NIH RADIO AMATEUR CLUB

NIHRAC Web site  http://nihrac.od.nih.gov

The next meeting will be held at noon on Thursday, September 3, 1998 in the Emergency Communications Center (ECC) located on the third floor of Building 11. Preliminary planning will begin for the next Clinical Center power outage test to be held in early October. Also, as a result of water leaking into the radio room we need to clean up and put things in their proper place. This will provide an opportunity to learn what tools and equipment we have available.

AUGUST 6, 1998 MEETING MINUTES

The meeting was called to order by Assistant Secretary-Treasurer Chuck Sherman at 12:10 p.m. The minutes of the July 2, 1998 meeting were accepted as written.

Attendees

Members attending the meeting included Bill Hook W3QBC, Albert Lock KA3WCF, John Muller W3QF, Dan Reggia N3ENT, and Chuck Sherman N3WTO. Harold E. Muller MD, Chantell Stevenson and Sandra Miller were welcomed as visitors.

OLD BUSINESS

MEMA (Commex) Exercise of July 14

John Muller operated solo at the ECC using both the MEMA EOC Voice Network and 2 meter RACES frequencies. He was kept busy copying message traffic from 7:30 to 8:30 pm. For the August 11 exercise NIHRAC has been asked by Montgomery County RACES to send a test message by packet radio and John asked for volunteers to assist. Help will also be needed for the August 11 exercise.

Cushcraft R7000 Vertical Antenna is Up!

Chuck Sherman, Chairman of the Antenna Project Committee has prepared a detailed report that follows these minutes. He notes that when viewed from Building 1 the top half of the antenna tilts slightly toward the U.S. Capitol and suggests it may require a small political correction.

PHS Deployment to Ft. Pickett July 11-24

Albert Lock reported that the PHS-1 DMAT hams set up and operated a HF station and contacted stations in Tyson's Corner and Silver Spring on the 75 meter band. They also operated on 2 meter FM and helped the team with their GE UHF government-band HTs.

NEW BUSINESS

Water Leak

A significant amount of water was found July 10 on the ECC floor by Albert Lock who was collecting items to be transported to the DMAT deployment. The South Buildings Unit was notified and efforts were made to clean out the air conditioner condensate drain above the ECC. Chuck Sherman also responded and removed items from the affected area and supervised a mop-up of the wet floor.

Requests for Information

Several requests for information about the club and its activities have recently been received. One of these was from another NIHRAC, "the Norwegian Interested Handicapped Radio Amateur Club" (translation). The text prepared by Jim Hobbs as found in the "All" area of the k3ygg packet mailbox has been found useful to respond to such requests. There is also information to be found on our Web page. It was suggested that we prepare a more complete, printed version with a title such as "What Is NIHRAC" to be used for promotional purposes.

ARRL Proposes a Simplified License Structure

The ARRL Board agreed to propose a simplified license structure reducing the number of license classes to 4 (A, B, C and D). There would be 4 rather than 5 written exam elements and only two Morse code exams (5 and 12 wpm). There would also be changes in the sub-bands available to each license class. Details will
appear in QST and elsewhere. Those attending our meeting generally agreed that such changes might benefit the hobby.

Harold "Doc" Farnham N3NAG, SK

We were saddened to learn of Doc's death on July 16. He was 87 years old. An accomplished musician who had played with major dance bands, he was also a professional photographer who before his retirement worked for the Medical Arts and Photography Branch, NIH.

Offer of Satellite TV Equipment

Albert Lock relayed the offer of another government agency to transfer to the PHS-1 DMAT or to NIHRAC a 6 foot KU band (4-11 GHz) antenna dish, satellite receiver and possibly a projection TV receiver. After a brief discussion the offer was rejected because NIHRAC has limited space for storage, there is the  likelihood of further complications to our inventory situation and the opinion that the equipment probably has no direct application to Amateur Radio.

