As you may have noticed two of our repeaters are currently off the air. Both the 146.76 and 444.1 repeaters are off the air as the repeaters and antennas are being relocated.

If my recollection from this morning's breakfast conversation is correct, the antennas have been relocated already and are being fed with new hard line to the new location in the building for the repeaters.

Tim got the message on Wednesday evening that the building was ready to have us relocate the equipment, and he and Roger and another person were busy last night actually moving the .76 repeater from its old location to the new room.

lots of possibilities, a few requests.

Echolink is now installed on the 146.76 repeater. It is available to all users of the repeater, and is available for any echolink user on the internet. At the moment there are a few restrictions placed on the node, and as I get those restrictions well documented, I'll post updates here and elsewhere. Feel free to post questions and I'll do my best to answer for you.

Take a look at http://www.eham.net/articles/16958 for a great description of ExpressPCB, free software for laying out a printed circuit board. You can print out the layout and do the rest of the work yourself or send the saved file to the company who will (for a modest fee) make the boards and send them to you.

73, Carl WCØV

Excerpts from the ICOM reflector:

After being told absolutely NO by the local dealer, I bit the bullet and had a local two-way radio shop run power, install 5 NMO mounts plus coax, 2 trunk lip mounts, and the coax plus control wires for a Tarheel screwdriver. Total tab: $600. They were happy to do it, and knew how. The local Toyota dealer wouldn't touch the job.

And here's a great link to GM's notes on installing gear:

I knew it was just a matter of time before the world of spammers discovered tcfmc.org, and now it's happened. This morning, a jerk sprayed us with about 100 comments, all spam to push their link count up. I'm switching to approved-accounts only, meaning new users who wish to have an account here need to be personally approved by me.

Does this thing actually work?

If so, this is a nice ad-on to the site. Kudos to whoever is responsible for the website, nice design and full of useful features.

I'll start with something I have been ruminating about the last few days - in past years, the TCFMC Field day operation has been (rightfully) categorized as a casual, good time affair rather than an actual contest. it is part of the reason I disassociated myself with the Club FD effort in 2000; I was told things are different now, but it seems to me very little has changed.

Just found these links for electronic calculations and conversions. Should save a lot of time and typos!

1. Capacitor value codes: http://xtronics.com/kits/ccode.htm

2. Calculators of all kinds: http://www.electronics2000.co.uk/

Enjoy.

73, Carl WCØV

RITTY PSK31
At the club meeting the speaker for the evening was Robert Chudek. He was very informative and inspiring for me. It also brought back memories of my younger brother N0BQV. He also had a huge old clunker of a green machine that to me then was nothing less then magic. He called it the tank, and it really was a tank it would take both of us to move it to another location in the small shack he had in the basement. When little bro put the power to it, it would come to life not unlike the old equipment you see in an old Frankenstein movie. Anyway Bob’s demonstration and hi love of this communication mode had me downloading a few programs that night when I returned home from the meeting. MMTTY & DgiPan 2.

The storm tracking and charity event volunteering seasons are almost upon us, and nothing makes situational awareness easier than having a GPS unit and a radio - except having APRS, to tie the two together! For those who are not familiar, APRS is short for Automated Position Reporting System, and consists of three components: A GPS receiver to obtain position information, a 2-meter radio tuned to 144.390 (the national APRS frequency) and a tracker or TNC to glue the radio and GPS together.

I'm organizing a group purchase of OpenTracker APRS kits.