[SFDXA] Jim's GAZETTE Newsletter #115 (great reading)

[Bill Marx]

Jim's GAZETTE
Newsletter #115
5 February 2002

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to any and all interested parties, or to reproduce it in
any other publication. All we ask is that you give credit where it is due.

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SHORT NOTES: Among the boatloads of trivia on the DX and RTTY reflectors, there is an occasional gem worth repeating and repeating.
Here is a good example.
Bob W2KKZ has a blind friend who can use a computer. But he needs software that, once a prefix is typed in, gives him the country,
beam heading and distance.
Now that's a tough order and I wouldn't have had any idea where to begin. Dave AA6YQ, however, responded 13 minutes later; "DXView
does that. See
www.qsl.net/dxview. It's free.' What wonderful help the message portends! And talk about response time! That's the kind of help that
makes you feel good about
people in general and about this hobby.

On the other side of the coin, a not so welcome Email from a Pactor II (and soon Pactor III) fan suggested that PSK31 was a
'kindergarten' mode. Hmmm! I didn't
respond but I did search my memory (a hazardous undertaking at my age Hi!) to see if I could conjure up a time and place when I last
saw or even heard of a Pactor
II QSO. Mailbox contacts don't count! I soon gave up. They are even more rare than a RTTY ragchew these days!

Then I scanned Dima's UT5RP PSK31 DX notes. This kindergarten mode seems to be pretty well represented. In fact, if you worked all
the stations on the week's
list I estimate you would have racked up somewhere between 90 and 100 countries from all parts of the world. Not bad for a mere
beginner.

Dima also mentions some future and some rare DX opportunities for fellow kindergarteners: J73CCM Dominica on 16-18 February; A big
DXpedition to Trindade
PW0T 18 February to 2 March, 24 hours a day, all bands (www.Trindade2002.com); T88XF on 9-12 February. And reminds all of us to mark
our calendars for
the Tara Rumble on 24 April.

As always, send your DX notes to ut5rp@radio.tenet.odessa.ua.

Oh, by the way, Doug N6TQS will be the RTTY and the PSK operator on the KH1 Baker and Howland invasion 30 April-5 May. Maybe we will
hear from him on
how he hopes to carve up his operating time between the two modes.


I spent some time playing around and learning at a propagation website deluxe. You'll enjoy it as well, so take a look at
www.qsl.net/dxlab. It's a fascinating facility.

Finally, Steve KF2TI mentioned an interesting piece of software in a recent note. The address is www.joshmadison.com/software. What
you'll find is not exactly earth
shaking, but it is a tiny utility that converts anything to anything else-miles to kilometers, temperatures from F to C and reverse
and so on. While I couldn't find a
dollars-to-doughnuts ratio, the table has a great variety of other elements. It's small and worth having on your desktop.

Mentioned before, but look again department. The NASA photo of Mother Earth at night is absolutely awe-inspiring. The entire globe
can be visited and, unless you
are from a very small town in the western USA or central Australia, you can probably locate your own QTH. Truly remarkable! Go to
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg --and stay awhile!

Finally, Dick K8WT raises one of the more interesting questions of the day. What, says he, can we as amateurs do to help out in a
meaningful way in this strange and
unsafe world in which we live? It's a good question without easy answers. I noticed the article yesterday where President Bush got
on the Florida emergency net to
say hello. That will make good press for the ARRL, but it hardly defines the need nor does it reflect great leadership on their
part.

It brought to mind the situation in Desert Storm. At the time, my dear departed friend TG9VT was handling thousands of messages from
the naval forces in the Gulf.
He and the other Aplink stations around the globe found themselves buried with traffic. They handled it all because of their
complete dedication and round-the-clock
operation. Yet, oddly enough, their service was somewhat limited because there were no stations on the ground anywhere near the
troops.

Their success led me to write to the head of ARRL suggesting that there was much more to be accomplished with this technology and
its existing network. Why,
asked I, can't we get volunteers to put stations on land, not too far from the troops, where with a packet network we could gather
up a huge volume of homebound
messages? Simple, I thought, and a mission to attract many volunteers and offers of free equipment from willing manufacturers.
Perhaps that was a far too ambitious
proposal but it seemed reasonable at the time in light of what I had heard of the mammoth phone-patch effort during the Vietnam era.
I had a friend, now a silent key,
who with his engineering students worked his station virtually 24/7 handling phone patch traffic.

Too simple or too ambitious, apparently, because their answer followed the usual bureaucratic path to a negative response. 'We are
not empowered to do such a
thing,' or words to that effect, repeated several times, convinced me they would do anything to avoid the task of taking the
initiative. Too bad, really, because the need
was so obvious (at least based on the volume of Aplink traffic which could not adequately serve the ground-based troops) that it
could have been a success. A great
and positive aura might have been built around amateur radio's service to the public.

As it turned out, only the telephone companies reaped much goodwill from that action. According to my nephew, a doctor in a hospital
way out in the desert near the
front, ATT would occasionally drop a few phone booths near the troops and give them free access to their family. Wonderful!

Now, the geography involved in today's multi-national action boggles the mind. Yet we assume that the need for personal traffic is
no less than before, perhaps more
considering the isolation in which most of the forces operate. I surely can't pretend to know what the answer is. But I don't think
we have our hands around an
up-to-date, viable volunteer service plan. I think the radio operators are willing and able, I think the technology is in hand, but
not much will happen in a vacuum.

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I said several times, 'I doubt I'll watch the SuperBowl.' Gen snorted and said, 'Yeah!' She, as usual, was right. Having made the
mistake of watching the first few
minutes, I couldn't leave until it was over. What a finish! I surely won't watch next year because there can't ever be another game
like this one. 'Yeah,' I hear from
afar!

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73 de Jim N2HOS jem@n2hos.com
http://www.n2hos.com/digital