(page numbers are as they appear in the printed version)

At the December club meeting we are looking forward to a presentation by Tim Saladin (KC2HVS) on his home-built 50-foot aluminum tower. If we can reproduce his work, this will provide a substantial cost saving compared to commercially available towers! The following photo of him and his tower is from his listing in the www.qrz.com database:

If you have a project or topic to present at a future club meeting, please let us know!

Russell Brown, Program Director

Email: wb2jil@arrl.net

The last club meeting was held on 6 Nov 2002 at the County’s Cooperative Extension Office located next to the Oneida County Airport. Our president, Dave Muscarella (K2YE), conducted the meeting and the minutes were recorded. In brief, the major items of business included a talk by Mike (KB2CCD) on APRS. Mike also described the PEAPRS demonstration that the Air Force Research Laboratory and the ARRL held on 4 & 8 Jun 2002. Thank you Mike for an informative presentation!

PRESIDENT

VICE PRESIDENT

SECRETARY

TREASURER

PROGRAM DIRECTOR *

NEWS LETTER EDITOR *

WEB MASTER *

CLUB EQUIPMENT CUSTODIAN *

Jim Needham W4BNY 337-8521

REPEATER TRUSTEE *

* Appointed Position

The Madison Oneida ARC VEC conducts examinations on the third Friday of each month at the Madison Oneida BOCES complex on Spring Rd in Verona NY. Contact Bill Mayers (KG2DI) for more information.

Local Nets

All Frequencies are in MHz and Times are Local (Eastern)

OCTEN-E 145.450- 1830 Daily

OCTEN-L 145.170- 2130 Daily

CNYTN 147.300+ 2115 F-W

NYPHONE 7.237 LSB 1300 Daily

NYPON 3.925 LSB 1700 Daily

Swap Net 147.000- PL 71.9 1900 W

Central District Emergency Net

OMEN (ARES) 145.170- 2000 last W

SkyWarn 145.170- as needed

NYS RACES 3.9935 0900 Su

NYS ARES 3.925 as needed

SWL Net 147.000- PL 71.9 2030 F

MOARC 145.170- 2000 W

CW Practice Net 145.170- 2030 W

Black River Valley Service Net 146.655- 2100 Daily

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This week, guest writer, Tim Lewallen, KD5ING, takes us to a Web site where you can download radio equipment manuals for free!

We have all been there, cruising the tables and booths at some hamfest or swap meet and we find that deal of the century, an Icom XYZ or a Yaesu ABC. It has more doodads than a James Bond movie and sounds better than Frank Sinatra--all for a price that Archie Bunker would pay! How can you resist? One reason might hinder you is that the seller has no manuals for the radio.

In the good ol' days, this may not have been such a big issue. You have tubes and components that you can see without using a microscope, and you can more or less figure it out. But try to program or operate a rig made in the last 10 years without a manual, and you will find yourself in dire straits, beating your head against the radio to see if that might work better.

Certainly there are companies and individuals who can send you a manual for a fee, but why get a copy of the manual that you have already paid for with your tax dollars? Our favorite government agency, the Federal Communications Commission, has many user manuals on file as well as other documents related to every piece of equipment that requires FCC certification (formerly known as "type acceptance.") The department within the FCC that manages this service is the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET), and it has made it very easy to get this information, provided you know where to look.

The first three letters or numbers of the ID number designate the manufacturer, and the remaining letters or numbers designate the equipment product code. For example, for the Yaesu VX-5R handheld, the FCC ID number is K66VX-5R. K66 is Yaesu's FCC number, and VX-5R is the equipment product code. In another example, on the Radio Shack HTX-200, the label has an FCC ID number of AAO1901102 with AAO being the FCC ID number for Tandy Corporation and 1901102, the equipment product code. See how easy that is?

On the Web page, enter the FCC ID and equipment product code in the appropriate field for the radio you are interested in, and click the "Start Search" button. After a bit of crunching, you will arrive at a Web page with a list of possible matches. While there may be several matches in the list, all the links will take you to the same Web page. The links we are interested in are in the second column labeled "Display Exhibits." Under that column are selections labeled "Detail" and "Summary." While the "Summary" link will take you to a page that only lists files that are available, the "Detail" link takes you where you can actually download those resources. So, click on the "Detail" link.

At this point, you will arrive at a Web page listing of all of the documents the FCC has on file for a particular make and model of radio. Those documents usually include the owner/operator manual, external and internal photographs of the radio, schematic and block diagrams, test reports, photos and sometimes parts lists--all free of charge and just waiting to be downloaded and printed out! I am sure you would agree that much of this information could be very useful! (One caveat: Material submitted to the FCC as part of the certification process might subsequently have been updated by the manufacturer.—ARRL Ed.)

The FCC ID Search Page has other uses as well. A few weeks before the Yaesu VX-7R was due to be released, I went to the search page and clicked on the "Advanced Search" link where you initiate more sophisticated types of searches. I did a search on Yaesu's FCC ID number to see what documents they had submitted in the last month or two. Naturally, several items came up. I hunted around and found the documents I was looking for--such as photographs and the operator's manual of the VX-7R--weeks before this product was released to the public!

Now this might not seem like a big deal, but it was kind of exciting getting to see the radio before everyone else.

Next time a friend asks you to come over and help program his radio, get the FCC ID number from him and prepare yourself with help from the FCC. You will be glad you did!

Until next time, keep on surfin'

ARRL Editor's note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, resides in downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, and is a member of the QQCC (QST quarter century club), i.e., he has been a QST writer for 25 years. Since getting his ticket in 1969, Stan has sampled nearly every entrée in the Amateur Radio menu (including a stint as Connecticut Section Manager), but he keeps coming back to his favorite preoccupations: VHF and packet radio. As a result, he runs a 2-meter APRS digipeater and weather station (WA1LOU-15) from his mountaintop location in central Connecticut. Stan has been a long time advocate of using computers with Amateur Radio and wrote programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna bearings way back in 1978. Today, he is on the board of directors of the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) and uses his Mac to surf the Internet searching for that perfect ham radio web page. To contact Stan, send e-mail to .

