West Texas Connection Newsletter MAY-JUNE 1997 The WTC Newsletter is available on a bi-monthly basis for a subscription/donation of $12 per year. Subscribers also receive new maps of the system twice a year. Send $12 to: WTC, P.O. Box 7033, Odessa, TX 79760 After postage, all money goes toward maintenance of the West Texas Connection. Editor - Les Blalock, N5KOA email: LCB911@apex2000.net WTC Sunday Morning Net The WTC Sunday Morning Net meets at 0900 (Central) every Sunday morning. The net is informal and open to all. Check in for local ham news and events. WTC News First, let me make a correction to the last newsletter... Sterling's callsign is WB5G. It was incorrectly printed as WT5G in that issue. Sorry about that, Sterling. We do appreciate your many years of support of the Connection. The West Texas Connection forum at the Midland Hamfest was attended by about 20 persons and their support was appreciated. I think everyone there learned a little and enjoyed visiting. The Sunday Morning Net was conducted from the Midland Hamfest site and produced about 38 check- ins. Thanks to Fred, KC5BNS, for the travel trailer accomodations and for logging check-ins. I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers even if N5SOR did try to pad the numbers by passing his handie around inside the hamfest to get more check-ins. Luckily for Fred and me, his battery ran down before he lined up everyone in the building. The Mt. Livermore repeater, 147.08 is back on the air thanks to Doug, N5HYD. On March 22nd, Mark, N5SOR and Bill, KD4LXC, replaced the simplex dump at HOBBS with a full repeater on 146.78. Make a note on your WTC map. On the last weekend of April, Albert, WB5FWR, and Mark, N5SOR, began work that will ultimately move the Ft. Stockton repeater (146.680) to a new home. Mark and Albert have acquired a site and tower near the old location. Rain kept them from completing the move but they're hoping to finish on the first weekend of May. My thanks to Tom, KC5ETW for conducting the Net on April 6th. I slipped out of town to attend the inaugural NASCAR race the the new Texas Motor Speedway. MISC. Two hydrogen atoms were walking down the street. One said to the other, "I lost an electron." The other asked, "Are you sure?" The first answered, "I'm positive". Radio Shack Drops Handie-Talkie From NEWSLINE If you're one of the few people with a Radio Shack HTX-204 dualband amateur handy talkie, you just may have a collectors item. That's because after barely a month on the market, Radio Shack has pulled the popular radio off its store shelves. In an April 17th notice to its stores, the Ft. Worth Texas based electronics chain ordered an immediate recall of unsold stocks of the radio. A source at Radio Shack's headquarters cites a "regulatory compliance issue" involving the transceiver. Radio Shack says it has no immediate plans to offer another dual-band HT. The HTX-204 started showing up in the chain's 7000 retail stores about six weeks ago. An official at the company's headquarters tells the ARRL Letter that Radio Shack is worried about potential illegal use of the new radio but he declines to be specific. He does emphasize that the HTX-204 is perfectly legal for use on Amateur Radio frequencies. Newsline has learned that the radios can be modified, something Radio Shack never intended. And, the radio was to have had a unique appearance as part of the agreement with the company making the radios for Radio Shack. But a dual band HT with the same appearance has turned up under another name, in apparent violation of Radio Shack's agreement. This sudden recall hits many dealers by surprise. At the BirmingHAMFest in Alabama, a Radio Shack vendor was planning to put the radios on sale as a Hamfest special, but he received orders just 48 hours before the Hamfest started not to sell the radios. And because Radio Shack has discontinued its single band 440 MHZ handy talkie, many dealers have few, if any, UHF radios available to sell. Learning ITU Phonetics: A Short Story by Paul A. Rauth One obscure night in Lima, during the month of November, Romeo and Juliet were staying at the hotel. They were waiting for Papa to arrive. As they waited they sipped a little whiskey. Their friends, Charlie, Mike, and Oscar, had been playing golf in the afternoon. Mike, a member of the Zulu Nation in Southeastern Africa, had a good round and was declared the Victor. Oscar, the Canadian from Quebec, came in second, Charlie, a rather shady character, broke his arm trying to get out of the rough. He went to the hospital to have an X-ray. Meanwhile, a Yankee in uniform was in the ballroom dancing