the band to use

while tuning up.

(Below—Chris KF4MMF running stations on 40m/15m

phone using an FTdx-5000 loaner from Gigaparts)

Private email from Dave K4TO to Johnny KR4F – reprinted with permission. Hello Johnny! It is really good to hear from you. I hope all is well with the Winters. I arrived in Hunts-ville in May of 1974 and left in November of 1983. I suspect I was active in all of the Field Days during those years. The YMCA site with Young's cranes and trucks were the mainstay of the operation. We were class 6A. We had three phone stations and three CW stations. At some point we discovered that powering all of the phone stations from the same generator and all of the CW stations from another generator cut down the interference greatly, especially for Phone and CW statios operating on the same band. I think I remember one year (or more) having a two element forty meter yagi on a 100 foot crane or some-thing like that. We stomped on the competition with that setup. At some point I introduced the use of programmable keyers and that upped our CW QSO total to over 600. I remember keeping the log by pencil, the dupe sheet the same way , drinking a coke, and talking to any visi-tors who might happen to come by and at the same time, making a couple of QSOs a minute! I had four buttons... 1 CQ, 2 QSO exchange, 3 QSL & QRZ and 4 ? . We were pretty good operators then. Saturday night, Marian would come out and we would grill some steaks, open a bottle of wine, and set the table with fine china and a white table cloth for dinner. It was a tradition. We did it just to show the ones eat-ing hot dogs and baloney sandwiches a little class :-) I remember a certain 12 year old boy who hung around my 40 meter CW station and grew up to be a EE with a masters degree and a fine young man. I gave Mike Fanning my 4-1000 , "Old Thunder and Lightning", a few years ago and made him promise to keep the hell out of the 5KV line. In return, his Dad gave me two jars of honey. That was a good deal. I didn't work Field day this year, but my K2 did. I loaned it to N4TY who has been #1 QRP Battery pow-ered station in the USA the last three years. He got 949 Q's, his highest total ever. I hope he won it again. Field Day holds a place dear to my heart. I have an 8x10 Black and White photo of me operating Field

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Field Day Stories & Photos (continued)

Day at age 17 as a High School Senior. It appeared in the Seymour, Indiana newspaper. I remember putting the first SSB station they ever had on the air for them. They used AM until that time. One of the Old Timers sat with me while I made 100 Q's an hour and never heard a sin-gle station I worked. Her ears (yes..an xyl) just didn't fit the SSB frequency response! June 22nd was the 55th anniversary of the day I received my Novice Class License in the mail. It was one of the best days of my life, and I've had a lot of them. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my "routine" heart procedure that almost killed me. Believe me when I say I am enjoying every day of life these days. These days I am fooling mainly with microwaves and SDRs. I have a SoftRock Ensemble II Rx on the bench that I built. It is an incredible receiver for a $67, 2" x 4" circuit board. Of course the computer does all the hard work. Again, it is good to hear from you. Glad you got to oper-ate Field Day. As a "ps" to my episode in the hospital last year, the most frustrating thing about it was not being able to talk because of the tracheotomy that I had "installed". Com-municating with the doctors and nurses was almost im-possible until.... My buddy, N4TY, brought a keyer over and hooked it to my laptop computer. We downloaded some software and Eureka! I could send morse and it would appear as plain English on the screen. The doc-tors and nurses were astounded. People came into my room from every wing and every floor of the hospital to see it. I was unable to type well due to the effects of the drugs I was given to keep me unconscious for three weeks. Otherwise, I might have communicated by simply typing on the keyboard. I was, however, fully competent on the morse key and that saved the day. It is ironic that several years ago I chose N4AR for my personal physi-cian for this very reason. I thought that if I was ever un-able to talk, I could tap Morse code into Bill's hand and communicate!

License & Exam Info by Rick Earl AA4II

Madison County Emergency Coordinator

Tim Holland, KK5H

Field Day Chairman

Tim Williams, K4AEE

Public Information Officer

David Stephenson, KJ4OKJ

Fundraising Coordinator

Tim Williams, K4AEE

K4BFT Club Station Trustee

Tom Duncan, KG4CUY

Picnic/Food Coordinator

Peggy Bell, K4EGB

Training/Education Coordinator

Jack Hemby, W5WQQ

VOX Publisher

Mark Brown, N4BCD

Website Designer

Jason Henriksen, KE4ROR

Program and

Project Managers Area Weekly Nets Northeast Alabama 6m Net (ragchewing)

