November 2013 - Yakima Amateur Radio Club

YAKIMA AMATEUR
RADIO CLUB
Ladder Line Newsletter
Club Founded in 1930
83 years of continuous service to the Yakima Valley
ARRL Affliated in1931
November 2013
Featured member
Inside this issue:
• Club Meeting
Tuesday Nov 12, 2013
7:30 P.M.
• November Social
Tuesday Nov 26, 2013
6:30 P.M.
• Featured member
• New Members
• Antenna install
• Technician License
• Maker Space
• Tip of the month
Andy W7CXA Everyone seems to know Andy, especially if you were involved in broadcasting.
In the high school lunch room Andy was
telling his friend Doug Altman about
someone talking on a short wave radio he
had and Doug said what you are hearing
are ham radio operators. He said his dad,
Willie Altman, was a ham and that started
it all. Andy and Doug studied together,
getting ready for the written and CW test
for their Novice license. Andy took his
ham test along with his friend Doug in
December 1955. Andy and Doug were
given their ham test by Roy
Christopherson, W7NJJ, and their license arrived 90 days later on March 12, 1956.
Andy and Doug were now novices, WN7CXA, and Doug was WN7CWZ. The guys
studied and got their General license in December 1956. Andy's ham shack his was
in the garage. His parents felt sorry for him because it was cold and let him move
ham shack into his bedroom. Andy was the only ham in the family and his parents
supported him. In 1980 he got his extra class license so he could operate on 20
meters, 14.000-14.025. He liked working CW there and incentive licensing took it
away from him.
• Simplex Net
• Gossip
• Mr President
How did he become a broadcast engineer? He got acquainted with Dave Hubert, a
station engineer that Andy asked if he could watch him work and they hit it off. Dave
would let Andy go with him to do maintenance on the transmitter. That was at KLOQ,
1390, a rock station. He was given a part time job setting up remote broadcast
equipment on weekends. He worked part time at the radio station and attended YVC.
When he was 18, he was hired to help Dave at KIT with an installation job. They
installed the first automation system in Yakima. It was a Shafer System, which used
two Seeburg 45 rpm record changers and four Concertone tape machines. Andy
worked overnight at KIT until the station got FCC permission to control the station
remotely from the Yakima Telephone Answering Service, which was owned by the
same person as the station, JackGoetz. Just after he turned 19, Andy got his First
Class FCC Radiotelephone license. He was then hired by KENE as their chief
engineer and announcer. 18 months later he went to work for KNDO TV. After 6
months of that he decided television was boring and went back to radio on a station
in Oregon. After that, he went to Kennewick with KEPR, as an announcer. While
there he received his draft notice and chose to join the Air Force. While Andy was in
the Air Force, stationed at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California, he
worked part time at a rock radio station there as a DJ.
Feel free to email us and
complain, brag, make
suggestions, or write copy
for the newsletter.
Send your email address to
bobruth@nwinfo.net
73
Andy, W7CXA, age 17 at the mike
Andy making a change in the DX 100
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YAKIMA AMATEUR
RADIO CLUB
Club Founded in 1930
83 years of continuous service to the Yakima Valley
Ladder Line Newsletter
ARRL Affliated in1931
November 2013
After getting discharged from the Air Force he went to work for KUTI in
Yakima and was on the air as a DJ and was chief engineer. Don Heinen
came in as general manager and after discussion with the staff changed
the format to country. The station went from number 6 in a 5 station
market to number 2 in the market in 90 days. Andy did the morning show,
signing on at 530 am. Because of his Native American heritage, he was
known on the radio as J. Andy Tom Tom. Don Heinen, by the way, is
W7POZ, and is a member of our club.
YAKAMA WARRIORS ASSOCIATION
leading a parade in Wiley City, WA
Andy converted a 150 mhz surplus military transmitter to broadcast quality
and also converted a Motorola 150 mhz receiver strip. The receiver was
placed in the top of the Larson building, with an antenna on the roof and an
equalized phone line was run to the station. This allowed them to do
remote broadcasts from businesses. This was done before remote pickup
equipment was being manufactured for use by radio stations.
He later moved to Vancouver and became half owner of a recording studio. They had a number one record
nationwide in the country music field. It was called, "Hello, I'm A Truck", sung by Red Simpson and written by Bob
Stanton, of Granger. Andy worked part time in Portland on 50 KW country station KWJJ as an announcer.
From Vancouver he moved to Seattle and was hired as chief engineer at Country KAYO. He also filled in as an
announcer there. He worked in the Seattle market for 12 years. He and his wife Lois got tired of the weather and
moved back to Yakima in 1986. He was once again chief engineer at KUTI and KXDD, under a different ownership.
