JOTA is on the weekend of October 20-21, 2001 and begins Saturday, at 0001 hours local time, and ends on Sunday, at 2359 hours local time.

Please save the date for the annual auction, in your calendar. This is a very important event for the club. Support in all areas will be needed, so if you can volunteer for even part of the day your assistance will be greatly appreciated. Please contact our chairpersons as soon as possible.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the monthly club meetings and/or at the auction.

Remember that the club meetings are held on the last Wednesday of each month except July and August at 7:00PM at Artisan Industries in Waltham. OCTOBER'S CLUB MEETING IS, HOWEVER GOING TO BE HELD ON THE 24^th DUE TO HALLOWEEN. All are welcome!

73, Ann, KA1PON

President – Ann Weldon, KA1PON

Publisher – Eliot Mayer, W1MJ

Editor – Ron Perry, N1USS

Production – Steve Gilbert, K1SG

Circulation – Ann Weldon, KA1PON

Dianne (KA1NOJ) and Ralph (KB1DXL) Cook became the proud parents of twins.

The names of these healthy, budding hams are Kyle Joseph and Kayla Joann.

Join us all in wishing Dianne, Ralph and the twins all the best for the future.

OH, by the way…… this happy event gives our President, Ann, one more title….

CONGRATS, GRANDMA!

A couple of my friends and I went out to Airventure, the world’s largest air-show, this year in my trusty plane N2405Y (A 1985 Piper Archer II {PA28-181}). As Airventure is in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, it took a few stops to get there.

On our first leg from Mansfield, MA to Buffalo, NY, we had to make an unexpected pit stop in Syracuse, NY. This stop was required because the pilot (N1UEC) had a little too much coffee before take-off. So, after a quick stop in Syracuse, we were again on our way to Buffalo. The clouds had moved in and the approach to Buffalo was shrouded and obscured. It was a good thing that not only had I been recently training for this type of flying (instrument reference) but that I also had a more experienced pilot next to me (W1DCB). After a nice approach into Buffalo, some lunch, and fuel, we again were off into the wild, not so blue yonder.

For those of you who have played with any of the PC flight simulator’s I can tell you, the simulators are pretty close to the real thing and in some cases more difficult to fly than the real thing. The instrumentation in the panel of N2405Y matches closely to that of any of the Cessna 172’s in MS Flight simulator 2000.

Our next Hop took us from Buffalo into Muskegon, MI. Muskegon is on the west coast of Michigan right next to Lake Michigan. This would be our stop for fuel and a snack before the leg into Oshkosh. This leg went pretty smooth and uneventful. All of the Air Traffic Controllers we spoke with, even those in CANADA were excellent. After we landed in Muskegon, while getting an update on the weather, we realized that a level 2 to 3 thunderstorm was poised right over the lake between Oshkosh and us. Just because you can do a thing does not make it prudent, and flying through a moderate to severe thunderstorm is one of those things that you should just not do. So we stayed in a Holliday-Inn in Muskegon till early the next day.

With an early start to the trip on Monday morning, we arrived on the other side of the lake at about 06:00 AM CDT. As we were almost 1 hour early for our scheduled arrival into Oshkosh, ATC placed us into a holding pattern over Sheboygan, WI. After about 15 minutes, they cleared us for the approach into Oshkosh! We finally made it!

After tying down the plane in the ‘North 40’ we were off to our rooms at the University of Wisconsin Dormitories.

The next 6 days we were subjected to an absolute overload of aircraft, accessories, and air-show’s. The show was excellent and a real must see for any aircraft enthusiast.

73 4 now… de N1UEC, N2405Y Aeronautical Mobile…

At this point in time I don't think anyone needs further reminder of the terrible things which happened in and to our country recently.

One point, however, should be made and that is that without the 100's of amateur radio operators who have, once again volunteered time and equipment there would have been a communications vacuum at a time and place where communication was and is crucial.

In emergency situations, natural or otherwise, it's not unusual for the regular communications infrastructure to fail. Hard line telephones and cell phones can often be the first to go. In addition, many communities don't have radio systems to allow them to communicate to other towns and/or services. So often it's imperative that these lines of communication be open and that's where the amateur radio community comes into the picture.

