Superstition Amateur Radio Club Links

• Hamfest First Saturday each December  Dec 6, 2008 Prize winners:
  • ICOM IC-718 won by Richard Ball, W7IQW
  • ICOM IC-208H won by Art Hoffman, W7ART
  • ICOM IC-2200H won by Brian Romine, KC5CAY
  • ICOM IC-T7H Sport won by Norm Tramba, NI0S
• Linked Repeaters operated by the club
  Repeater Status:
  • 147.12:  (+) 162.2 Hz access tone  Operational
  • 449.60:  (-) 100 Hz access tone  Operational
  • Remote Base:  29.65 MHz 10m FM simplex, No access tone  Operational
    The remote base is turned off during Drivetime Net and Wednesday Night net, otherwise always on.
     
• VE Testing EVERY month, third Monday evening -- Now $14.00
• License Classes  Jan 2009 Tech class
• Superstition ARC information
• Ham Breakfast every Thursday morning and Saturday morning
• Club Nets
• Mailing List

WestFest this weekend

Thunderbird Amateur Radio Club hosts Arizona's only indoor Hamfest this weekend, Saturday, January 10, 2009 at the Thunderbird School of Global Management Activity Center, 59th Ave at Country Gables Lane in Glendale, a quarter mile south of west Greenway Road.

Page Updates

I have updated this page with the 2009 Board of Directors and with the addition of the Ahwahtukee Ham Breakfast.

The VE Page has a new license exam fee of $14.00, and the Membership page was recently updated with a slightly revised membership form.

The 2009 W7W announcement has been placed on the W7W page, but I have to revise the log sheets pdf file with a date ending in 2009 instead of 2008.

I have updated the Photo Gallery with train pictures from Steve's back yard, but somewhere along the way, I only have five of the pictures I shot at Kathy's memorial,

Speaking of the Photo Gallery, I solved a layout problem to get rid of the black bar on the right side, for people running non Microsoft browsers and MSIE 7.  I still have pictures from an email and some more on a CD from Judy, K7JLF covering the Hamfest and the Christmas Party still to be added.

Next Meeting is January 20

The Club meets again on January 20, the third Tuesday of the month, at 7:00 PM.

New card game page added

I have introduced a new page describing a card game my family and I played a lot after I brought the game home from college many years ago.  It is politely called Revenge, but because someone is going to end up with a LOT of cards and has to count them all, it was called Screw Your Neighbor.  That name, apparently, is applied to more than just a few different card games, but I didn't see this one in the list.  Good fun for the whole family.  I forgot to add a link to the rules for Revenge!  Rules for Revenge card game

Join the Mailing List

See the mailing list page for information about adding yourself to the reconstituted mailing list.  Monthly meeting notices and other club news are posted periodically in your inbox.

Superstition ARC:

Club Information summary

Ham Breakfasts every Thursday at Linda's Hoosier Cafe and every Saturday at Coco's

Thursday

A Ham Radio Breakfast at the new Hoosier Cafe meets every Thursday in Mesa since May 24th, 2007.  Steve, KY7W shot this picture, from the north end of the table row instead of from the front door in September 2007.  He had somewhat better fortune with the sun, though he reports there were only 13 at this breakfast.  There are 11 heads in this view that I could count, and with one behind the camera, that leaves just one other unaccounted for!

It's at the Northwest corner of University and Higley, just West of the Gas Station at that corner.  Entrance is on University Drive.  

There are now two start times, one being the official 7 AM start time that migrated to 5:45 AM and a new start time at 7:00 AM sharp.  This second shift was required to accommodate all the people showing up in 2008.

Saturday

The Saturday breakfast is out near Ahwahtukee, at Coco's on the southwest corner of Priest and Elliot in Tempe.  This breakfast starts at 8 AM? sharp, but I need to verify this breakfast's start time.

Superstition ARC Tax Status,
ARRL affiliation
and Club Officers and Committees

501 (c) 3 NonProfit Organization

Superstition Amateur Radio Club, Inc. has been approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofit organization, effective with our initial incorporation in July 1977.  Our filing was approved in July 2006.

Officers and Board of Directors

2009 Officers and Board

1. President:  Mary Simmonds, KD7ZBC
2. Vice-Pres:  Jeff Kokovitch, N7JJK
3. Secretary:  Michelle Powas, AB7NS
4. Treasurer:  Ray Moore, K7RAM

Directors

1. Jo Wilson
2. Paul Powas, KD7GWD
3. Judy Ferrara, K7JLF
4. Tony Ferrara, K7AJF
5. Brian Romine, KC5CAY
6. Gene Wilson, K8WQ
7. Fred Bollinger, AB7JF

These are the people in charge of the day-to-day business affairs of the club.  It is customary for the prior President to sit on the Board in an advisory capacity.

Elections are in November at the General Meeting, but things begin to heat up along about September.  Typically, a nomination committee is formed in September to draw up a slate of candidates to be presented at the October meeting.  Nominations are taken from the floor in October, closed, and the ballot is presented in November.  New officers are installed at the December Christmas Party that takes the place of a December membership meeting.

