The dates for the Sea-Pac convention have been changed this year to Early June so it doesn't interfere with Fathers Day, A very good idea.

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I just received a ARRL 50 Year Continuous Member Pin, first part of this week..   I thought it was due in September or October.  First licensed in 1956 and ARRL member starting in 1957.  As I remember the Fee for one year was $6.50 which was a lot of money in those days..

Later on, 1969,  I became a Life Member at the cost of $125.00 in 1969 which was a lot of money in those days.     That was a very good decision...

I don't think I could afford a Life Membership if I would  have to buy one today.   No certificate yet, it supposed to be presented by Division Director., 

That's all the news from this end of the State.

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Although Field Day 2007 is still more than three months away, many ham radio clubs and groups already have begun making plans for this year's event, Saturday and Sunday, June 23-24. Field Day has always been an ideal time for new hams to become more proficient operators and for prospective licensees to get "bitten by the Amateur Radio bug." That may be even more the case during Field Day 2007, as many radio amateurs gain new HF operating privileges because of the rule changes that went into effect February 23.

"This is an opportunity to get new or upgraded licensees on the air for some active mentoring and active learning," says ARRL Regulatory Information Specialist Dan Henderson, N1ND. "Field Day 2007 will be a chance to learn and grow, but above all, it will be a lot of fun -- and for many there is perhaps nothing more fun in ham radio than ARRL Field Day."

The numbers support that claim. Last June, more than 32,500 operators took part in ARRL Field Day -- some as individuals but many more as part of a club or group. The League saw some 2200 Field Day log submissions for the 2006 event, during which nearly 1.24 million completed contacts went into the log -- not a record but up a little from the previous year.

While no longer a licensing requirement, Morse code (CW) remains a very popular Field Day operating mode, perhaps because CW QSOs are worth twice as much as phone contacts. Last year some 56 percent of Field Day contacts took place on SSB, while nearly 42 percent were on CW (the rest were digital contacts).

Henderson points out two small changes in the Field Day rules starting this year. First, participating stations may only complete one satellite contact for bonus points via a single-channel FM-mode spacecraft (Rule 7.3.7.1), and it must be an Earth-satellite-Earth contact. "This will allow more stations to access this very limited resource," he says.

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Spring Greetings from Yelm to all WSN members.  Hope the winter left all of you in good spirits and health and all the antennas survived the December windstorm. My G5RV bounced around  a little bit, but still works fine. So if this is the April newsletter, in two months the ARRL will hold my favorite operating event all year: Field Day.  Sea-Pac doesn't count, I don't operate, I just meet  all my old friends.  By the way, for all of you that didn't know, Sea-Pac this year is the first weekend of June, not the weekend before Field Day as per 'normal.'  Hope to see some of you there. Let me know on the net where you want to meet.

I would like to invite all WSN members to the 2nd annual WSN Field Day get-together at my house in Yelm. We'll be setting up in the front yard this year, since I'm pretty sure RFI is not an issue, and we'll be showing off ham radio to the whole Nisqually Pines neighborhood.  As I looked on the map, Yelm seems to be reasonably centrally located for the WSN members west of the Cascades at least.  Al and Bev will be here from Olympia I'm sure, so maybe some of you folks from Friday Harbor, Vancouver, Surrey, Tacoma, Port Orchard, Port Angeles, Sea Tac, Everett, and Seattle can make the trip as well.  Also, if any of you fine folks east of the Cascades could make the trip, it would make Field Day 2007 just that much more special!

I just verified that Field Day will be the fourth full weekend in June, so my grandson and I will be setting up Friday evening on June 22nd, and our Field Day operations will start 1100 the 23rd, probably using the beam in the trees...

