Due to the September meeting date falling on the holiday weekend, there will be no CARP meeting in September.

Clovis Amateur Radio and Electronics Swapmeet
Sponsored by the Clovis Amateur Radio Pioneers

Mark your calendars! The Clovis Amateur Radio Pioneers is sponsoring an Amateur Radio and Electronics Swap Meet in Clovis, CA on Saturday September 18, 2010. Ham radio and electronics enthusiasts from the Fresno, Clovis and the Central Valley area are invited to attend.

Click on flier image for larger PDF view

Admission is free, sellers fee will be $10.00 per space.
CARP Members sell for FREE

Date/Time
Saturday September 18, 2010
8:00 am – 11:00 am
Sellers setup at 7:30am

Location
New Hope Community Church
4620 E Nees Ave
Clovis, CA

Contact
info@k6arp.org
559-492-7675

Date/Time
Saturday April 9, 2011

Location
Las Vegas Circus-Circus Conference Area.

Contact
Kent W7AOR
w7aor@narri.org

Ham radio operators to commemorate end of WWII

On the 65th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II, local ham radio operators will try to link up historic battleships that served in the Pacific Theater.

Members of the Azalea Coast Amateur Radio Club will be aboard the Battleship North Carolina on Thursday night. Using original radio gear from the 1940s, they plan to establish radio contact with the battleship USS Missouri, anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, at 9 p.m. local time.

Anchored in Tokyo harbor, the battleship Missouri was the site of the surrender ceremony on Sept. 2, 1945, formally ending hostilities.

“We have been in touch with the USS Missouri and we have set a schedule to communicate between the two ships when propagation is best,” said Azalea Coast club member Charlie Vaughan.

Some of the vintage radio equipment is on loan from an amateur radio operator in upstate New York, Vaughan said.

Now preserved as a war memorial and floating museum on the Cape Fear River, the USS North Carolina was the first American battleship to enter Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. It participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific and earned 15 battle stars.

For more information on the transmission, visit the radio club’s website at www. ac4rc.org.

Here is a noteworthy bit of information.  On Joe Miller’s website, the candidate has published some of his records, including copies of his law degrees and his Amateur Radio License.  Mr.  Miller, call sign AL0J, holds an Amateur Extra class license.

2010 Digital Communications Conference

Mark your calendar and start making plans to attend the premier technical conference of the year, the 29th Annual ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference to be held September 24-26, 2010, in Portland, Oregon. The ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference is an international forum for radio amateurs to meet, publish their work, and present new ideas and techniques. Presenters and attendees will have the opportunity to exchange ideas and learn about recent hardware and software advances, theories, experimental results, and practical applications. Topics include, but are not limited to: Software defined radio (SDR), digital voice, digital satellite communications, Global Position System (GPS), precision timing, Automatic Position Reporting System® (APRS), short messaging (a mode of APRS), Digital Signal Processing (DSP), HF digital modes, Internet interoperability with amateur radio networks, spread spectrum, IEEE 802.11 and other Part 15 license-exempt systems adaptable for Amateur Radio, using TCP/IP networking over amateur radio, mesh and peer to peer wireless networking, emergency and Homeland Defense backup digital communications, using Linux in amateur radio, updates on AX.25 and other wireless networking protocols.

iHAB – Iowa High Altitude Balloon

iHAB Payload

The purpose of the iHAB (Iowa High Altitude Balloon) Project is to design & build a vehicle to fly into Near Space. Near space is the region of Earth’s atmosphere that lies between 65,000 and 325,000–350,000 feet (20 to 100 km) above sea level, encompassing the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. A more understandable definition would be above where a commercial airliner flies but below the realm of an orbiting satellite. The area is of interest for military surveillance purposes, as well as to commercial interests for communications. Currently, craft that fly in near space (nearcraft) are generally high altitude balloons, blimps (non-rigid airships) and sounding rockets.

Launch is scheduled for 1500z on August 28, 2010. Additional project details can along with photos of the payload can be viewed on the W0OTM website. APRS callsign used will be W0OTM-4.

OCEANSIDE: Residents argue against cell phone tower plan
Planning board says new rules are improvement

A plan to update Oceanside’s rules regulating the placement and appearance of cell phone towers came under fire Monday from people who said it did too little to protect residential neighborhoods.

“This is what the community has been fighting from day one,” Sharon Newbery told the Planning Commission.

Newbery and others said the city should declare a moratorium on issuing permits for new cell towers until the proposed new rules can be strengthened.

“We really need a moratorium, not push it through. We need to do it right,” Newbery said.

But planning commissioners said the new rules would be an improvement. The matter is tentatively set to go to the City Council for approval in October.

“I think this is an excellent document, it’s a first step,” said Commission Chairman Bob Neal. “It’s a living document that’s going to grow and grow and grow.”

The new rules would allow cell phone towers in residential neighborhoods only as a last resort.

“They have to prove going into a residential zone why that is the only place they can go and how they will protect the safety of residents,” said City Planner Jerry Hittleman.

South Oceanside resident Holly Hargett said that cell phone antennas should be banned from schools, churches and day care centers.

Commissioners recommended that the council modify the proposed rules to discourage placement of cell antennas near those locations.

Hargett and others also said the proposal has a huge loophole in it by allowing cell antennas to be located along public rights of way —- primarily streets and sidewalks —- in residential neighborhoods.

City officials have said federal law and court rulings prohibit an outright ban on the towers and limit restrictions cities can place on antennas along streets and sidewalks. But they said existing rules discourage placing antennas along streets and sidewalks in residential neighborhoods.

