Newsletter et al

[Terry Fox]

<flame on>
Tacoistas:
Paul needs your help.  In fact, AMRAD needs your help.

Paul needs articles for the next (and upcoming) newsletters.  The deadline for the next issue is December 19.  If you could produce an article for that issue, please let Paul know.  If not, how about for the next issue?

Frankly, I am getting burned out.  I have not done much that is documentable in the last month or so, therefore there’s not much for me to write about.  Without my regular input, the next newsletter may be somewhat lighter.  It’s up to YOU to change that.  My  last few articles have been a stretch, and I am not happy with them, but they did convey some information.

I realize that it’s easy to talk about politics, or a 1920’s antenna, or a 1947 tube transmitter at Saturday Tacos, but that does NOT fulfill this club’s direction.  AMRAD is meant to be a amateur technical education organization, NOT just another amateur radio social gathering.  Read the charter.  Yes, some of that fun talk is just fine, but if that is all that is done, we might was well consider ourselves another NVFMA.  There is nothing wrong with NVFMA, Vienna Wireless, or any of those other organizations.  It’s just that AMRAD is supposed to be different (do NOT read better!).  We have a 501(c)3 for a reason.

There are many fairly smart people in AMRAD and here at tacos, as shown by the technically interesting postings here.  How about writing about some of those for the newsletter?  For example, there are often one-line web site addresses shared here about something of technical interest to the hobby.  Rather than just posting a single line (often without ANY description about what the reference is about), how about writing a single page (or more) about how this affects us amateurs or professional communications experts for the newsletter.  Lightsquared is an immediate example.  Where exactly does their spectrum fit with regards to amateurs, GPS, etc.  Adding some simple path loss calculations – and discussion of them and their impact – would be good as well.

Other items that I would like to see more about include Arduinos, STM microprocessors, dsPICs, Freescale chips, and their respective demo boards and development packages.  And that’s just me.  What would you like to see?  Or contribute?

Also, if someone knows FPGAs pretty good, that would be great.  How about mesh networking?  An SDR that you have played with?  Another project that the collective “we” may be interested in?

These articles do NOT need to be fancy, and they do not need to be a long treatise.  In fact, Paul has a hard time with my articles, because I have never been accused of brevity in my writings.  Just pull up your favorite word processor, and write!

I’ve been able to do more and write more since I retired.  But, I have been somewhat frustrated with the general lack of technical interest and progress within AMRAD for several years, even before I retired.  I realize that it’s harder to find the time to do stuff these days, but not all of you have turned in your soldering irons or software development packages.  It’s time to tell US what you are doing.

If this group continues in the present direction, it may not be of interest to those few technical-minded hams in the future.  Why publish the newsletter if there’s nobody writing for it?  If the newsletter goes, so does the incorporation – at least in its present form.  Last one to leave Tippys can turn off the taco machine....

BTW, my IRLP link is working here in Charleston, on a temporary frequency.  If you touch-tone my IRLP node number (8568) on the AMRAD repeater, it should link to me.  I admit that I am not in the shack too much right now, but feel free to try.  Maybe we could actually make the AMRAD machine work out a little bit!

IT’S UP TO YOU!

Thanks for listening.
<flame off>
73s
Terry, WB4JFI
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