Weeknights 9:00 pm 50.150

MTEARS

Monday 8:00 pm 443.625

Lincoln, TN County Emergency Training

Monday 6:30 pm 147.03

Madison County Emergency Training

Thursday 7:30 pm 146.94

Morgan County Training Net (new listing)

Tuesday 8:00 PM 147.000 (no PL)

Lauderdale County Emergency Training

146.68 pl 100

unknown

Lawrence County Emergency Training

145.27 pl 107.2

Thursday 7:45 pm

Limestone County Emergency Training


North AL/Southern Middle TN Training


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If you’re interested in becoming a licensed amateur radio operator, study guides are available online or in

bookstores. You’re welcome to come to any Friday club meeting to ask questions. You don’t need to know

Morse Code to attain a license!

License exams are at 9AM the first Saturday of every month at the Red Cross Building,

1101 Washington St, Huntsville, AL 35802. The fee is $15 (cash) and you must bring some

form of picture ID.

73 Rick DE AA4II

Field Day Stories &

Photos (continued)

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Madison County, Alabama ARES Monthly Meeting Minutes Steve – KM4CJ

June 14, 2012

The meeting was conducted in the Huntsville-Madison County EMA’s EOC.

The sign-in log indicates 12 in attendance. The meet-ing started with the consumption of pizza.

Josh - WX4JRR opened the meeting asking for com-mittee reports:

• VOAD – none

• CERT – None

• Red Cross – Woody - K8GNM reported the national Red Cross is supporting fires in Colorado, and Floods in south Alabama, no anticipation of North Alabama activation at this time.

New Business:

Chris - KF4MMF announced Rolf –K4RGG was awarded the “Alabama EMA Volunteer of the Year Award” – congratulations Rolf! Chris reported EMA Hamshack renovation activities are on hold for now. Rusty appreciated the enthusiasm of the group top help renovate the shack when the time comes.

Chris reminded us of Field Day in a few weeks and is a good opportunity to practice EMCOMM. He also wanted to thank Gigaparts for their support of local

amateur radio activities.

Doug – N4CZ reminded us of the Amateur Radio Day at Gigaparts this Saturday.

Tim – KK5H joined the meeting via SKYPE and in-troduced Steve – KM4CJ as the newest AEC to serve as the Administrative Officer.

Programs:

Mike - KD7OQC provided an overview of the Inci-dent Command System (ICS)

Doug – N4CZ provided an overview of WINLINK 2000 and performed a live demonstration using PAC-TOR and RMS Express.

Meeting Adjourned at 19:50.

ARES/RACES Meeting Minutes

- Steve Smith KM4CJ

Bart Fey W4NS takes a turn at the

80m/20m CW station

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Johnny KR4F Club Director

Well, the antenna history is an interesting one. The first HARC Field Day I attended was in the parking lot of Burritt Museum on Monte Sano. That was about 1970, and the 20m station manager was Jim Williams, WB4IQS. The antennas were all wire, thrown into trees, and almost touching each other. The combination of an-tenna proximity and the receiver technology of the day led to incredible interference! Jim was the chief of the computer branch for what was then the U.S. Army Mis-sile Intelligence Directorate. I mainly observed at that affair. The first Field Day I really operated, we were in the field just east of building 5250 on the Arsenal. We were using a Johnson Ranger and probably a Drake 2B. That was probably 1971, as I think I was still in the

Army at that time. I think on 20m CW (no 80m at that time), we were probably still using wire on a push-up mast I remember thinking then that if we could just break 200 on 20 CW, we’d be in tall cotton!

We were only there one or two years, and then moved to a field behind the YMCA in Madison on Hughes Road. Jim Williams was very interested in antennas. He had started the Williams Antenna Company to build quad kits which he sold via mail order. He built and donated four quads to the club. They were for 20m phone, 20m


CW, 15m phone, and 15m CW. My years may be off by one or two, but anyway, once we had the quads, the next issue was how to support them. Don Whitener, K4BWU, and I took over 20m CW and used my Drake TR-4 (no CW filter). We put the 20m quad on about a 30 ft push-up mast with a small alliance TV rotator. That is, on lucky days. At least once, we bent the mast during erection and had to scamper to recover from that. That meant sawing off the bent portion, so sometimes the mast was a bit shorter. The 20m phone and 15m phone quads were mounted on Mr. Young’s sign trucks. I don’t remember what 15m CW used, but it might have been a Rohn tower erected by a sign truck. The 15m stations also strung up an 80m dipole just in case. The 40m stations used various expedient an-tennas – dipoles in trees, verticals, etc. So, we were run-

ning class 6A in those days.