The question is, how do you prepare for these kinds of situations? The answer is right in front of you many times a year. VOLUNTEER!

The experiences you gain from volunteering for such events as the "Walk for Hunger" or the "Boston Marathon" or to participate in the annual "Field Day" exercises go a long way to helping you to understand what you must do and what you should have available in order to take your ham shack from your home and to operate under less than ideal circumstances.

The best training, however, is to get involved with ARES. ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) provides periodic training sessions and exercises to formally prepare you for the possibility that your efforts could provide the ONLY means of communication in a situation where there are no other alternatives available.

Remember, amateur radio was created as a service to provide communications by skilled operators in time of need to the community and nation.

You can send things in via e-mail to

n1uss@arrl.net or snail mail to:

Ron Perry, N1USS; 34 Summer Street

Melrose, MA. 02176-4610

Text should be plain text (ascii) like an e-mail message or in Microsoft Word format (preferably) and photos should be in JPEG or GIF format.

Since this great description of the Elecraft K2 was an answer to a question by our own NS1R I thought that it might make good input for PHI. What do you think?

Fran, KA4FRH

I have a question. I have seen the specs of the K2 performance including the latest specs in QST at the end of the Kenwood TS-2000 review. How can Elecraft get those high specs? OR why is it the Japanese radios have such lousy specs $ for $.

You would figure the Japanese manufacturers could blow away the Elecraft kits in performance due to the larger engineering staff.. larger operating budget etc.

I don't own an Elecraft...however I am impressed at how the specs measure up against the $3,000 to $4,000 Japanese radios. Is it a matter of engineering, better quality parts etc.?

I would appreciate an answer especially from the guy named Eric at Elecraft.

Thanks,

Steven, NS1R

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The primary reason the K2 does as well as it does is that Wayne (N6KR) and I decided to pay special attention to RX and TX performance from the start, rather than try to fit too many unneeded marketing features into the K2. Plus we're both performance addicts.. By applying good RF engineering practice to the design, combined with an emphasis on trying

to do more with less, we ended up with a solid design that performs well. Plus it is easy to build, trouble shoot, modify and understand.

The K2's receiver does well because:

1. The K2 uses a single conversion RX, which almost always will out perform multiple conversion schemes in dynamic range. (Less stages to overload etc.) We go directly from the first mixer to our narrow IF crystal filter at 4.91 MHz. This blocks signals that are outside our narrow filter from overloading the remaining receive chain. A single conversion RX is also usually quieter than a multi-conversion one since there are less active stages to add noise to the receive path.

A primary reason for using multiple conversions in other rigs is to provide general coverage receive. Multi-conversion receivers -can- improve their dynamic range, but it adds a lot of cost to their design.

The multi-conversion schemes used on other receivers typically first go to a high IF (45 MHz and above) and can only filter signals there with a wide 'roofing filter' that is 10 to 25 kHz wide. Once a strong signal gets inside the roofing filter at the first IF it will begin to overload the following stages, seriously degrading dynamic range -before- they reach their narrow IF filters. That's why the K2 shines even more now that the ARRL is publishing 5 kHz spacing dynamic range results in addition to their 20 kHz numbers.

2. We designed a clean, low phase noise, PLL. This is especially important for improving blocking dynamic range (de-sense) in an RX. No matter how good your IF filters are, your RX will dense in the presence of strong signals if your PLL is not clean.

3. We use narrow double tuned front end filters to filter out strong signals outside of the ham band in use. This really improves our 2nd order IMD, a feature important to contesters and hams in Europe, with its extremely strong BC stations.

4. We optimally balanced the gain between the various stages in the receiver for both good sensitivity and excellent dynamic range. Too much gain up front in a receiver will seriously degrade strong signal handling. You only need enough front end gain to hear signals that are -above- the naturally occurring band noise. Too much sensitivity is wasted and makes the RX more likely to overload in the presence of strong adjacent signals.

5. We designed all the receiver stages with enough dynamic range to handle a wide range of signal strengths.

The bottom line: Keep the RX simple, clean, and properly balanced. Too much extraneous circuitry can actually degrade receive performance.

On top of that, we also paid special attention to the cleanliness of the TX signal. We optimally shaped the CW wave form for best performance and we designed the SSB circuitry for clean audio. We also use a diode switched T/R path to eliminate chattering relays and enhance break in CW operation.