Committees

• ARCA Delegate:  Vacant 
• ARCA Alternate:  Myrna Cross, KN7M
• Editor:  Vacant
• Technical Committee:  Brian Romine, KC5CAY
• Trustee, WB7TJD:  Larry Kuck, WB7CRK
• Trustee, WG7VA:   Rick Willis, K2DLZ
• Web site maintenance:  Larry Kuck, WB7CRK

For Contact information, please visit:

• Contact Us
   

Board Meeting Time and Location:

The JB's Restaurant, northeast corner of Power and Main, Mesa, 6:30 PM on the Second Tuesday of each month, between the 8th and 14th of the month.  The location change took effect with the February 2007 meeting.

This meeting is open to all members of the club who wish to sit in on the Board actions.

Other Articles and site links

If you remember the wb7tjd.org/ domain name, there are a few things you can place in front of it, separated by a dot, that will take you to places of interest in amateur radio.  Unless otherwise noted, these wb7tjd.org/ subdomains point directly to other web sites.

• part97.wb7tjd.org/ -- ARRLWeb copy of the FCC Rules governing amateur radio
• I removed fcc.wb7tjd.org, which can be accessed as http://wb7tjd.org/fcc/.
• update.wb7tjd.org/ -- ARRL page where we can update our club information with the ARRL.  See the bottom of their page for the submission link.
• arca.wb7tjd.org/ -- Amateur Radio Council of Arizona web site at www.arca-az.org/arca/
• wx.wb7tjd.org/ -- AZ SkyWarn Storm Spotter Program page on the NOAA web site
• North American Simplex Alliance Swap page -- Terry, KC5EGC, now KB5B, operates a swap page on his Tucson web site. 
   

Our site has grown!  At last count on Google, there are 20 pages containing our site menu.  Below are some more sites of interest.  I will add new sites here as they come to my attention.

• Free Morse code Midi Ringtone Generator -- Download these tones to your phone or your PC.  Interesting concept to generate Morse code sounds in midi files.
• AA9PW Morse code practice -- Generate Morse code from letters, numbers, punctuation, or from RSS news headline feeds, or QSO's just about like the old Morse code exams.  Morse speeds from 5 to 50 words per minute.
• New Morse code symbol passes age of 6 years -- It was proposed in December 2003, and adopted in May 2004.  Hear the @ symbol MP3 audio file.  I had to check -- I got a midi file of it from the ringtones site above!
• Emergency Radio -- The New Public Relations Campaign and Web site from ARRL
• We also have a number of Amateur Radio Newsline scripts on our web site.  A Google site search will locate many news stories from 2006 and earlier.
• Use the Google search feature found below the site menu to search many amateur radio sites, including QRZ, qsl.net, ARRL and the club site.  There are many good pages about ham radio in there that will never see the light of day on a global search of the Web.
• Check our Links page for many more links, plus I have added some new solar activity and propagation web sites to our N3KL Solar Activity Monitor page.
• The QRZ callsign search box is conveniently at the top of this page in the normal page view.  Without styles it is further down the page, but in any case, the link will put it in view.

Ten Meter Net Tuesdays, Thursdays, 28.329 SSB, at 7:00 PM

Sun Life ARC has changed its ten meter net on 28.329MHz SSB (upper sideband) to every Tuesday and Thursday, at 7:00 PM.  The Sun Life group's net is open to all radio amateurs of all classes of license.

The Venture Out group meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on 146.58MHz simplex at 1 PM.  I happened to discover this net schedule by accident when I was listening on that frequency to a Tucson simplex EchoLink node.  They are not affiliated with the Sun Life club, but you may find many of the same people on both nets.

We offer N3KL Solar Activity Monitor in Text form

In order to make propagation data provided by n3kl.org available to visually impaired amateurs, this site has the unique ability to display solar activity status in text form.  We get our data from www.n3kl.org, but we process their image data to provide you with this unique ability to see the status in plain text.  This information is displayed at the top of every page.  Please see our Solar Monitor page to see how you can add this Monitor to your web site.

180 miles Round Trip on 147.12

Thursday night, March 22, 2007, during the ten meter net, on a wet, rainy night, Jim, K9ARO was checked in to our net from out Wickenburg way.  He is a little south of the town of Wickenburg, about 90 miles northwest of WB7CRK in east Mesa.  Larry noted the distance to the net, and said, "CQ Tucson," which is 90 miles southeast.  Don, KD7UIZ in central Tucson came back, and he and Jim were able to exchange words over the 180 miles between them, through the repeater.  Jim was running 5 watts from his RV, parked on some high ground, which was loud and clear, with some noise, but which started failing when rain hung out over the repeater site, raising static levels.  Meanwhile, Don's 100 watts was very strong into the repeater.

Site Browser Compatibility and site design notes

This site design was developed by Larry Kuck, and based on an example found in this A List Apart article.  This example was the starting block for our site, but it requires use of an image to create the background color shading for the side panel.  Our style sheets for this site have been modified to eliminate any need for images.

The site design is standards-compliant, and displays well on Windows using Firefox, Opera and Safari for Windows, and in Linux using Firefox and Konqueror..  Firefox and Safari display the site on Apple Computers, based on reports by Apple users.  There may well be many other minor browsers that work equally well.

Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows required extra work, with best results coming with MSIE7.  Additional browser-specific work was done to allow users of Internet Explorer 6 to see a similar view of the site, but some features do not work.

There was no testing done using any Microsoft browser outside of Windows, and none using MSN Explorer.