 

Section News

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Station Traffic Reports

Traffic (October 2002), # for BPL: N2LTC# 1204, KA2ZNZ# 508, WB2IJH 312, W2MTA 267, KA2GJV 249, KB2KOJ 202, NN2H 194, WI2G 132, KC2EOT 98, KG2D 93, N2CCN 91, WB2QIX 89, W2LC 80, KB2CCD 72, KB2SNP 71, W2PII 53, AF2K 46, N2IK 46, N2JRS 45, W8JEB 45, KA2BCE 40, W2GUT 30, KB2ETO 25, WA2GUP 19, W2RH 13, K2DN 11, KA2DBD 4. Digital, Rx/Tx: N2LTC 437/341.

Station PSHR Reports

PSHR (October 2002): W2MTA 540, N2LTC 495, N2CCN 425, KB2SNP 350, KA2ZNZ 345, W8JEB 290, NN2H 267, KB2KOJ 250, KB2CCD 230, W2LC 225, KA2GJV 222, WI2G 190, N2IK 180 , KB2ETO 178, WA2GUP 134, AF2K 125, W2GUT 124, N2JRS 120, KA2BCE 110, KC2EOT 100, WB2QIX 100, WB2IJH 90, KG2D 90, K2DN 75.

Our club has a long history of being a special service club. In the past, we have supported the Honor America Days Parade, the Drums Along the Mohawk, the race in Westmoreland, and the Pumpkin Patrol (just to name a few).

Does anyone know of any upcoming Public Service Events?

October ARES Report

SET Report for Saturday, 5 OCT 02:

6 check-ins on the 145.17 repeater.

4 check-ins on 146.50 simplex.

Due to lack of interest no net was held on Sunday, 10/6. (ED - 2 of us did show up KB2CCD & W5IXM)

4 amateurs made themselves available for the 19 OCT Red Cross HazMat Exercise. Due to weather and too short notification I did not activate ARES for this drill. There will be other exercises to participate in and we will have a longer notification time. The Rome Red Cross Chapter is well aware of the role that amateur radio can do for them.

2 new members have filled out the ARES Registration Form. If you wish to join ARES or have filled out the form and have not received an ARES card, please contact me and I will send you a new form and/or card. Please include your email address if you have one.

Frank H. Reynolds
N2FHR

Emergency Coordinator

Oneida-Madison Counties
n2fhr@arrl.net

336-8276

(ED - Also, don’t forget to check into both the Oneida/Madison Emergency Net (OMEN) and the Central District Emergency Net. These are good places to practice your emergency skills and gain new ones that may help to save lives in the future.)

N2KPR/Terry Kennedy

N2JAW/Ron Raposo

 

• December 4 - Club meeting
• January 8 - Club meeting (2^nd Wednesday of the month)
• February 5 - Club meeting
• March 5 - Club meeting
• April 2 - Club meeting
• May 7 - Club meeting
• June 4 - Club meeting
• June 28/29 - Field Day
• July 2 - Club meeting
• August 6 - Club meeting
• August 9 - RRC Hamfest

This section is available to our neighboring clubs and any other organization that would like to pass on information that would be of general interest to our club’s membership.

Please continue to give me feedback on the newsletter. Last month’s edition had a number of typos and errors. Most of the errors were corrected on the copy that was posted on the club web page.

This month’s "EC Corner" illustrates a big problem with our ARES/RACES membership (not just from our club, but county wide). We cannot just say "we will just show up and do the job when a real emergency occurs", we have to practice. The saying "practice makes perfect" really applies to emergency situations. And if you won’t participate in the practice drills, whose to say you are dependable enough to count on when the real thing (I hope it doesn’t) occurs. Remember, lives and property (maybe yours or your families) may depend on your being able to do a GOOD job. Support what our EC is trying to do - PLEASE.

As always, please pass this newsletter on to anyone whom you think can benefit from its content.

73, Mike KB2CCD

WEB Page Links

ARRL VEC examination fee to rise

(ED - Reprinted from ARRL Website Nov 14, 2002) -- Starting January 1, the fee charged all applicants at ARRL VEC-coordinated Amateur Radio test sessions will increase from $10 to $12 for the year 2003. This fee is charged to anyone applying for a new amateur license or upgrading their operating privileges. Applicants failing an exam element at ARRL sessions where examiners permit retesting on the same exam element also must submit a retest fee of $12. Additionally, the maximum reimbursement ARRL VEC allows ARRL volunteer examiner (VE) teams to retain to directly offset their prudently incurred out-of-pocket expenses will increase from $4 to $6 in 2003 (this fee has remained at $4 per person served since 1991). "While the number of examinees has remained relatively unchanged in the past 24 months, our cost of doing business--and the expenses incurred by ARRL VEs--continues to rise," said ARRL VEC Manager Bart Jahnke, W9JJ. "An adjustment was needed in the 2003 test fee if we intended to maintain the same level of service that our VEs and VE teams have come to expect." Jahnke said that adjusting the reimbursement level for ARRL VEs who retain a portion of the fees to offset their out-of-pocket, exam-related expenses was also past due.

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Notes: 1 - Auto-Patch; 2 - off the air; 3 - linked to 10m; 4 - linked to 6m; 5 - ARES/RACES repeater (P - primary, S - secondary)

Listing compiled from multiple sources; including KC2HSU, KB4CMF, nf2g.com, KB2CCD - corrections and additions should be directed to the editor