For those of you not familiar with my station, let me explain:  We happen to have 3 100+ foot tall fir trees, triangularly spaced about 20 feet apart in our backyard.  They do call the place Nisqually Pines, after all.  As you shall see, I have been busy since we only had the G5RV up last Field Day.  Last September Mac the Tree Guy installed eye bolts 80 feet up in those three trees, and I now have 3/8" ropes strung through pulleys connected to each tree.  These ropes lead to a mounting assembly I put together that suspends a Hygain TH3MK4 beam up as high between these three trees as the wind will permit.  It bounces around a little bit if the wind gets over 30 MPH, but in June that's usually not too big of a problem.  If it's up, I pay close attention to the wind forecast on the Weather Channel.

So for Field Day we'll be using that beam up at about 40 or 50 feet, pointed southeast for 20, 15, and 10 meters.  The G5RV at 50 feet works nicely on 80 meters CW and 40 meters phone, and if I can't get my TS-570's tuner to work on 40 meters CW, I'll have to put up my 40 meter vertical.  The G5RV worked on 40 meters CW last year, but not now for some reason.  Putting up that 40 meter vertical is a whole different evolution, however:  Picture, if you will, 600 square feet of chicken wire spread out all over my back yard as the counterpoise, Works well, too. May even put up a vertical director if we can, which will make it a 2 element 40 meter vertical beam, again pointing southeast.

We'll probably use my 2500 watt generator again this year, so we'll be on the air as a 1E station.  We'll get any traffic we have out on DRN7 again, and WSN in the evening, of course.  Also, if you know of any way to hit any of the satellites through these trees, please bring your expertise and/or equipment.  We never did hear any satellites last year.  But the WSN Field Day event is usually mostly about camaraderie, so I hope as many of you as possible can grace us with your presence, and you can operate too.  Bring food if you want, we'll have plenty here, I'm sure Looking forward to Field Day, and see you on the net.

Leroy
N7EIE

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Harvey has had a tough time so far this year but we hope there are better days ahead. First HM’s Radio went on the blink and he had to send it to TenTec in Tennessee for repair and it took about a month so HM was without a radio and was out of business as far as getting on the net.

Harvey just got going again when the radio came back from TenTec and he injured his thumb which required minor surgery and that put him on the sidelines a couple of more days. Last Friday he was working in the yard and fell breaking 2 ribs and as of this writing he is in a lot of pain and unable to work on the radio. Jennifer is retired now and she is home taking care of him.

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I personally think the ARRL and FCC could have done a better job with the CW portion of the new band plan by not taking so much away from the General and Advanced Class licenses. Now General licenses cannot operate CW from 3600 to 3800 khz and Advanced class cannot operate CW from 3600 to 3700 khz  so all the old timers with the above licenses lost a lot of band privileges as a matter of fact the Generals and Advanced licenses got  Ripped Off  

WSN is doing fair on 3653 except for the weekend contests. The worst of those for QRM is automated RTTY stations.  Don W7GB keeps us informed on upcoming contest skeds and lets us know when we have to be on the lookout for the Serpents striking. Many thanks to Don.

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George K7BDU the Pacific Area Digital Coordinator has finally found someone to take the 7th Region Digital Hub Station Job.   Ken K7IFG in Beaver creek, Or, agreed to take it.   It’s a 24/7 job and his station has to be running all that time and also George’s station is a 24/7 station.   Ken is also the 7th Region QSL Bureau Manager.

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Had some excitement today. I went with a missionary couple in their pick up truck to a home for abandoned and handicapped children (both) that's just to the north of Kingston, about 15 minutes, over a narrow windy road. We went through a small town just outside Kingston on the way.

Some time later on the way back there was a huge crowd of people about in the middle of the small town, and we were stopped by a couple of men. We were a little nervous. One of the young men, a guy probably in his mid twenties came to my window and wanted to say something, so I rolled down the window a bit. He told me an old man had been hit by a car and needed a ride to the hospital. We said sure, then several men loaded an old guy into the back, the bones were sticking out of both legs between the knees and the ankles and he was bleeding a lot. This wasn't quite what we expected. Two of them got in with the old chap in the back and we were off, luckily I'd been to the hospital before and knew the way.