In 1999 he went to work for Clear Channel as Director of Engineering. A nice quiet job, he only had to take care of 6
transmitters on 6 separate tower sites, 6 control rooms, four production rooms, two news rooms, did all the IT duties,
with 3 networks and 75 computers, and was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He retired in 2003, to keep from
having a heart attack, and worked part time for 4 or 5 years for stations that needed engineering help in communities
like Prosser, Toppenish, Ellensburg, and Yakima.
Andy now spends some of his time as a volunteer at DSHS in Yakima. He is chairman of the Local Indian Child
Welfare Advisory Committee. He has been on that committee for 27 years. This is done to comply with the Indian
Child Welfare Act, which requires all Indian child cases to be heard before a staff of Indian people. He also puts in a
lot of time as a member of the Yakama Warriors Association, a veteran group on the reservation. They do military
burial ceremonies, flag ceremonies, parades, anything for the veterans. Andy is on the Honor Guard, and quite often
on the firing squad when they do a 21 gun salute. You may have seen him carrying a flag in a parade somewhere.
When he isn't doing volunteer work, he might be on one of the ham bands.
He likes chasing DX, both on ssb and cw, and rag chewing on 75 and 40 meters.
His shack has an Icom 756 ProII, a Yaesu FT 101ZD, an ancient
Swan 500, and a home brew linear amplifier capable of 1,000 watts
plus. His antennas are a dipole and a SteppIR beam.
Andy has a QSL card from John Adams that shows that Andy was John's first
contact in 1957 on CW from Johns basement ham shack..
New Members
The new members feature will start in January 2014. We do have one clever member that took advantage of our offer at the
HamFest. You join that day and you get a Ham Hat and a W7AQ club member badge. Hutch who was already a member for
2013 started thinking and very cleverly decided that a hat and a club badge was worth more than the $20 fee to join. Hutch said
I’ll just pay for 2014 and get a badge and hat.
All I can say is Hutch looks really good wearing his new hat with his call on it. Will he get a club shirt? I will be watching him very
closely. I’m sure he has a scheme figured out so he can get one
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YAKIMA AMATEUR
RADIO CLUB
Ladder Line Newsletter
Club Founded in 1930
83 years of continuous service to the Yakima Valley
ARRL Affliated in1931
November 2013
Ladder Line Newsletter
November 2013
Kudos to the boys who helped with my antenna installation for the second time!! On monday October 14, they put up
my G5RV Dipole and tethered it with 1000# tinsel strength nylon line. A military fiber glass pole ( you can buy them at the
HamFest ) is being used as the center structure anchored to the garage with an offset bracket lagged to the side. I am
W7ICW Dave H. and belong to the W7AQ Ham Radio Club of Yakima.
For my gratitude I will donate $100.00 in the name of the Monday Morning Breakfast Group to the club to show my
appreciation for a job well done.
Signed W7ICW
PS: drive by and look any time.
Don doing all the work
Andy calling home “I’ll be right home dear”
Dave down here !
What’s Dave looking at?
Dave... I think your line should be tight
and is that a train hat?
is this a DirecTV commercial
There were more members of the Breakfast Group but someone forgot the
camera and had to use his cell phone. That turned out to be a good thing
because Keith N7TRN showed me how to bluetooth them to my tablet.
Technician License
My records show we have about 400 Licensed Technician in Yakima and surrounding area. My goal is to contact
all or most of them and offer our services. They got their license by studying and taking a test and getting their
ham ticket to hang on the wall? Do you think that’s what they want to do with with their ticket? We could at least
offer our services so they can move to the next level.
That could have happened to any of us. The hams around us started encouraging us to move on and get involved
and that has not changed. Everything we do is because a ham friend is pushing us to the next level or introducing
us to something new. It’s our job in 2014 to make sure they have a chance to enjoy amateur radio like the rest of
us.
"When All Else Fails, Ham Radio Works"
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YAKIMA AMATEUR
RADIO CLUB
Ladder Line Newsletter
Club Founded in 1930
83 years of continuous service to the Yakima Valley
ARRL Affliated in1931
November 2013
Amateur Radio Club PR
maker space what is maker space? That’s what I said the first time I was asked if the club would help them with their event to
inspire makers of all ages. Maker festival interactive workshops and demonstrations for kids and families including 3DPrinting,
Quad-copters, Robots, Badge Soldering, Tesla Coil and CNC milling.
Now you know exactly what it is that we were going to help with. We setup a buddy pole antenna and an IC-701 HF rig with an
MFJ-941c antenna tuner and it all worked better than we thought. Then they started the Tesla Coil all I can say is if there is a
Tesla Coil at anything we could be involved in we will not be there.