Things rocked along like that for a few years and then three things came to-gether: 1) Mr. Young might have a paying job that slopped over into Field Day set-up time leading to great anxi-ety; 2) the 30ft crank-up tower/trailer was donated to the club;, and 3) Bert Wheeler, W4IBU, a retired Seabee, joined the club. Bert devised the method for erecting the towers using the crank-up. So, the club bought enough tower sections for four towers – 20m phone, 20m CW, 15m phone, and 15m CW. The 40m stations were still using expedient antennas. We were still running in class 6A.

As members aged and membership and sunspots waned, we successively dropped 15m CW and then 15m phone and moved 80m to the 20m stations. That freed two of the towers to support 40m wire antennas. And, we successively moved to UAH, UDS, Intergraph, and the Space and Rocket Center. So, this is a long way of explaining that the original intent was not to use the towers to support wire antennas. They were intended for beams with rotators.

So much for geezer reminiscing.


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Mark N4BCB Since getting back in into amateur radio a few short years ago I've been part of K4BFT's efforts. Until this year. With the move to Fayetteville, TN I wanted to get to know the local W4BV club members and decided to be a part of their smaller & more casual 4A operation in the downtown courthouse square. The club doesn't begin set-up until Saturday morning so towers & elaborate antennas are not on the list. At K4BFT, the choice of station antennas has been distilled from man-decades of experience in a multi-station environ-ment. My goal was a wire with some gain on 40m to the NNE, decent performance on 80m, and some possibility of working on 20m through 10m. And it had to fit the available supports with room left for others to put stuff up. Downtown Fayetteville, 6:30AM Saturday morning. Another ham & I arrived with our car & truckload of equipment with the first order of business to get the wire antennas up before cars & pedestrians might be in harm's way from a fal-ling arrow. I had investigated the legal question earlier - it is illegal to discharge a firearm within city limits. A cross-bow is not a firearm. Different cities might have different laws but we were OK. In the car was the last antenna I used in Madison - a 200' doublet attached to about 60-odd feet of ladderline. The crossbow easily launched a fishing line over and down through a 70' oak. We paced off the distance available to another likely support and guessed at 110 foot clearance so we measured & cut the doublet to 51' on each side of the insulator. Isn't that the infamous G5RV length? The other support was a tall street lamp - a mere chip-shot for the crossbow. We pulled the antenna up (being careful to not snag the wire on the Confeder-ate Soldier's rifle) and found it too long for the available span and took about 5' off each end making it about 90' overall. It was necessary to add some more ladderline to reach the Heathkit tuner and stripping the insulation revealed the spare wire was a different type / gauge of Wireman stuff. No matter, we spliced it anyways. Generated a tuner setting list on 5w using 4 spots on 80 through 10m and was pleased to see that only a few degree turn of one knob covered each band. The tuner ran out of inductance below 3750 with reflected power showing a slow and steady rise with decreasing fre-quency. At fifteen minutes before 1PM, I was in the chair running stations for signal reports (and to lay claim to 7.190). It was a pleasant surprise to pick N4OKL Charlie out of the pile-up and plug our Hamfest on the air for all those ears listening. The hammer dropped at 1PM with one already on the hook and in the ensuing hour I ran 94 stations before moving off

to coach some younger club hams on S&P. After dinner I carved out a spot on 80m and commenced a similar run. Around 10PM the 20m station shut down so I moved up there to snoop around. There's some DX on the cluster (why not?). Slovenia, Ukraine, and Dubai all on the first call with 100w. Bottom line: a 90' doublet sloping doublet from 70' to 30' broadside to NNE worked really well on 40m, OK on 80m, and was a pleasant surprise on 20m. We wrapped up about 3AM Sunday morning and vacated the site about 4AM, arriv-ing home as first light was showing. A good turnout with lots of Q & A and ham radio discussion, good food, and for me a chance to get to know my new ham neighbors better.

Was this different from K4BFT's operation? You bet. The Big Fat Turkey is a good example of how a large club organ-izes the resources of station builders, cooks, contest operators, public relations people, tower crews, trailer haulers, gen-erator experts, etc to put several stations on the air for the whole of the 24 hour FD event. As we remember that FD is a public relations & preparedness exercise, every club, large & small supports their community in this great event.

