Our meeting next Wednesday, 14 July, will be on Packet Radio. A good video was provided by Horace Ory, K7ORY, and it would help after seeing the video if some expert could give a short talk or demonstration on the subject. Contact me if interested. C U at the mtg. Bring a friend too!.

Cheers and 73. --- Jerome Turner, K9CCZ

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NKARC has received permission to operate at the Point No Point lighthouse in Hansville during the Lighthouse Day. Plans are to have the club trailer on site to operate from 9:00 AM until 3:00 PM. Mark you calendars to come and have some fun working other lighthouses that will be on the air on that day. The site is on the beach looking out over Puget Sound and provides a spectacular view. Bring the family along and have a picnic.

The parade started after the 11:30 ferry unloaded when two Kitsap County Sheriffs deputies on motorcycles followed the last vehicle to the end of town and then turned around to lead the parade. The parade was led by emergency service vehicles followed by the American Legion Post 245 color guard. Then the communicators assumed the role of dispatchers sending the units from the staging areas in a smooth flow making sure there were no wide spaces. When the parade was over, they all heaved a sigh of relief and enjoyed the other festivities in the town.

Thanks to Mike, N7IPJ; Jerry, K9CCZ; Forest, W7EKK; Horace, K7ORY; Peter, KB7TGF; Ed, AK7H; Bill, W7ARC; Lois, N7ZDA, and Bob, N7KTP for their work in this worthwhile project. It was a great opportunity to practice communications support for a community project.

The North Kitsap Amateur Radio Club once again this year participated in the American Radio Relay League’s annual Field Day event from the Vinland Elementary School in Poulsbo, WA. Prior to the actual setup of the antennas and the stations at the site for this event, many hours of preparatory work paid great dividends. The club was awarded 3 proclamations from the City of Bremerton, the City of Poulsbo and Kitsap County proclaiming June 20-27, 2004 as "Amateur Radio Week" to coincide with the Field Day Weekend, June 26-27, 2004.

Contacts were made, and personal invitations given to all members of both Poulsbo and Bremerton City Councils and the Kitsap County Commissioners. These led to site visits by Kathryn Quade of the Poulsbo City Council and Jan Angel, Kitsap County Commissioner on Saturday, June 26, 2004.

Steve Finley, West Sound, Emergency Services Manager for the American Red Cross and Gary Bolen, Red Cross Volunteer observed the activities at the site on Sunday, June 27, 2004. An invitation was also sent to the Department of Emergency Management and the Salvation Army but neither chose to accept our invitation.

The Bremerton Sun newspaper ran a small announcement about the activity for several days prior to the event. While the North Kitsap Herald ran a story entitled, "Hams to bone up on skills at annual field day," that ran in the June 23^rd edition of the paper. The story was written by Carrina Stanton after a lengthy phone interview with the Field Day Chair, Bill Frazier, W7ARC.

Friday, 13 volunteers arrived at the Field Day site to erect antennas. Using potato guns and sure muscle power, the team installed the club’s B&W folded dipole antenna, an off-center fed dipole, a tri-band 3-element yagi, a 3 band vertical and a high gain VHF antenna for use with the two primary stations, the "Get On The Air" (GOTA) station and a VHF-FM station. Floyd, KC7EVL and Burres, KC7GFN provided security at the site Friday night.

Fourteen club members and invited guest operators took part in the actual operation of Field Day 2004, making 436 QSOs on both CW and phone modes over the 24 hour period. We handled 15 pieces of formal NTS traffic including messages to the Section Manager and the Section Emergency Coordinator.

Saturday afternoon, Jere, W7TVA, brought in the Kitsap County Emergency Communications Vehicle to be used as the GOTA station KD7WDG. At which point we shut down the club’s hand cart station and transferred the control to the mobile station. He was able to make 10 contacts from this station. The GOTA station was also visited by the Booher boys, members of a local Scout troop who were each given a turn at the microphone to make a contact on the air. Contacts were made with Bob, KA6ARR of Keno, OR who talked to each of the boys in turn.

The site also attracted other visitors right up to the time we packed everything up and headed for our individual homes. We had a total of 21 visitors to the site over the two days, many with questions and one with a complaint about the noise of the generator.

