THE PIONEER PERSPECTIVE

By Darrell Davis KT4WX

Welcome to another issue of the HARG PIONEER. We apologize for not publishing an October issue. Your editor had a busy month at work, school, and at home. You will notice that the November and December issues are combined. This will allow your editor to spend more time with his family and to prepare for the January issue as well.

Hurricane season is coming to an end in less than a month now. Hardee County ARES briefly went to Level 3 activation from Monday October 29 until Thursday November 1, while Tropical Storm Noel was in the Western Atlantic and Carribean until the storm started to move away from Florida. Level 3 activation is Monitoring and Stand By mode and is our lowest mode of activation. This year we were very fortunate with virtually no impacts to Florida or the continental United States for that matter. We will indeed have much to give thanks for this Thanksgiving Day later this month. Folks in Mexico, Jamaica, and the Lesser Antilles had a rough and traumatic hurricane season this year. Remember them in your prayers as many of these areas are more than likely still recovering.

However that does not mean we can relax or let our guard down. Between December and May is a good time to take inventory of your equipment and supplies for the next Hurricane Season, which will be here before you know it again. Next year could be quite different than this year for Florida. Also do not forget that even during the winter season our services could be requested for other events.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Enjoy these holidays and the season that comes with them. Do not let these holidays put you in a sad spirit. Slow down a little, enjoy them, and ponder their meaning.

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NEW MEETING LOCATION FOR HARG

The Hardee Amateur Radio Group has a new meeting location effective with the November meeting. HARG will now meet at the Hardee County Agricultural Extension Office of the IFAS. The Extension Office is located in the building adjoining the Hardee County Agri-Civic Center where Stenstrom Road dead ends into Altman Road. The meeting date and time are the same: The First Monday of every month at 1900 (7:00PM). Refreshments are available as well. If you have a preference, please contact Roy Alderman KI4YIE via email at tbu52@yahoo.com and let him know your preference.

HARG CHRISTMAS PARTY

Coming up on Saturday December 8 at 1900 (7:00PM) will be our 2^nd Annual Hardee Amateur Radio Group Christmas Party. This year's Christmas Party will be held at Mona's Italian Grill on W. Main Street, between 7^th and 8^th Avenue, in downtown Wauchula. If street parking is full, there is extra parking spaces at Heritage Park across the street. Below is a map of where the restaurant is located.

There will be NO December HARG monthly membership meeting on the first Monday in December. The Christmas Party will serve as our monthly meeting. Please bring your family with you as this will be social event and we will not have a business meeting, just a social for your enjoyment.

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HARG AND HARDEE COUNTY ARES WEEKLY NET – NEW

The Hardee Amateur Radio Group and Hardee County ARES now have a weekly radio net. The net is held every Monday evening at 1900 (7:00PM) on the N4EMH Repeater, 146.625 MHz with a PL of 127.3 Hz. If you are within range of the repeater please check into our net. We occasionally will be doing some training and some short drills as well.

HARG Web page and Email List Server

Web page: http://harg.drivehq.com

List Server: harg@drivehq.com

Do not forget about the HARG web page and email list server. Our web page contains the latest club news and is home to the Hardee County ARES web page as well. All the issues of the HARG PIONEER are located there as well as information about our meetings, nets, and any special training that is scheduled. A new item is the net preamble for the HARG weekly net has been posted there as well in PDF format.

Also if you are not subscribed to the HARG Email List Server you can send an email to harg-list-subscribe@freelists.org and you will be added to the list. It is a low traffic and will not overload you inbox.

HARG-CERT COMBINED TRAINING/DRILL – OCTOBER 20

On Saturday October 20th, the Hardee Amateur Radio Group was requested by Hardee County Emergency Management to participate in the Hardee County CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) Training/Drill session. The training “refresher” was held in the morning, followed by the drill itself in the afternoon. The following hams participate in the combined exercise:

The critique that was held afterwards the following which is real good: (1) We need to practice together more often and (2) Establish protocols for CERT and HARG to work together. As soon as some pictures are available we will pass those along in the next issue of the HARG PIONEER after they are made available. Many thanks to those who participated in the drill.

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2007 – Year in Review

As the end of another year approaches fast, people often review their accomplishments and see where they can improve, hence New Years Resolutions (which unfortunately are not kept for the most part). So let us look back at the accomplishments for HARG and amateur radio in Hardee County in 2007 and in the next issue of the HARG PIONEER we will outline our goals for 2008.

• Held one Technician amateur radio licensing class (between July and September) and had three candidates complete the course.

• Three new amateur radio operators were licensed this year: KI4YIE, KI4ZOY, KI4ZOZ.

• HARG Participated in State of Florida Hurricane Exercise – May 7 and 8.

• HARG Participated in Hardee County Pandemic Exercise – June 8.