Stan NX3P This was my first overnight stay at the HARC Field Day. It was the maiden voyage of sleeping in a popup camper that I purchased last fall. It was nice that the AC unit worked fine as the weekend was very hot. I had the great pleasure of working with Todd's N7KDT GOTA station which was set up using 10 and 6 meter antennas that Todd built up and placed on the crank up tower. Radio equipment utilized my IC-7000 equipped go-kit. Todd and I kept thinking my rig was malfunctioning as stations on both bands were non-existent. Todd went to his truck and tuned around with his IC-706. He didn't receive anything either. Our operating position was outside in the heat as we got to great visitors to the site and we encouraged them to make a contact or two. The band did open every once in awhile and we worked the Northeast US, and Puerto Rico. Todd even worked a couple South American stations. Late in the evening, I was pre-paring to shut down for the night and ended up working Hawaii twice, and San Diego. Ten meters then died again. A few contacts were made the next morning, but it was a struggle. I had a great time working the GOTA station. My XYL, Amy brought brownies and a bean dish for the dinner on Saturday. Her pan of brownies seemed popular and disappeared quickly. The food was excellent and I would like to thank all of those who worked so hard to make everything pos-sible. Congratulation to the FD volunteers who worked so hard plan-

ning a great weekend. I look forward to being there again for 2013.

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(Right) Todd N7KDT is the control

operator for GOTA

Jim, N4KH Station Manager for 40/15 Meter CW Station This was a record breaking year and fine team effort by N4KG, NM4T, KG4CUY, KS4L, KX4V, W5WQQ, and N4KH. NM4T coordinated the installation of the US Tower 56 ft motorized crank up tower and boom assembly, com-plete with a large American flag on top. N4KG, N4KH and KG4CUY installed the wire antennas, feed lines, and tie points. Two antennas were used, a 2 element wire beam oriented to the north and a dipole oriented east-west. KJ4RAQ assisted in antenna tuning with his antenna analyzer and laptop computer. N4KH provided the Elecraft K3 radio and overall station management. 40 meter conditions were tremendous day and night, producing QSO rates of over 60/hr for the first 10 hours on the band. The radio never moved from 7034.3 for 14 hours! Rates over 70 for 3 hours well before sunset were an unprece-dented surprise. All sections were worked with exception to the Virgin Islands (VI). The final 40 meter tally of 1141 QSO's surpassed the pre-vious 40 meter CW record by 160 Q's, and the station also set an all time record of 1256 com-bined Q’s for 40 and 15 meters. A special thanks to Chris and his generator team is in order for resolving the issues with the ca-bling to the station camper, and for providing power that was as reliable as anything a utility could have provided.

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HARC Calender 1-Jul 2-Jul 3-Jul 4-Jul 5-Jul 6-Jul 7-Jul

Field Day Video

w/Bill KK4FDF

8-Jul 9-Jul 10-Jul 11-Jul 12-Jul 13-Jul 14-Jul

DX Club Meeting ARES / RACES

Meeting 6PM



29-Jul 30-Jul 31-Jul 1-Aug 2-Aug 3-Aug 4-Aug

5-Aug 6-Aug 7-Aug 8-Aug 9-Aug 10-Aug 11-Aug

ARES Picnic


DX Club Meeting Hamfest move-in Hamfest & DX

Banquet


26-Aug 27-Aug 28-Aug 29-Aug 30-Aug 31-Aug 1-Sep

Auction Night

2-Sep 3-Sep 4-Sep 5-Sep 6-Sep 7-Sep 8-Sep

Labor Day


Craig NM4T

US Tower Company generously offered to loan us a 56-foot military grade RMTU656 mobile crank-up tower, complete with their team performing all of the installation and teardown activities. (With 100 degree weather approaching, we couldn't decide whether hav-ing use of the tower or having someone do all that work for us was the bigger windfall.) This tower is a truly a thing of beauty--way beyond the financial means of mere amateur radio folks. Needless to say--it not only fulfilled its role perfectly, but we all learned a few things by watching the meticulous manner in which the US Tower staff worked through their pre-cise tower operation processes. Thanks again to Ronnie, Brad, Ben and the US Tower home office en-gineering staff for making this opportunity possible.

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Leigh WD4CPF

I was HARC President 1984-1985, also served as President of NARA the same year, and the two years follow-ing. 1984 was the first year HARC used the 30 ft crankup, and Bert Wheeler's system to erect towers. More about that later.