The popular trend to put as much as possible (all mode, all bands through UHF etc.) into a single box these days provides convenience, but it seriously sacrifices performance. I think the all band radios are excellent compromises in design, but they can't match the performance of an optimized HF (160-10M) radio without adding significantly to their size and cost.

Please feel free to check out the information on our web site, http://www.elecraft.com/ It includes customer comments, rig comparisons, our email list archives and even manuals which can be downloaded.

73, Eric WA6HHQ---

That's right. W.A.R.A. has 4 repeaters in the Greater Boston area (Waltham, MA.) on 50MHz, 146MHz, 220MHz and 440MHz to provide you wide choice and bandwidth to carry on your conversations and pursue your hobby of amateur radio at any time you'd like to. All of our repeaters are free and open for all licensed amateur radio operators to use. However should you feel inclined and would like to support the operation of one or more of these machines you can join W.A.R.A. by filling in the membership application at the back of this newsletter or by downloading a copy of it from our web site.

We also have a web site that includes areas of interest in most facets of the amateur radio hobby and service. Some of the topics available are public service opportunities, upcoming club events, club meeting schedules and general amateur radio related events. We, periodically, include information and links to such things as F.C.C. rules changes as well as issues of interest and concern for we hams. On the web site we have a guest book where visitors can sign and leave a message, question or opinion. We also have a BBS style message board where you can ask and answer questions about amateur radio as well as to communicate to the general user-ship special events and information in your life in amateur radio.

Finally, we have the wara64 email list at "yahoo groups". This email list, should you decide to join, allows members and friends of WARA to communicate by simply sending one email message and reach ALL the members of the list.

Links and additional information about all of these methods of communication are presented in much more detail on the WARA web site at:

We have many special interests and activities and we all seem to ask why we don't see an influx of new hams into the hobby/service. Perhaps the answer is that we confine ourselves to our own little clique of fellow hams. Perhaps it's because we don't take that single extra step to let those just outside of our little circle of friends to know that we're even here. Perhaps, in addition to putting our photographs and stories (most of which are great and fun events) on our web site and into our email messages we should make a copy and email or snail mail those same bits of information and news to our local news papers.

Maybe, just maybe, if one of you would like to take on the easy task of handling "public relations" for the Waltham Amateur Radio Association we could get the ball rolling and see more people (young and old and even in between) join the ranks of we hams.

Anyone game? If so, give a call or drop and email message to either Ann (KA1PON) at ka1pon@amsat.org or to me Ron (N1USS) at n1uss@arrl.net .

If you want to see the kind of resources available to help in the take of public relations check out the ARRL web site at this URL: http://www.arrl.org/pio/ .

There's NO charge for this service or ANY service on VQSL.NET. The service is designed to help the QSL effort and to give an alternative to the high cost of postage and printing of QSL cards to send to your DX and local contacts. This site and concept was created by Michael Paris (KA9TND) and ALL online services are provided FREE OF CHARGE as his was of giving back to the ham community.

VQSL has other features, in addition to the QSL service. These include DX chat rooms to help you make those remote contacts, FREE web hosting for amateur radio operators, FREE email accounts, CQ contests and much more.

United States of America.

Today, more than most of the past times in my life, I realize that EVERYONE from the custodial engineers who make our lives easy and pleasant to deal with to the President of this great country are EQUALLY as important, to that which is and has always been what these United States have always and will always stand for.

From 128/I95 take the Route 16 East exit (#21A), follow Rt 16 into West Newton square, then bear right leaving Rt 16 and following Washington St. About 8/10 mile further take a right at the light at Lowell Ave., cross the turnpike and take the immediate left onto Austin St. The Masonic Hall is directly ahead of you at the end of the street, and the municipal parking lot is on your right.

From Boston, take the Mass. Pike west to exit 17 at Newton Corner. Go straight ahead on Washington St. about 1.2 miles to Newtonville Square. At the light at Walnut St. go left over the turnpike and take the immediate right onto Austin St. (The Masonic Hall is on your left as you cross the turnpike.) Park in the municipal lot on your left off Austin St.

TALK-IN: 146.64 MHz (-) Waltham Repeater