Trees are down and light to moderate damage to some buildings from the storms that passed through Lee County on Friday evening. The clubhouse survived nicely, which is good.  The covered bandstand/shelter was destroyed though.

Some of the club members will be helping clean up today.

W4HOD had a special guest at our March meeting. After dining on spaghetti, manicotti, lasagna, salad and dessert, we were treated to an antenna program by Darrell Penrod, K9MUG. Darrell presented several different wire antennas that will perform well and are easy to build.

Darrell Penrod, K9MUG

Thanks to Gene Harlin, KI4EEY for the photo

Jim Reisert-AD1C

I discovered a very good web site created by AD1C. of Colorado. The main page URL is http://ad1c.us/ . It is a combination personal page, ham radio page, and a great page on RTTY. He has written some very good, useful software programs and there is a link to them as well. One program I plan on trying for our club is the ADIF to CSV program. It converts ADIF files to comma separated values for exporting to Excel.

Thanks to a benevolent club member, W4HOD is the proud recipient of two WAS certificates. Both certificates were done 100% LOTW.

Mixed number 53,519 Date 09 March 2009

Digital (RTTY) number 734 Date 09 March 2009

I operated the BARTG RTTY Contest this past weekend. I used the club callsign W4HOD. Usually I have the pleasure of  the company of  members KF4OPX and KA4PKB, but they were not able to make this one. I had fun and made a few points.

Call: W4HOD
Operator(s): AA4YL
Station: W4HOD

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Loachapoka, AL
Operating Time (hrs): 14

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Countries  Call Areas
-----------------------------------
   80:    0             0           0
   40:   58           7          14
   20:   84         12          14
   15:   10           3            4
   10:    0            0            0
-----------------------------------
Total:  152      22         32  Continents = 5  Total Score = 41,040

Club: Alabama Contest Group

Comments:

Great contest. My first one flying solo, but great fun. Thanks for all the
contacts. Thanks especially for those stations who followed the message layouts
from rttycontesting.com, it makes things much more organized.

W4HOD will operate the club station in the CQ RTTY contest this weekend. KA4PKB, KF4OPX and AA4YL will be operating. Our goal is to be on the air most of the weekend and work as many stations as possible. As usual, our operation will be part of the Alabama Contest Group.
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KI4KUT, KF4OPX, KA4PKB and AA4YL are operating the XE RTTY contest this weekend. So far we have had a lot of fun and I am headed back to the clubhouse to join KA4PKB in an hour to finish up the contest. A super thank you to member John, KI4KUT for the use of the 80 meter dipole for the XE contest and for the CQ WW contest next weekend. More added about the contest later today.

Update:

I am back home, I’ve had a nap and here is some data from the contest for W4HOD in the XE RTTY contest.

174 QSOS

459 Points

38 DX

16 XE States

Total multipliers: 54

Score: 24786

Posted by AA4YL

Thursday usually means a gathering of the Loachapoka Think Tank (or Loachapoka Rat Pack, whichever you think is more fitting) at a local eating establishment in the Auburn-Opelika area. On Thursday, Feb 5, the lucky establishment was the cafeteria at the East Alabama Medical Center. The food was not bad, but the conversation is what made it great. We solved most of the worlds problems, but no one will listen to our solutions.

Yours truly was the only YL present, so I guess you could say I am the Angie Dickinson of the Loachapoka Rat Pack, but unfortunately, I sure as heck don’t look like her.

Present today were KA4NDY, KA4PKB, W4KDS, KG4NYW, KI4TWB, WB4LNM and yours truly, AA4YL. Look out Lee County restaurants, we could be at your place next week.

Kim, KG4CQZ giving a syrup & biscuit sample
Photo from the ATNM – http://atnm.mcars.us/#an5

I just returned from the hamfest at Greenville, Alabama. Members of HODARS made the journey and had three tables. We promoted the club and sold some syrup. We always have warm home baked biscuits and warm syrup for folks to sample.

Greenville is a small fest, but lots of friendly people looking and buying. Our syrup sales were very good and HODARS is grateful to everyone who dropped by to visit and sample our syrup. The money raised with syrup sales goes to help our club and we appreciate the support.