At Field Day in June 1983, in the field at UAH, calamity had struck. On 40/10 phone, we put about 4 tower sections up with one set of three guys, the "guys" being a couple lengths of rope, with one guy tied to what turned out to be a half dead bush - (as noted afterwards by Tom N4KG). When the rotor failed to rotate, I climbed the tower to see what was the matter. David, N4HHE, was the single person belaying a guy wire. Standing about 35 feet up, I felt the tower start to move - the bush guy had come loose, or rather the bush had pulled out of the ground, I think. One step down into 'air' let me know the tower was going over, on me, with my eyes looking at the ground 40 feet below! The tower picked up speed.... At about 15 feet, rather than be-ing squeezed between the tower and whatever it was going to land on, I jumped clear of the tower, the station trailer, and the very expensive NASA solar panels, and landed on the grass. My 1st wife Paula, KA4FYM saw it happen. I counted the number of railroad tracks the ambulance crossed between UAH and Huntsville Hospital - the bumps made the leg pains worse.

Doc Miller put my legs back together. Health insurance paid all but $1K. I returned to work at RDEC in Bldg 5400 seven weeks later, in a wheelchair. I had burned up 300 hours of sick leave. It was still another 6 weeks before I traded the wheelchair for a walker. By November I had quit using crutches. And packet radio was about to hit the big time...

On to Bert's system. The Magnavox folks on South Parkway donated the 30 ft crankup, and Bert figured out the system of pulleys and ropes necessary to use the crankup as an erection device for fully assembled 50 foot towers, complete with antennas installed. Originally we used people power to raise and lower the tower, rather than a vehicle, but the basic system was the same that we use to this day - 28 years later. One Sunday afternoon before field day 1984, we took the whole thing to Braham Spring Park, and practiced raising and lowering a tower. We have never dropped a tower, nor even had one damaged, to my knowledge.

As a part of the system, new towers were purchased, and tower bases constructed. Permanent guys were built, solving the right triangle. At Field Day, guy points were measured accurately from the base, and real guy an-chors were installed - before the towers went up. The guy ground system has been updated over the years, but we are still using the same guy wires. The system was put to the test at Field day1984. We put up 4 towers with Jim's quads on top. The club made me the Safety Officer, issued me a hard hat, and wouldn't let me climb FD towers anymore!

{in the above story, Bert is: Hubert H Wheeler. His call was W4IBU, checked with his widow to be sure. Mary Wheeler WA4AXA, a HAYLARC, was happy to talk. Bert had a 26 year Navy career in the Seabees. Then worked various places including with a Electric company - towers, training, teaching etc. Mary was first licensed in 1968, Bert before that.}

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Tim N8DEU made several satellite contacts

to enhance the club score

David KJ4OJG & Johnathan KD4MPW

operating at the 80m/20m Phone station.

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Hamshack of the Month—Rob Conklin KK4GOI

Most hams these days make their first HF QSO with a pur-chased radio. Not Rob. Here’s the bitx20 project shortly after making his first HF contact ever. QSO was with a member of the Calgary Amateur Radio Club. What a thrill! Hungry for more! Now packaging the radio in a nifty case.

http://www.qrpkits.com/bitx20a.html

In early 1977 some YL’s who were licensed amateur radio operators decided they would like to form a club. The idea soon became reality as the group met in Febru-ary of that year to organize. It was decided at that time to call the group HAYLARC (Huntsville Area Young Ladies Amateur Radio Club).

The group was formed as a service club and one of the first projects was a directory of “hams” in the North Alabama area. Another project which continued for many years was the school program. Because there were teachers in HAYLARC, it was not difficult to of-fer the program and for a number of years ladies from HAYLARC went regularly to schools in the Huntsville area. Students were shown videos about amateur radio and demonstrations were given using Morse Code and someone would be contacted on 2 meters. This always was exciting to the students and frequently one of them was allowed to say “hello”. The HAYLARCS also pre-sented programs to HARC and other radio clubs in the area. There eventually was no longer a demand for the school program due to school schedules and technology.

HISTORY OF HAYLARC by Jan Sturbois, WB4RIV

Some of the other projects of the group included providing communications for different events--especially the annual Christmas Parade, participa-tion in Field Day, local nets including one of our own, and the Hamfest. In recent years the group has published a cookbook, helped with the annual Angel Tree of the Salvation Army, helped with SVHFS Convention in 2003 and hosted the YLRL International Convention here in Huntsville in 2008. Books and other amateur radio materials have been donated to the local library as well. The annual Huntsville Hamfest registration is still one of the main projects of the group as well as having a breakfast for YL’s and guests on Sunday morning of the Hamfest.