I set up my computer and CNC Router at their request. As soon as I started to show how it worked guess what? You guessed
it. The Tesla Coil took out the power, not once but all day. You would think that we had a bad time from my story so far but we
had a great time watching all the kids doing and learning new things.
I would like to thank Vince KG7BFN , Paul N7XOP & Linda KF7PCZ for helping setup Friday night. Vince was there at 8:00am
and helped till 4:00pm. The photos were taken before the crowd started to arrived at 10:00am.
1
2
3
1. I think every kid and most parents soldered a badge with 2 LED’s and a battery. They only received instructions they had to build
them with out help. When they put the battery in and the lights started flashing the smiles on the kids and Andy was priceless.
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5
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2. A table of junk that the kids could disassemble just for the fun of it. 3. All kinds of paper projects very popular.
4. This was the most active table everyone wanted to make a tile. Tesla5C.oil.
One of the cool and interesting demonstrations
was this 3D Printer. This one sells for $2200 it is
turn key and has a library of 1000’s of files to
print. A little girl was dressed like a princess. They
printed her a crown and she was very happy.
They has some 3D Printer Kits for under $500
I will be looking into that. The last job they printed
on the 3D Kit printer was a Chess Set all pieces
at one time. They said it would be finished at
12:30 that night and it would shut itself down. The
kit printed as good as the commercial one. I know
there are settings for draft and better.
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YAKIMA AMATEUR
RADIO CLUB
Ladder Line Newsletter
Club Founded in 1930
83 years of continuous service to the Yakima Valley
ARRL Affliated in1931
November 2013
TIP of the month
What do I need in my shack? We never NEED anything. I know that but the longer we go with out it WE NEED IT. I wanted
to do something new. Joe KK7KI said I should try Psk32. All I needed was to down load free Digipan. Run the program, put
the microphone on the computer up to my HF speakers and Digipan will start receiving. That got kind of boring so I switched
to Packet. That was really boring. Everyone said I needed a SignaLink USB so I could try HF packet.
What a surprise! the SignaLink USB opened up a world I was not expecting. First I got Digipan working, receiving and
transmitting. Then I was told if I like that, down load FLdigi WOW! FLdigi will do every thing. It will do things that I didn’t even
know I wanted to do. There are 107 modes you can do and I only have heard of 3 of the 107.
Thursday night on the 6 meter moan and groan group Gary K7GWD ask if I had ever tried SSTV I said No, why? Gary said with
my new Signalink U S B all I had to do was down load MM S S T V and give it a try. I did and ran the program and it worked the first time.
Bill Carter NC7C had me down load RMSExpress months ago so I could send him emails using Telnet WL2K and it worked well. Then I
started getting email from Winlink about ships at sea. Now with Winmor I can keep track of ship movement. Why? because I am net
control of the Maritime Mobile Service Net on Tuesday at 2100 zulu and now I know what they are talking about. The real plus is you
can use packet WL2K and send email all over the world without the internet using HF. Is this a great world or what?
Simplex Net
Don KC7FFG and Bev KK7OE are doing a great job with thier 2 meter simplex net. The first time I checked in I didn’t hear
half of the check ins. I think everyone has improved their antennas including Don. The last 2 Wednesdays at 8:00pm on
146.52 I have heard everyone that checked in. Signals are getting better. Just think what it will be like after it snows.
Thanks everyone from Yakima that have been checking in. This is a great test to see if you can talk to Grandview simplex.
6 meters dead nothing on there any more. If you think that’s true you have not been listening on 50.125 USB on Thursday
night at 7:00. This is a great group of hams that like to talk and experiment with antennas. First step is just show up and
see if you can be heard and join in and have a good time. If your signal is low that’s ok. We will just put our head sets on
and you will have a week to experiment and try again next Thursday night. We will be looking forward to hearing you.
Gossip
Q: Will field day be handled the same as it was handled this year?
A: I am not sure what you mean handled? There will be many changes! Signs inviting the public. Band choice? Possible drawing? Teams? More laughter.
Q: What is the story with the generator that’s in the Red Cross Van? Will the club get it back? Can we use it? conflicting stories.
A: #1 question Dave...The club paid for it? The red cross has it? I wish I could answer that question. You are about the 20th person to ask me that question.
Q: Can we do packet with out going thru YKM
A: I asked NC7C about that today and yes you can. The problem is who would you talk to? I have been hearing that some of the old TNC are being dusted off?
Q: What did you mean when you said you were going to get in touch with 400 Technicians in the valley. How is that possible?
A: First it could take $300 and a flyer or invitation for them to join us. Not join the club just join us in our activities. Joe and I are working out the details.
