Harvard Wireless Club Bulletin February 23, 1999

Harvard Wireless Club Bulletin
February 23, 1999

Lots of news again this week. There were 6 in attendance at last night's meeting (a record for the school year). We had Frank, Nick, Bill, myself and two new members! Build it and they will come :-)

HWC welcomes back K9HI, Phil Temples. Phil is a sysop guru at Harvard Law and also a former member of the club. Phil has held many club and ARRL positions over the years. He is interested in getting the HWC web site updated and under our control again. We had an interesting discussion of how that could be done. We all agree that a real killer site will benefit the club enormously. Also joining the HWC is Edson Pereira N1VTN/PU1JTE, a computer and satellite whiz with the Harvard Library System. Edson will work to get our satellite station up and running. He works right down the street from HWC.

Bill and I worked the ARRL DX CW Contest M/S this past weekend. We put in 33 hours and finished with @1,600 contacts, 305 mults and 1.47M points. Our plan was to do a casual reentry into contesting. Of course, once one sits down at the radio the adrenaline starts to flow. We topped our goals of 1K contacts or 1M points. It was great fun! The entry is in the mail and a copy of the log is in the shack.

Congrats to Maury and crew at G4BUO for demolishing the EU M/2 record in the contest. We worked G4BUO on 4 bands but unfortunately missed them on 80. These guys were real loud on our end. It's rare that G stations (who are power restricted by our standards) do such a great job.

The ARRL DX SSB Contest is coming up March 6-7. I'll be in PA this coming week but perhaps Bill & company can talk at the next meeting about some W1AF activity in this one. This would be a great opportunity for the undergrads to spend a couple hours in a major DX contest.

Frank meets with the UC Finance Committee today regarding our grant petition. We discussed strategies for presenting our case. HWC may not end up with the full amount we requested but we're pretty sure the UC will come through with what they can.

This past Wednesday we installed new RF grounding in the shack. We sunk three 8' copper rods in front of the building and have fed that into the shack with heavy duty aluminum-clad copper ground wire. It's a slick installation and it works great!

The construction people installed telephone receptacles and lines in the outer office and upstairs this past week. These should be activated in another week or so. They also installed electrical receptacles in the clubroom and the sprinkler line went into the shack. The sprinkler head is virtually unnoticeable -- another slick installation. The new bathrooms in the building are coming along nicely. That'll sure beat running over to Adams House.

We still enter the building during construction time via the Adams tunnel. The front of the building is pretty torn-up but in the evenings and on Sundays it's OK to use that entry. Casali plans to re-key all the building entry locks very soon. We'll work with them on that and get new front door keys from the Harvard Key Shop.

We had mail delivery problems the past few weeks. I think the postman feared for his life :-) Anyway, I moved the mailbox over to the fence and called the PO to tell them to start up delivery again. No problems with delivery now. I'd like to tell you that the MIT Flea check has arrived, but that hasn't happened yet.

Last week I ran across a hefty batch of bureau cards for W1AF that had never been answered. Bill is taking care of answering these via the ARRL Outgoing Bureau. We've also recently received a batch of QSL requests from the School Club Roundup. We'll wait and reply to these with the 90th QSLS. I should have the color proofs for these new cards shortly.

I sent out a check this past week to XX for the Rohn sections, mast, thrust bearing, rotor plate and side- mounting tower brackets. Matt & I are thinking late March, early April for getting this project going. As I mentioned at the meeting, we'll have to get together for several roof parties to assemble the new antennas. We put them together; Matt puts them up.

Frank installed the Harvard TCP/IP software on both computers. Those with FAS accounts can now connect via the HWC computers. When the Centrex data line goes in, we'll switch both computers off the 876 line and on to the 495 line.

We have @800 IRCs for sale. Bill collected these for several years from my DX operations. I'll post these on several of the reflectors to get rid of them. Proceeds to the new antenna fund. Looking to get $400 for the lot. Bill also brought in a hefty supply of US1A & PJ1A cards. We still get occasional requests for these operations.

Our old 12' wooden ladder got a paint-job this past week. Looks like new! The old scaffolding that we used on the roof is safely stored in the basement if we ever have occasion to use it again.

Our new subscription to CQ is now coming through. We also recently renewed QST (ARRL Membership) and CQ Contest. We also get lots of "freebie" subscriptions -- probably several dozen. Feel free to take any of these freebies home. There's actually some good stuff here. They're on the top shelf in the outer room.

We had two requests from non-Harvard affiliates to join the HWC this past week. Sorry, but that's not going to happen. We are a Harvard undergraduate student, graduate student, faculty, alumni, and staff organization. You knew that already, didn't you :-)

I took the three best CQ photos (it was tough to choose) to Charette for enlargement and mounting. They should be ready today. These will go up in the clubroom. You'll like this new display :-)

Next meeting, Tuesday, March 2, 7:00 PM. I'll be in PA. Bill & Frank will handle the meeting and minutes.

73, Mike
K3UOC

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