Cheryl. AA4YL & Kim, KG4CQZ
Photo from the ATNM – http://atnm.mcars.us/#an5

The Butler County RACES group were very courteous and we appreciate the free tables at the hamfest. We will be back next year.

My thanks to KA4PKB, KG4CQZ, and KA4NDY for making the trip for the club.

Posted by AA4YL

This blog author has been licensed as an amateur radio operator since 1984. I entered as a Tech Plus, but found 2-meters to be boring. I wanted to get on HF and see what was out there.

After my father-in-law bribed me with a Drake TR-4C if I passed my General, what the heck could I do but upgrade. Unbeknownst to me, my dear FIL was working on a big surprise for me. He had seen my keen interest in the assorted RTTY teletype machines in his basement shack. He had several different machines each doing a different speed (60, 100 WPM) and mode (Baudot, ASCII) I was always impressed that he could copy the news reports and he knew Hank Aaron had broken the home run record before it was reported on the news.

Dear FIL procurred an old Model 32ASR and began converting it to a RTTY machine. He built a homebrew TU and installed it. I call it old, but at the time, it was miles above the old Model 15.

I felt very special when I was presented with my new toy. I had a tape punch and tape reader on the machine. I kept about a dozen pre-punched tapes hung on the wall. These consisted of transmissions I used over and over, such as personal info, RTTY net preambles, etc. We lived in a manufactured home at the time, and often my dear hubby would hear the machine running as he came down the driveway. He would think to himself, “Oh heck, dinner is late tonight!”

I think back to these days often when I am at the W4HOD club station working a RTTY contest. Using a computer terminal and Writelog are really a huge improvement in operating and I enjoy them very much. But, in my mind, I like to travel back in time 25 years and remember the muted smell of machine oil from the machine, and the distinct feel of the rolls of teletype punch tape.

Here is a link to more detailed info on a Model 32ASR.

Post written by AA4YL

Okay, the OM wants to add someting!

Dave here, (K4ANU, a call I inherited from my Dad).

Just a few comments about RTTY.

I remember the whole end of the trailer shaking when that thing was running, especially when someone on the sending end forgot to turn off the diddler – that used to annoy Dad to no end. He was essentially an electronics engineer without the credentials. The TU he built was like a watch, a small box crammed full of stuff, worked like a charm. One day, Cheryl took the thing apart and, of course, couldn’t put it back together. Upon presenting it to Dad, in pieces, he rolled his eyes and said, “Keep that girl away from screwdrivers!” and this became a running joke. He was very proud of Cheryl due to her enthusiasm and fearlessness – taking stuff apart is easier than putting it back together!

I grew up around Amateur Radio and wasn’t overly interested in it as a result. When Cheryl first saw Dad’s shack (which, to me, looked like the helm of the Enterprise), she was fascinated and took to it like a duck to water, which delighted Dad.

Typically, when we visited my parents, Mom and I would go out in the yard (she’s where I got my love of plants ) – Cheryl and Dad would go down to the basement where the shack was.
He was licensed in 1955 ( I think ) and , of course, back then if you wanted it, you built it. There were tons of surplus equipment left over from the War, and parts were easy to come by. The trick was putting them together. I feel sure that some of the things he built are still working today. He was a remarkable fellow.

Although I rarely use it, I’m proud to have his call. As Dad used to say, ”All I need is a ‘s’ and I’d be K4ANUS!”. I think it’s ironic when someone sees my call and thinks, ”Wow, a K4A call, must be an old hand!” Not really…

Posted by K4ANU

Here is Bill Gates Teletype tape which input the BASIC interpreter to the Altair computer. Notice the date is 2 March 1975. Gates and Paul Allen created the interpreter in two months and it fit in less than 4K of memory. Allen took the tape to MITS and discovered they had only one computer with 4K of memory. After loading the Teletype tape, the READY cursor began blinking. Everyone at MITS was excited. And so it began.

Despite good reviews from the computer hobbyists, not many were buying the operating system. It seems a lot of users were sharing their copies with other users, prompting Gates to send letters to all the electronic publications of the time that accused the hobbyists of stealing his software. Some things never change.

Post written by AA4YL