It is our understanding that HAYLARC is one of the few groups of YL’s who have been in exis-tence for this length of time. We remain active but small; however, we are always looking for new members in the North Alabama area.

VOX

… continued from Page 3

the 40/15 CW station this year. The U.S. Tower RMTU-

656 is a wonderful piece of equipment and I look forward

to a long and productive relationship with them! John

Lewis WA4PRH accepted the challenge of getting 80/20

SSB station on the air with a lot of support from Woody

Zeigler K8GNM. Our GOTA station was manned again

this year by Todd Cline N7KDT and his daughter Sabrina

KJ4YAJ with a ton of help from Stan Cole NX3P and his

daughter Kiatlyn KS3P. I believe I even heard they got a

contact to Hawaii…now that’s not bad for a GOTA sta-

tion! Tim Cunningham N8DEU was able to be with us

again this year and manned his satellite station which is

always a big hit the visitors! Remember station managers

once you’ve volunteered you have the job for life!

Peggy Bell K4EGB as usual took control of the picnic and

the hydration station which is always the center of activity

during the weekend and without her efforts we all would

have died from heat stroke or dehydration again this year!

Our Safety Officer Steve Bell KD4TFN did double duty

again this year by making sure we didn’t drop any towers

on ourselves and flipping the hamburgers to feed us all and

I am not sure which one is more important.

I think this year we had more press coverage than I can

ever remember about our Field Day efforts and it is all

thanks to the efforts of our new Public Relations Offi-

cer David Stephenson KJ4OKJ. We had two of the

local TV news stations visit our site and three news

paper articles written about our efforts, so I hope we

can turn all that coverage into some new hams and

club members! Oh, and by the way be looking for a

new videography by William Martin KK4FDF coming

soon documenting Field Day 2012.

I need to take a moment here to thank all of the Field

Day Committee members for their hard work to make

the visible part of Field Day a success, so thank you all

for your hard work and I can’t wait to do it all again

next year! But, as important as the committee mem-

bers are to this process nothing could happen without

the most important part and that is you the H.A.R.C.

Club member because without the commitment to do

the hard, dirty work that needs to be done every year

we could not put this show on!


VOX

Huntsville Hamfest

Aug 18 & 19, 2012

Huntsville Hamfest Activities/Details

Admission: is $7, under 12 free.

Hamfest Hours:

The hamfest will be open to the public Sat, 9:00–4:30 PM and Sun, 9:00–3:00 PM.

Grand prize drawing will be Saturday at 4:00 PM and Sunday at 2:00 PM.

Move-in hours for dealers and flea market are Fri, 10:00 AM–9:00 PM and Sat, 7:00–9:00 AM.

DX Card Checking: Representatives will be available to field check your DX cards for DXCC credit.

Visit the NADXC booth for information.

Hospitality Suites: Huntsville Hamfest will host Hospitality Rooms at the Holiday Inn across the

street from the VBC on Friday and Saturday nights. Come by and talk to the great, the near great, and

those who just think they are great!

Contest Hospitality Suite: The SECC and ACG will host the "Sunny South Contest Hospitality Suite"

on Friday from 7 to 11PM at the Holiday Inn (Milltown Room), across the street from the VBC. Come on

by for Pileup Competitions (8-9 PM), prizes and demonstrations.

License Exams: Exams will begin at 10:00 sharp Saturday and Sunday in the curtained area outside

the South Hall. Bring your original license, copy of same, any CSCE's you want to present, some means of

personal identification and the $15 test fee.

Talk-in station: Our always welcoming and always helpful (they've never lost a visitor yet) talk-in

crew will be operating as K4BFT on the 146.94 repeater for complete talk-in information. Back-up

frequency is 147.30. No PL required during the hamfest weekend.

HAYLARC YL Breakfast: The Huntsville Area Young Ladies Amateur Radio Club (HAYLARC) invites

all YLs attending the Huntsville Hamfest to join them for a Dutch breakfast Sunday, 7:00 AM at Shoney's.

Parking: The parking garage across the street from the VBC will be open with a parking fee of $5. The

South Hall where the Hamfest is located has a 500 space ground level garage with a parking fee of $5.

Elevators carry you up to the hamfest.

For more Info, visit www.hamfest.org

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