It was a very long 5 minutes from there to the hospital emergency entrance where he was loaded onto a gurney and admitted. He didn't look like he was in good shape, he wasn't conscious, hope he makes it.

Mike VE7MMH/6Y5

PS    We went up to the hospital this morning and were informed the old guy didn't make it.

Mike and  Theresa will be back in North Vancouver, BC,  March 29 after 2 very nice years in Jamaica. They are anxious to get started again in their home in Vancouver and Mike expects to be back on the air very soon.

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This is an emergency communications website sent by Dave Goodwin this month to me and many others on where we can get help for any emergency. Thank you Dave for this very good and necessary information    The link is:    http://www.emergency-radio.org/

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Hi FISTS,

You are receiving this email because you provided your email address to FISTS CW Club. If you prefer not to get these update emails, please let us know by sending a "remove" email to Kathi at fistelist@comcast.net Kathi maintains the email list for us.

CONGRATS!! A job well done!! Thanks to all who responded to the previous update email and contacted the FCC, the ARRL, and passed around the information. You did a great job and showed what can be accomplished when we all pull together. Thank you also to the early whistle-blowers who brought the situation with the ARRL ex parte meeting to our attention.

We will never really know what happened behind those closed doors, but the end result is that the ARRL amended their revision to their proposal RM-11306 to provide some protection from automated digital signals.

I haven't read the whole thing in depth again yet, but I know some of you have and I hope you keep me posted on your opinions so we can share them and alert the membership to other possible threats to CW.

And it is still very important that you file a comment regarding RM-11306 with the FCC and let them know we need to have a narrowband mode area in which to operate in peace. 3 kHz is still the bandwidth that the ARRL is favoring and we need to see that provisions are made to protect us from encroaching wideband signals. The FCC will be reading all the comments, so don't let up now! We MUST have a protected segment for CW operation.

Together we can make a difference, just like we did the last few days. Enough is enough - stay strong and stay vigilant.

Thanks again,
73 88 33
Nancy WZ8C

Note: The proposal was to amend the Digital Band Width from 500 hz to 3 khz  and  Nancy requested all Fists members to send in comments asking to amend the proposal. Apparently the ARRL has reconsidered and hopefully it will stay at 500 hz however it probably will go up some.

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SHB 2335  Repeater Leasehold Excise Tax Exemption Bill
Yippieee! The bill is out of the Ways and Means Committee and into the Rules committee. That happened without opposition! It needs to be "pulled" twice in the Rules committee and then it's off to the full Senate for a floor vote. So we have 2 more hurdles before it goes to the Governor. Actually, they look more like mole hills than hurdles and the bill appears to be headed for passage. I'll let you know if we need to mount another email/phone call campaign.

SSB 5037 Cell Phone Bill
SSB 5037   This cell phone bill will be heard in the House Transportation Committee on 20 Mar. at 3:30 PM. The ARRL's Counsel has reviewed the language in the bill and thinks it is "fine." Our local volunteer counsel has some concerns about how the language could be interpreted by a judge but hopefully it would not get to the point of having to be interpreted.
In light of the accident yesterday that involved a teenage driver talking on a cell phone and a 7 year old pedestrian I suspect the attitude in Olympia will harden against bill opposition and possibly any further attempts to get exemptions.

SB-5037 passed last night!
Another Success! The cell phone bill passed the senate last night. The bill contains an exemption for Amateur Radio! It reads;
15 (3) Subsection (1) of this section does not restrict the operation
16 of an amateur radio station by a person who holds a valid amateur radio
17 operator license issued by the federal communications commission.
The House version HB-1868 does not have that amendment, however.

Have you sent in your Emails?