Russ, KI7PG supplied pizza, soda, water, and coffee for lunch, while Jerry, K9CCZ, club president, brought in Kentucky Fried Chicken with all the trimmings for dinner. Susan, AB7MD brought in McDonald’s Egg McMuffins for breakfast on Sunday.

The weekend was not without incident. "Murphy" was hard at work. It was found that the clubs Alinco DX-70 was only capable of producing 30 watts on 75 and 40 meters making it almost useless with the B&W dipole as a GOTA station. The rig worked well on 20 meters but with another station on 20 meters, this only lead to interference problems so contacts were sparse via that station. No contacts were logged via the VHF FM station although we did monitor several of the VHF simplex frequencies.

A neighbor to the school across the road came over about midnight Saturday to complain of the noise from the generator. He stated that his family couldn’t sleep with the generator running. We decided to keep peace and harmony with the neighborhood and decided to suspend operation from the generator-dependent station and only operate from the trailer on battery power. We operated this way until 8 AM Sunday morning when we brought the generator and station #2 back on line.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend. We had lots of fun, ate too much of the wrong things, and stayed up way too late. We are claiming a score or 1,114 points for the weekend and we’ll see where that places us with the rest of the folks that participated this weekend.

Thanks goes to all those operators who put up with long shifts, lousy band conditions, bad operators and just plain "Lids". I want to thank each and everyone that helped with this weekend; Jerry, K9CCZ, Horace, K7ORY, Dick, W7VS, Ed, AC7H, Malcolm, NF7M, Susan, AB7MD, Connie, N7NVQ, Floyd, KC7EVL, Burres, KC7GFN,Jim, K7LD, Russ, KI7PG, Forrest, WA7EEK, Ed, KA7UJA, Ed, N7NVP, Jere, W7TVA, Dave, N7VRZ, Nick, Dave, and Gary. THANK YOU! for helping make this weekend a success.

Looking forward to next year.

Bill Frazier, W7ARC, Field Day Chairman

I attended my first Field Day in 1939 as a seven-year old "troublemaker" at Pilsen Park in Chicago. Dad, W9NXP (SK) was a member of a fairly new club called the "Hamfesters" and scheduled a time slot as "CW" operator on one of the stations. I remembered that there was lots of soda pop available for those my age by I consistently tried to sneak a sip of Dad’s beer. My other passion was to come up to a station and "adjust" some of the dials.

I got my first "ticket" in 1987 and have been participating in field day operations since 1988. Field Day gets into your blood and it’s difficult to think about not being involved. This year, family affairs required that I be in Chicago during the last weekend in June – the sacred time for amateur radio operators in the United States and Canada. I did not want to miss Field Day so I turned to the Internet and looked up the Field Day site for the Hamfesters. I found that the site was in a suburban area that I was familiar with and decided to make a visit on Saturday.

The topography of the Chicago area is relatively flat for many miles. One person said that he found it amazing that you could stand on your deck and look out to the horizon for 5 miles if there were no buildings in the way. As I approached the Hamfesters Field Day site, I could see the vertical antenna masts at quite a distance. Sure enough, there was the field with masts, tents, and Sani-Kan. It took two trips around the field including drives through the adjacent junior college to determine that there was no driveway and entry was to just drive onto the grass.

As soon as I got out of the car, I was greeted by one of the members with a warm welcome and given a description of the layout. The club was operating as a 3A operation using the call sign W9AA with a GOTA station using the call sign KB7FBQ..

I was intrigued by the vertical masts that were being put into position. They consisted of four 10 foot sections of 2-inch PVC pipe with four sets of guy lines on four point tie-downs. The crew walked the mast up as others manned the guy lines. The best way to describe the operation is to imagine trying to overcome gravity and set a wet noodle into the vertical from the bottom up with a crew of 18 chiefs and one Indian.. I never realized that a vertical mast of PVC pipe could be made into a figure "S". All the HF antennas were wire antennas including a dipole, G5RV, and a wire beam that could be switched into right angle configurations.