Former Deputy City Attorney Leslie Gallagher, who helped draft the proposed ordinance, said other cities have adopted bans but they haven’t held up.

If wireless companies can show they have a gap in service and a residential neighborhood is the only place they can put antennas to close the gap, “they can force the city to let them go in anyway,” Gallagher said.

The new rules would replace an ordinance last updated in 1992 that made no distinction between residential neighborhoods and other areas of the city. At the time, “big, clunky” cell phones were just starting to come on the market, Hittleman said.

Planning Commissioner Louise Balma said the proposed new rules were “way better than what you have.”

The new rules list a series of antenna locations, with residential neighborhoods cited as the least desirable. The proposed rules also would require new cell towers to blend in with the surrounding environment.

In order of preference, the sites are city-owned property; industrial districts; commercial districts; public and semi-public districts such as churches and open space; agricultural property and residential neighborhoods.

The new measures also would encourage new antennas to be “collocated” on the same location as existing antennas, rather than erecting new towers.

Before a site is approved, “we’re going to require a lot of justification studies,” Hittleman said. He said those studies must prove a new antenna is needed to clear up gaps in coverage and explain why the proposed site was selected.

Wireless companies also must show that the equipment they use has Federal Communications Commission approval, Hittleman said.

Several amateur radio operators said the proposed new rules would unfairly lump them in with wireless companies. They said their operations are far different and should be regulated in a separate ordinance

Amateur radio operators provide “an honest service to this community,” said Brad Kruger. “I am deeply offended that this legislation has any ties to amateur radio.”

SIDEWALK SERIES: Amateur radio offers technical assistance during disasters

Aug 24, 2010 (Moscow-Pullman Daily News – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) — More than two feet of snow and ice has fallen in 24 hours. Roads are impassable. The power is out. Cell phone towers are frozen over and phone lines are down, knocking out all communications. The city of Moscow is being brought to its knees.

That’s when Geoff Billin — and other hams, or amateur radio operators, like him — come in to save the day. The 66-year-old Moscow man has been tinkering with amateur radio for the better part of 15 years and is active in ARES, or Amateur Radio Emergency Services.

With public officials unable to communicate effectively internally or with the outside world, they turn to the radio waves and Billin, who coordinates with other hams — who are able to run their radio equipment on as little as a handful of AA batteries — to provide communication for area shelters, law enforcement and health officials to effectively deal with disaster.

The scenario is fictional, but by no means is it impossible.

“This isn’t plan A or even plan B. This is plan C for when things get really bad,” Billin said. “It could happen and has happened in the U.S. and around the world. … We hope that it wouldn’t” but we will be prepared.

Members of ARES have had their share of experience helping out in the face of disasters throughout the years, providing assistance after the 9/11 attacks, following devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Pakistan, and in northwest Oregon a couple of years ago when a storm wiped out all phone service, Billin said.

“We like to say we provide communication while the professionals are putting the normal systems back together. We are fortunate it hasn’t happened (in Moscow) in a long time,” he said. “… Our hope is, if there was some sort of emergency we could help out by helping provide communications if it’s down.”While Moscow hasn’t had any major disasters requiring the aid of hams, Billin said amateur operators did provide assistance in the early 1970s, after the city’s telephone exchange station burned, by helping provide communication for three or four days while repairs were being made.

Billin hasn’t found himself in the middle of a disaster yet, although he’ll be prepared when and if the day comes. However, he has come to the rescue with his handheld mobile transceiver.

“I had one situation in which I reported a motor vehicle problem out in the middle of North Dakota,” he said. Billin was able to use his radio to contact complete strangers who in turn contacted local authorities.

Billin got his first taste of amateur radio at age 16 but, he said, “that lasted about a year, then I did other things — girls, college.”About 15 years ago, Billin picked up the hobby for good this time after getting involved with a local search and rescue group that used similar radios. He has since become active in the Palouse Hills Amateur Radio Club, currently serving as the group’s vice president.

Billin jokes that he retired four years ago after doing “30 years hard time at the University of Idaho” as a system administrator for Information Technology Services and now is “out on parole.”With his new found freedom, Billin has had more time to dedicate to his amateur radio hobby and, more specifically, as it relates to emergency services.

“One of the things that I am doing now is devoting my time and talents to the community and amateur radio is one of those ways,” he said.

Billin said there are more than 600,000 hams in the United States, and an estimated 2.5 million worldwide and, according to federal records, there are more than 100 amateur radio operators in Latah County.

Communication can be as simple as contacting someone in the same town to trying to reach someone across the globe — though Billin said his farthest communication was to Arizona or New Mexico.

The PHARC, which was founded in 1994, meets monthly and meetings are normally attended by a dozen or so people, Billin said. In addition to his duties as the club’s vice president, Billin also helps with a once-a-year training course offered to those interested in earning an amateur radio license, and serves as a volunteer examiner, issuing licenses to qualified operators.

For more information about hams and the PHARC, go to www.palousehills-arc.org/.

Devin Rokyta can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 252, or by e-mail at drokyta@dnews.com.

To see more of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News or to subscribe to the newspaper,go to http://www.dnews.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Moscow-Pullman Daily News,Moscow, Idaho Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For moreinformation about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune InformationServices (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mailservices@mctinfoservices.com, or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States,call +1 312-222-4544).

More info as it becomes available…

When:
Saturday October 23, 2010 @ 9:00 am

Location:
Turlock Youth Center
1030 East Ave. (cross of Minerva)
Turlock, CA
[map]

Contact:
Grady Williams
gradyw@elite.net

Website:
http://www.w6bxn.org/auction.htm