Q: If you are elected President of the club what or will you change anything.
A: Not sure I would change anything. I do know that the things we do day to day will be done by the Constitution. It was changed so we are going to live by it.
Q: I hear the club has new shirts.
A: Years ago I made club shirts/coats for those who wanted them. There are a hand full of club members that wanted club shirts for the HamFest OK DONE!
Q: How are the Pixie2e CW QRP rigs? are you still going to mess with that?
A: Building them right now. We are going to see what happens if there are more than 2 on the air at the same time because of the way the receivers work.
Ham Breakfast
Old Town Station
Every Monday 8:30am
Are we having breakfast because we're
hungry or are we trying to keep our weight up?
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Net Schedules
W7AQ Net
146.660 tone 123
7:30pm Monday
Ladder Line Newsletter
Simplex Net
146.520 simplex
8:30pm Wednesday
November 2013
Mr President
It is coming to the end of the year, so the two big items of business are the elections for
next year, and the setup for our hamfest in April. For elections, we have only one name for
each of the officers, but 4 names for 2 board positions.
Insomniac Net
145.555 tone 100
445.875 tone 103.5
every night 11:00pm
President = Bob WB7WAM
Vice Pres.= Joe KK7KI
Secretary = Sharon KB7MKF
Treasurer = Jo KA7LJQ
Trustee = KB7HDX
Registered Agent = Jo KA7LJQ
Board Members (2 needed) = Hutch KE7LA - Andy W7CXA
Mike KE7TJK - Julie KF7MXL.
Tech Net
145.555 tone 100 simplex
445.875 tone 103.5 simplex
Friday night 7:30pm
W7AQ Repeaters
VHF
146.660 Tone123
146.840 Tone123
147.300 Tone123
Nominations will be open again on the 2nd Tuesday, 12 November for additional names for
any of the offices or board positions.
The Yakima Amateur Radio Club Hamfest being held at the Selah Civic Center, in Selah
on the 12th of April. We need to get all of the announcement information out so we can
have a good turnout. We will be sending out post cards in January, and Ray K7VAL will be
sending out letters and applications to those that had tables at last years hamfest.
UHF
220
224.900 Tone123
We want to be sure that we have informed everyone, and if you know of someone who
might attend, please let them know. We will be setting up the room on Friday afternoon for
those who are going to be selling their wares, and we can use club members to get the
room set up. We open on Saturday morning, 12 April at 9:00 am for those that are doing
the buying. We can use club members to help get things going and set up, and we can
use as many as possible to help us take it down and clean up. We have a sign up sheet so
please sign up and help us sign up and take part.
Other Repeaters
VHF
147.040
Tone123
146.940 Tone173.8
146.200 Tone ?
Nodes
145.555 simplex Tone100
445.875 simplex Tone103.5
We have a club net every Monday evening at 1930 hrs, and have been having several new
check-ins. Bob WB7WAM has been doing the net and with his gift of gab, has been able to
get several to make comments and make the net very interesting. So listen in on the
146.660 repeater on Monday evening at 1930 and check-in and give a comment or two.
We would like to hear from you.
work the world with a handheld
or get ham news anytime
Several of the members have been having a Round Robin net on Thursday evening at 7:00
on 6 meters 50.125mhz usb. It has been an interesting net and it is interesting to get the
different ideas and opinions. None are wrong, all are right, so come on in and let us hear
from you.
Ham Coffee
Every Friday
4:00pm
Starbucks 56th & Summitview
VE Testing
Starbucks changed their chairs and
tables so that it will not handle our
small group this fall and winter.
November 16 10:00am
We may be moving west to
Burger King on Summitview
Red Cross building 302 S. 2nd St.Yakima, Wa
All Walkins Welcome
Meetings of the Yakima Amateur Radio Club
are held on the
2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month
2nd Tuesday:
Short Business Meeting with a Program
7:30pm Red Cross building 302 S. 2nd St. Yakima, Wa
4th Tuesday:
November Social
Shari's Restaurant 6:30pm
Fruitvale Blvd & 40th Ave Yakima, Wa
2013 Officers
President
Vice-President
Secretary
Treasurer
Past President
Trustee
Registered
Joe Ackermann
KK7KI
Robert Rutherford WB7WAM
Sharon Fisher
KB7MKF
Jo Whitney
KA7LJQ
Lindsay Kooser
N7RHW
Mark Tharp
KB7HDX
Agent Jo WhitneyKA7LJQ
Board Members 2012 - 2013
Harold Hutchinson
Mike Geerhart
Board Members 2013 - 2014
Mike Judy
Ray Gregg
KE7LA
KE7TJK
W7CCY
K7VAL