• HARG Participated in CERT Training and Drill – October 20.

• Two licensees upgraded to General class: KI4SPG and KI4YIE.

• Construction and publication of a new HARG website.

• Activation of an email list server for HARG.

• Transition of HARG E-letter to full monthly newsletter – HARG PIONEER.

• Continued work in communications room to facilitate upgrades.

• Acquisition of kit for new repeater controller – Arcom RC210 (Installation soon).

• Acquisition of remaining components for construction of UHF repeater.

Hopefully we will get more accomplished next year in 2008. Look for our goals for 2008 next time.

HURRICANE SEASON ENDS SHORTLY

NEXT SEASON PREPARATIONS

Great news!! Hurricane season for 2007 will end very shortly. The Atlantic Hurricane Season for 2007 will “officially” end on November, so we have only a few more weeks to go by the time your read this. Again now is the time to start thinking about, and even budgeting for, replenishment of your grab to go kit and emergency supplies if their shelf life will not last for another hurricane season. That way you will not be in a rush come the next storm.

For a whole lot of good information, including your own personal disaster plan you can go to http://www.floridadisaster.org, which is the official website for Florida Division of Emergency Management. Also checkout the Hardee County Emergency Management website for good information at http://www.hardeecounty.net/eoc.

TIPS AND TRICKS

By Darrell Davis KT4WX

Welcome to another installment of the Tips and Tricks column. I would like this column to be reminiscent of the “Hints and Kinks” column in QST in days gone by. Not necessary a tutorial, or series but just some useful hints and tips every issue that will be useful to you.

COMPUTER CORNER: I have found the following software that will be helpful to you.

• FLASH DRIVE APPLICATIONS = http://portableapps.com. Do you wish you had some useful computer programs that would run on your flash drive so you can take it with you and run it on any computer running the Windows XP or Windows Vista OS'. Check out http://portableapps.com. It is the home to applications that will run on your flash drive. Some of the applications that you will find there are that have been ported as a “portable application”: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird (Email Client), OpenOffice. There are many, many more listed and check back there often as new programs are added on a regular basis. I have not check to see if there are any portable applications for the Linux platform. Also some the portable applications may not have been “fixed” yet to run properly on Windows Vista.

You may be asking, what is a portable application? A portable application is an application that totally installs and runs from your flash drive and saves all the application data to your flash drive as well. It does not install or save data on the computer it runs on. The flash drive just “uses” the computer as a host without saving any data to the computer. For example if you need to check your email but you are not home, load Portable Mozilla Thunderbird on your flash drive and take it with you and run it on your home computer, your computer at work, etc. Just remember that some “public access” computer, for example at some local library, may not have permissions to run applications from flash drives. Other than that you are in luck.

• WINDOWS VISTA = This is strictly personal opinion of your columnist. Unless you buy a new computer with Windows Vista installed on already, do not upgrade to Vista yet. I would recommend you wait until the “major bugs” are out of Vista to a great extent and until most of your applications that you use have been “fixed” to run on Vista properly. I am not “raining on the Microsoft parade” here but I have talked to quite a few folks, done some reading, and am still seeing quite a few compatibility issues with Vista. Being it is a new OS, that is somewhat expected. Wait until you are comfortable and then make the plunge. While you are upgrading consider partitioning your hard drive into two section and running a Linux distribution on the other partition and trying it out. There are a ton of applications out there for it, many which are quite nice. Some versions of Linux you can try and install on a burnable CD to try it as well. There is even work on a version of Linux to run on a flash drive!!

• ALTERNATIVE PDF READERS = Do you dislike how much of your computer resources it takes to run Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1? Try the FoxItReader 2.2. You can download it at http://www.foxitsoftware.com and it is available for multiple platforms. It loads and runs much quicker.

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TIPS AND TRICKS (Continued)

HARDWARE HELP: The tip this time is on feedline and feedline loss. When installing your base station antenna, do not forget about feedline loss of the feedline you are selecting. There are several factors you need to take into account when selecting the appropriate feedline:

• Length of feedline needed.

• Frequency or Frequencies you will be operating.

• Type of feedline used.

You can go to the following web page for an on line feedline loss calculator: http://www.vk1od.net/tl/tllc.php. It is easy to use. Just select the feedline type, frequency of operation, and you will need to select the “matched” option under the Mismatch menu box for simplicity, and the length (select feet or meters). And remember that figure, produced by the “matched” option will only be accurate if your antenna is matched at the frequency you are operating, if you use that option. When I put in RG-58 coax, 50 feet in length it produced a chart looking similar to this:

RF Transmission Line Loss Calculator / Enhanced

Notice that 50ft of RG-58 coax has 3 db of loss for a 50ft run. The loss on UHF would be much more and may be prohibitive. Unfortunately, that is all the space I have for this issue. Take care and see you next year. 73.