Club News

Safe underground?

As you may have read in our E-mail reflector, Gary, KE8O, discovered recently that burying feedline isn’t always safe! Gary discovered this in his LMR400DB (direct burial) cable- waskally wabbit! Fixed now! Gary’s thankful it wasn’t in the dead of winter.

FCC proposing paperless applications

The FCC is proposing to eliminate paper applications for new or renewals of amateur radio licenses and move to 100% electronic filing via its ULS. They also want to require an email address on all applications. This may not become reality but it is probably inevitable somewhere down the road. You have about a month to comment on this. If you are an ARRL member, they can renew your license. My opinion is that the ULS is very easy to use. You have to register with CORES then things are pretty straightforward after that. I’m not sure about all VECs, but at least some require an FRN on the 605 application form. If you want to comment on the proposal, stick to facts as to why it is a good idea or not. Emotional arguments don’t go very far with them. 73, Joe, AA8TA

Antenna Mast Ideas

Stan and Bob gave me a bunch of mast arm parts and the one in the picture is finished and ready to be given back to the club for future use. These mast arms go on the top of the military masts and have an eyelet for a pulley. I use my mast arm with a 20 meter vertical loop and it works great. When you attach a dipole or an end fed antenna to a mast there is a lot of tension as the antenna is raised and the opposite side of the mast needs to have a good guy wire run to the ground, a tree or any other sturdy support. With a vertical loop the pull on the arm is parallel to the mast...meaning you are not pulling the mast sideways but straight up from the ground and the mast, while it still needs guy wires, has no where near the tension on it which is a lot safer. The reason for the email is to put out an all call for two of the nuts like in the picture. They attach to the mast top and hold the battens at one end. I have six battens and two eyelets and need two of the nuts to complete the arms. When finished they go back to the club. They can be used for any type of antenna or what have you but I was using a vertical to show what it's really good for. If anyone has some of these nuts and wants to donate or sell them to me to be donated let me know and I'll get them at next weeks meeting. Thanks, Wally W8WLK