Adjournment Followed by a Presentation on Property Management Procedures

The meeting was adjourned at 12:45 pm. After the meeting, Ms.Sandra Miller, Administrative Officer of the Emergency Preparedness Branch, provided the club with an excellent outline describing property control procedures, especially those that affect our unusual position as an NIH "club" that is, nevertheless, considered to be an official part of the NIH.

She also described her effort to simplify the process by having future surplus equipment transfers to us declared "donations" to a civic non-profit organization. However, her efforts were unsuccessful. Thus, we will need to follow the procedures she carefully documented in the handout that provided examples and
standard forms. A brief discussion followed Ms. Miller's presentation. She stressed that all future actions by NIHRAC involving equipment on the NIH property list must be approved by her office. Following the presentation, Dan Reggia and Ms.Miller began preparations for the visit by the person who will conduct the official inventory.

de w3qbc & n3wto

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Attachment to the Minutes of the August 6, 1998 NIHRAC Meeting

Report of the Committee Erecting the Cushcraft R7000 Vertical HF Antenna

The new Cushcraft R7000 vertical trap antenna is assembled, erected, and working on the roof of NIH Building 11 above the ECC.

The R7000 antenna and R80 kit were purchased by NIHRAC Assistant Secretary Treasurer Chuck Sherman from Ham Radio Outlet of Woodbridge, Virginia with $493.90 of club funds, slightly less than the original estimate because of a discount given for a Club purchase.

Installation was accomplished on Saturday July 25 by Andy Mitz, John Muller, Frank Putnam, Chuck Sherman, and Tom Vegella using ladders supplied by Bill Hook and John Muller. (Bill's ladder, now donated to NIHRAC, is in the rooftop anteroom with "NIHRAC" clearly labeled.)

Installation began on schedule at 10:00 a.m. The weather was beautiful and not too hot. Initially there was no wind.

The raising of the wood ladder to the roof via a rope over the wall must have provided some good entertainment to anyone listening to our 2 meter repeater.

Assembly went smoothly, thanks in part to Frank Putnam who had recently installed an R7000 of his own at home. The 80 meter add-on kit provided some novelty and a different height and balance. The taller assembly requires guy wires. The first attempt to raise the antenna into position failed because the
antenna swayed and could not be held vertical.

We considered removing the 80 meter trap or mounting the antenna on the outside roof guard rail.

After Andy Mitz arrived we had a sufficient number of workers to hold the guy wires from three positions to keep it vertical while Frank and Tom, on ladders on each side of the supporting wall, lifted the antenna up and into the mounting brackets. By this time in the afternoon there was a bit of wind. Handy Talkies were useful to communicate among the three guy-wire positions and draw the antenna into a vertical line before tying it off. Final assembly included adding ground plane wires and counterpoise leads.

The antenna lead used to connect the antenna to the antenna patch panel in the ECC was the one previously used for the former trap vertical antenna that had been damaged or destroyed. The connector is weathered and now only weakly threaded onto the new antenna. Some work will be required to remove the old connector, thread the lead through the hole in the wall beneath the antenna, shorten the lead, and solder on a new connector. The patch panel also may need new, clearer labels for antennas and transceivers.

The characteristics of the new antenna were measured by Andy Mitz using the Club's MFJ-259 antenna analyzer. The ranges of frequencies where the SWR was 3.0 or less (and the minimums) are given in the table that follows:

Hamband SWR characteristics for new trapped vertical antenna.  All frequencies in Mhz

(This was done fairly quickly. Replication is advised. Graphs of the curves would be nice to have.) To test the antenna, Andy tuned the new Kenwood TS 570D to 20 meters and held a brief QSO with a ham in the British Isles participating in the IOTA DX contest. Chuck reset the HF rig back to 40 meter packet use after removing our litter and debris from the roof. The installation instructions and residual parts and materials are in the shipping box, now in the ECC.

The antenna guy wires may pose a problem in the future. The two pairs of guy wires tied onto the outside guard rail present a modest head clearance problem; they are now flagged with yellow tape. The pair of guys tied inside the wall now run between the elements of the KLM beam. This poses no problem until the beam is remounted on a new tower with a working rotor.

--Chuck Sherman
N3WTO