HB 1073 from Pati W7ZIW
Well, yet another bill that may effect many of you is moving it's way along the process.  The link for this bill is http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=1037&year=2007.  HB 1073 has to do with liability exemptions for emergency workers.
The bill in it's basic form is good, as it allows immunity from liability for volunteer emergency workers. The wording issue we are looking at pertains to the definition of emergency worker. The way it is currently written it would not include persons employed by a government agency unless they were on a "unpaid leave status". So, if you work for the state for example, and take time off to participate in a search, and use your accrued paid time off, you would be considered as being paid, and not covered by the liability exemption. Many of the state SAR (search and rescue) groups are aware of this, and have been working to get an amendment to the bill. It is on the agenda for Today (Tuesday) to be discussed in the government operations and elections committee.
We will keep watch on this, and if the time comes for another letter writing campaign, we will let you know by this mode.

73, Ed, N7NVP

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When I first joined WSN on September 24, 1959, WSN met once a day, at 7 PM on 3535 khz, five days a week (Mon - Fri). I'm looking at the September 1959 net report and the only ones on that list who are still on the net are Dave, W7DPW, and myself. The net manager was Ev, W7OEB. Associate net mgr was W7QLH. Net recorder was Joe, W7GIP. Nearly everyone on the roster is a Silent Key. A couple things about the net stats from that report that are of interest; most net sessions have at least 14 checkins and there are no QRU sessions. The amount of traffic ran the gamut from 1 to 19, with a monthly total of 181 for the 23 sessions.
 
In looking at our WSN/2 and WSN/AM it is very clear that these are usually QRU. In the case of WSN/2, so far this month, 24 out of 28 WSN/2 net sessions are QRU. There is virtually no traffic coming to us from RN7/2. I can't speak for other nights but I'm NCS for PAN every Monday night and can say that there is rarely any traffic for RN7 coming through. Monday after Monday I give W7GHT (RN7 liaison) the early QNX. Apparently the digital boys have cornered the incoming traffic business, leaving us with nothing to do. So, other than letting a few us know that we're still breathing, why bother having a WSN/2 session? Any traffic that happens to show up is most likely SPAM and can wait until the following evening.
 
The WSN/AM session was set up about 10 years to 1) move traffic that couldn't get handled on WSN/2 and 2) help move traffic on to the daytime phone net system. Now that there's very little traffic coming through to WSN/2, why bother having a morning session? For handling traffic there's no point in having it at all. But I like having a ham radio wake-up call at 7:30. It's comforting to know that it's foggy in Olympia, wet in Yelm, and of course clear and dry in Moses Lake. The same group of 6 or 7 who check into WSN/2 also check into WSN/AM. Also note that so far in March, there are only 14 QRU WSN/AM sessions (out of 28), so more traffic gets passed on WSN/AM than on WSN/2.
 
So do we keep WSN/2 and WSN/AM? It's easy enough to leave well enough alone. I'm beginning to view this in terms of it being a Senior Support Group. If you don't hear me on WSN/2 and WSN/AM the following morning, then unless I'm out town, something isn't normal. Maybe it's time to get on the phone and see if I'm okay. This is just my opinion; I could live without WSN/2 (just bring any traffic to WSN/1 the following evening) but I do like having the WSN/AM reveille wakeup call. Then there's always going back to 5 nights a week!
 
Before I close, I thought that I'd pass along the WSN roster from when I first joined in September '59: W7AIB (Mr WSN), W7AMC, W7BJR, K7CLL, W7DPW, W7DZX, K7EID, W7EWL, W7FRU, W7GHM, W7GIP, K7GNA, W7IEU, W7IGB, K7IIJ, W7JEY, W7KZ, W7LVB, W7OE W7OEB, W7QLH, W7TH, W7UMJ, W7USO, W7WAH, W7ZB, W7ZIZ. I was put on the November '59 roster as W7GYF in Pullman. Ah, memories!
                                                                                                                            73,  Don  W7GB

PS I think Don has a very good point and we should discuss this further
Allen W7QM WSN Mgr    

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January – Sessions 93 – QNI – 690 – QTC – 175
February – Sessions 84 – QNI 655 – QTC – 122
March – Sessions 93 --  QNI 794  -- QTC -- 251

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