President's Message
The Longmont Amateur Radio Club had an election. I was on vacation. I got elected. Is that fair? Anyhow, thanks to all who came to the meeting and voted. Also elected were Sebastian Wessels NSØW as Vice President, Rick Hess KCØNZW as Secretary, and Dan Campbell W3ETA was returned to Treasurer showing the club’s great confidence in a job well done.
I understand that we had our first outdoor general meeting! You folks are all good sports! It seems the key to the Clover building at the Boulder County Fairgrounds went missing, so there was no way into the meeting room. The folks there decided in true amateur radio style to hold the meeting as best they could and held it outdoors. Good job! It seems appropriate that there was a foxhunt at that meeting. They’re usually held outdoors, so that worked. For those wondering, a foxhunt is also sometimes called a transmitter hunt, and is where a signal is issued into the ether and the source of said signal is the object of the transmitter hunt.
It was so much fun that there was another hunt on Saturday afternoon September 26th. I actually got to participate in that one along with John West KBØONB. All we had for our “team” was my Icom W32A handheld and John’s brain. Also participating were Rick Hess KCØNZW, Duane
Burtis WDØEEM, and of course Foxmaster Sebastian Wessels NSØW. Several of those fellas had yagi antennas (homebrewed!) and attenuator boxes to make the hunt easier. John and I held our own pretty well, though! We got to within half a block of the fox before anyone else. We were using a technique call body shielding. After a while we used a paper clip for an antenna to effect
attenuation. We had to cut the size of the paperclip down to get less signal into the HT. Finally, the signal was so strong that we took the paper clip away and used no antenna at all. We still got pretty close, but at long last the Foxmaster was kind enough to point out the fox when we were a mere 10 feet away. What fun!
The rumor is that more foxhunts will be held on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays for a while until the weather gets too nasty. We’ll try to post notices here on the website. You don’t have to be licensed to do a foxhunt nor do you need a transceiver. And as John and I proved on Saturday you don’t have to have a lot of fancy equipment. So grab the neighbor kids and the lady down the block and a hand held scanner and come huntin’!
Speaking of the website, have you noticed the changes to this website? Many thanks to Raul Taibo KI6JC and Sebastian Wessels for making that happen.
It time to start thinking about some upcoming events. We should have our annual Christmas party in December, and a group is needed to set plans for it in motion. It is also time to begin planning LARCFest 2010. If you feel you could help with either of these things, please call me at (303) 678-9748, or send me an email at n0xda@msn.com.
That’s all for now. See you on the air and at the next LARC meeting on October 21st. (I think the Clover building is available inside again.)
Jim Walker NØXDA
