Amateur Radio News

AMATEUR RADIO CLASS

  Our next Ham classes sponsored by Temple Amateur Radio Club this Fall will begin on September 8, 2008. Classes will meet Mondays and Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. The location will be the Chirch of Christ in Western Hills, 210 N. General Bruce Dr., in Temple. Classes end on Monday, September 29th, just a few days before our Fall
HamEXPO on October 4, 2008.  This will coincide with VE TESTING on that date.

So the class dates are September 8, 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, and 29.

The class is free; however, each student is expected to purchas his or her own study materials. These will be supplied by TARC at cost (about $25).

     All classes of licenses will be taught, if the enrollment dictates. 
     You need to register for these classes. Contacts are: John Hobson, WB5BFS, TARC President, <jshobson@embarqmail.com > ; Darwin Geiselbrecht, K5DOA, Instructor, < k5doa@vvm.com >; and Charlie Schlieper, N5TD,  Instructor, < n5td.cs@gmail.com > if you have questions or need more information.

D-Star Developments

DSTAR is growing exponentially -- Waco and Austin are making great strides in getting their systems underway.  May 5 there were 39 repeaters with internet gateway connections to the Dallas Texas server - there are other servers in Germany and Japan.  This moment 49 sites are connected to the internet through the Dallas server.   There are around 150 repeater sites on line in the US and UK and Sao Paulo Brazil is very close as well. 

We are waiting for the 23 cm Digital Data and Digital Voice repeaters to go on line.   The repeaters are installed and waiting for an antenna from Hustler in Mineral Wells and an Antenna Combiner / Duplexer from TX/RX Systems in New York.  The 23 cm system uses the Icom ID-1 radio as a subscriber unit and provides 128K digital data and digital voice including an internet connection for special events.  The ID-1 comes with an ethernet connection for direct connection to your laptop and can be set up for peer-to-peer networking or an internet connection.  Speed measured at www.pitstop.com show 80 kb/s downlink and 74kb/s uplink.  There are 3 ID-1's in the Temple area.

KE5C continues to add features such as DPRS tracking and DSTAR Echo voice testing to the Temple DSTAR Gateway.  Visit http://www.dstarusers.org to see who is talking now!   All DSTAR radios have a standard GPS receiver interface port and the IC-2820 offers a built in GPS receiver as an option.       -- Steve Bosshard, NU5D

Texas club steps up to the plate with generous Spectrum Defense Fund donation

(Nov 7, 2006) -- The Temple Amateur Radio Club (TARC) in Texas has donated $1000 to the 2007 ARRL Spectrum Defense Fund. "TARC is pleased to donate a little something back to the hobby that we all enjoy," TARC's President-Elect Tom Olsen, KC5KXS, and President Myron Mesecke, N5TFK, said in a note to ARRL Chief Development Officer Mary Hobart, K1MMH. "The ARRL Spectrum Defense Fund needs our support, and we hope this check helps, if just a little. Thanks for all you do!"  TARC's twice-yearly Belton HamEXPO, billed as the "friendliest hamfest in the country," draws thousands of hams...from all over Texas and the surrounding states to buy, sell and socialize...."  CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY.

We will be posting local news and events that would be of interested to amateur radio operators here. If you know of an event or a news story that you thing other amateur radio operators would be interested in please email it to webmaster@tarc.org.