the foxtrot and tango. He had just received a tip on a drug shipment that probably weighed a kilo. Papa finally arrived after a long trip from India. Papa was a nuclear physicist specializing in alpha particles. He announced he was going to the United States and would fly Delta Airlines to vacation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The story ends happily as the Yankee in uniform caught Charlie trying to smuggle the kilo of drugs in his arm cast. The resounding echo, as all said bravo, could be heard throughout the hotel. A Noble History: Nobody knows when Amateur Radio operators were first called "Hams," but we do know that Amateur Radio is as old as the history of radio itself. Not long after Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian experimenter, transmitted the Morse code letter "s" from Poldhu, Wales, to St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1901, amateur experimenters throughout the world were trying out the capabilities of the first "spark gap" transmitters. In 1912, Congress passed the first laws regulating radio transmissions in the U.S. By 1914, amateur experimenters were communicating nation-wide, and setting up a system to relay messages from coast to coast (whence the name "American Radio Relay League"!). In 1927, the precursor agency to the FCC was created by Congress and specific frequencies were assigned for various uses, including ham bands. ____________________________________ After eating, do amphibians have to wait one hour before getting out of the water? Is there another word for synonym? ARRL CALLS ON FCC TO PRIVATIZE HANDLING OF MALICIOUS INTERFERENCE COMPLAINTS Citing "a substantial need to improve and increase the quantity and quality" and timeliness of enforcement in malicious interference complaints, the ARRL has called on the FCC to "create a streamlined, privatized enforcement process" to handle and adjudicate the most serious Amateur Service rules violations. In a petition for rulemaking filed March 28, the League asked that the FCC change its rules to permit members of the volunteer Amateur Auxiliary to bring evidence of malicious interference violations directly before the Chief Administrative Law Judge. The Chief ALJ would be authorized to determine if the complainants have a valid case, to issue show-cause orders, and to designate complaints for hearing. The League recommended that the FCC capitalize on the volunteer resources available through the Amateur Auxiliary to relieve the evidence-gathering burden in such cases. If the rules changes are approved, the League said it would likely assist members of the Amateur Auxiliary in preparing and submitting complaints and in presenting cases at administrative hearings. "The increased use of volunteer resources would seem to be entirely appropriate in the Amateur Service, which involves avocational use of radio only," the ARRL concluded. While noting that most hams obey the rules, the League said Amateur Radio needs the Commission's help "in a very few, persistent, serious enforcement cases" but has not been getting it in recent years because of the FCC's staff and budgetary limitations. "Indeed, notwithstanding the best efforts of the Commission over the past several years, there has been no resolution of the four or five most serious cases brought to the Commission's attention," the League said in its petition. Even in some of the cases the FCC did act upon, the League said the Commission did not go far enough to make the problems go away permanently. "Malicious interference problems, if left unchecked, tend to spread and increase in intensity," the League said. The ARRL suggested that a series of "visible, successful enforcement actions" would deter rules violations and promote self-regulation. The ARRL also suggested that some FCC policies get in the way of timely, effective enforcement. Current Wireless Telecommunications Bureau policy requires the Commission to independently corroborate evidence gathered by Amateur Radio volunteers. "The policy often acts as an absolute obstacle to any enforcement activity whatsoever," and it demoralizes volunteers, who view their efforts as wasted. While noting that malicious interference cases often attract a lot of attention within the amateur community, the League said ham radio can be "justifiably proud" of its history of voluntary rule compliance. "The overall level of compliant behavior among amateurs has not deteriorated over the years," the League emphasized, citing fewer than 10 active malicious interference cases in the US at present. West Texas Connection P.O. Box 7033 Odessa, TX 79760