At 1300 Local, the stations went into action and "CQ Field Day, W9AA" could be heard on the 40 meter and 15 meter bands. Propagation was not the best but the 15 meter station seemed to be getting a number of responses from stations on the east coast and from the southern states. The 40 meter station was getting responses from California and the southern states. I was hoping to hear K7CZ but the Pacific Northwest did not seem to be there. The GOTA station tried for VHF contacts but only managed to get one from a station about 15 miles away. It switched to PSK-31 and was making aome contacts to the east coast on 20 meters.

Each station was using the N3FJP logging program. It was very easy to use and heartily endorsed by everybody who was operating with it. Something NKARC should consider for its next Field Day and Special Event activities.

It was interesting that a number of families had set up tents and were going to make it a family campout for the weekend. As I passed one tent, a precocious young lady of about four stuck her head out and informed me that they were camping out and asked if I was staying in a tent. I answered no and she immediately invited me to stay with her and her family. The mother come running over as I was telling her that I could not stay because I had to go somewhere else for supper.

As I was getting ready to leave, I asked Club President George, N9VOK and Field Day Chairman, KB9CYL, how many members were on the Hamfesters roster. They answered that the club had two-hundred plus members and they expected between 30 to forty members to participate in the Field Day activity.

I did not miss Field Day 2004 although I had to participate 1800 miles from home. The warm welcome and the congenial feeling I enjoyed proved the Hams are brothers all over the world and all it takes to open the gates of friendship is to announce your call sign 73 to those great Hamfesters in Chicago and cul down the log. Tnx for a great time.

Bob Tomas, N7KTP

Some members indicated that the jackets could be very warm if worn during a sunny summer day here in the Pacific Northwest. Yes it can get hot here once in a while. Vests readily visible in emergency situations are available from Horace, K7ORY, for $17.50 each.

My neighbor has some estate items that I offered to help her sell. Here is the list of stuff for sale from that estate:

ICOM 730 HF transceiver $300.

ICOM PS15 20 Amp. matching power supply 75.

ASTRON switching power supply SS-30 30 amp. 100.

Heath auto keyer HD 1410 30.

All above are in very clean condition.

For further information call Les, ko3g, in Poulsbo at 360 779-7952

This is a reminder that the August presentation meeting will be a picnic in the patio shelter at Viking Park. The club will provide hot dogs and coffee. Russ Swank already has a pot of beans simmering. Members who attend are asked to bring a dish of some kind: salad, side dish, dessert, drinks, or what have you. If you are worried that we might have 23 desserts and no salad, or vice versa, you might contact Susan to coordinate dishes (697-9379).

Everybody is invited including spouses, friends, girlfriends and children. Come on down and swap stories about the one that got away. (DX contact that is).

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The current July 2004 issue of National Geographic contains a wonderful and lavishly illustrated cover article on solar activity. You really have to see this one. It comes with a pullout poster illustrated on both sides.

Reader David Moore sent a link for an article about 3 dimensional renderings of coronal mass ejections. Read the article and view online movies at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14506. 

For more information concerning propagation and an explanation of the numbers used in this bulletin see the ARRL Technical Information Service propagation page at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html. 

It costs approximately 60 cents per copy to print a newsletter and postage to mail it. Receiving your newsletter electronically helps keep publishing costs down allowing the funds to be used for other club projects

Do not bring lead-acid batteries to the meeting for disposal. It is your responsibility to take them to the Solid Waste Facility.

Packet is a marriage of radio and computer communications. It is like having a modem connecting two computer terminals by radio rather than by telephone lines. As computer data transfer speeds increased, many looked at packet radio as being too slow and outmoded. Question: What do you do when the telephone lines are down? Emergency Communications groups are urging that packet radio networks be developed to help speed the transfer of information with lesser errors and immediate confirmation. Amateur Radio Position Reporting System (APRS) is an application of Packet Radio.

The subject of the July 11th presentation meeting is Packet Radio with a video and discussion afterwards. Efforts are underway to have a demonstration. The chart on the reverse of this page gives an idea of the Packet Radio Network in the Puget Sound Area. Look it over and bring it to the meeting.

Hamfest flyers are ready now. They'll be available at the July 11th meeting. If you have a need for some before that, contact me.