During the OCARC's 2009 Christmas Party/Meeting the members present voted on an elected some new officers to take over duties of Vice-President and Secretary/Treasurer. Taking over the Number 2 spot of Vice President for 2010 is Chuck Ferree N9NAP of Valeene. Chuck is a long time member of the club and holder of an Extra Class license. Taking over this year as Club Secretary/Treasurer is Morning Lark Baskett KC9MBE of Orleans one of the newest club members and holder of a General Class ticket. Both N9NAP and KC9MBE are excelent choices for the positions and will serve the membership well in 2010. They are replacing Don Bobbitt N9YGP and Ricky Holliday AB9PF VP and Sec/Tres respectively. The club thanks both Don and Ricky for their service to the club. Larry WB9FHP was elected as President of the club for his 3rd term. Larry is feels honored by such a vote of confidence. This team of officers should make 2010 a great year to be a member of the OCARC! If you would like to become a member of the OCARC contact anyone of the Club officers or join us for one our club meeting on the 2nd Saturday of each month at the Paoli Pizzaria.

The INARES Digital Net has change it's day and time starting in May of 2010. We are now holding the net on every Monday Evening from 6PM to 8PM EDT (2200Z to 0000Z) on 3583USB (1000 Hz waterfall) using the mode OLIVIA 8/500. If the band is extremely noisy we will use OLIVIA 16/500. Any bulletins are sent using MT63 1000Khz long interleave. Please Join Us..All are Welcome!

The new WB9FHP 6 meter repeater is ready to start operational testing. The repeater is located at the "RF Hill" site and the controller arrived this past week. So shortly the repeater will begin operational testing on the frequency of 53.630 out 52.630 in. There will b NO PL for access. So get ready to try it out!

WB9FHP has recently started packet operations with a Full Service 2 meter BBS on 145.050 which runs 24/7. The footprint of the operation covers a large part of Southern Indiana into northern Kentucky areas. This BBS is networked into the Indiana Packet Network and provides lots of amateurs with all the advantages of the packet mode. For more info and a copy of the Operators manual please contact WB9FHP.

The Orange County ARES and SKYWARN will be holding weekly nets on Thursday nights at 9PM on the KB9OHY repeater in Paoli. WB9FHP DEC for INARES District 8 and EC for Orange County recently gave the net control assignment to Morning Lark KC9MBE who will be doing NCS every Thursday. The purpose of the net will be all aspects of ARES operations training. All amateurs are welcome to check in!

Recently WB9FHP added PACTOR to the arsenal on "RF HILL" He is the 9th region NTSD MBO and also provides links into the WL2K system on both Pactor 1 and 2 and soon will be adding Pactor 3 some of the LSB center frequencies his station scans 24/7 are 3591.9, 7101.4, 7102.4 and 14097.9. If you have pacotr capabilties try a connect!

The Orange County Amateur Radio Club is nw publishing a monthly newsletter called "THe RF CONNECTOR". The news letter will contain a variety of items concerning club activities, operating tips, club calendars and features on club members. The "RF CONNECTOR" is free and available to members and non-members as well. If you would like to receive a "PDF" copy via email simply send an email to the club's Public Information office with "RF CONNECTOR" in the subject line to pio@kb9ohy.org. The publication is circulated on the last week of every month.

WB9FHP has just set up an official RMS station on WL2K using Winmor, the new soundcard TNC mode which emulates ARQ modes such as Pactor 2. This RMS station allows you to connect to the world-wide Winlink 2000 radio email system. The user program to connect to thr RMS station on "RF Hill" is called RMS Express and is very much like stardard email programs such as Outlook Express. You can also leave personal messages to Ham calls on the system that use WL2K. The user program is fairly easy to setup and use and is a very powerful mode. The WB9FHP-5 (the -5 indicates an RMS station and is not put on a user's call) operates 24/7 on 2 different frequencies. From 0000Z to 1300Z the station is on 3575 USB Dial, and from 1300Z to 0000Z it is on 7075 USB Dial. To download the latest copy of the RMS EXPRESS program by clicking on this link to our Download Bin http://www.wb9fhp.com/Downloads/RMS_Express_0.6.2.0_Full_install_.zip   to download the latest Public Winmor stations list click on this link http://www.wb9fhp.com/Downloads/PublicWinmorChannels.zip   I keep these files updated daily. To find out more about Winlink 2000 please go to www.winlink.org. My RMS station is there for everyones use so please feel free to connect as much as you wish.

If you like traffic handling and want to go into a larger area you can tune into the 9TH Region Traffic Phone net at 12 noon ET and help pass NTS traffic between the 4 states covered the 9RN. The net happens on 40 meters on a frequency of 7280KHz Monday, Wednesday, Thurday and Friday. Indiana traffic picked up there is then passed along thru the Indiana Traffic net which occurs daily at 8:30AM and 4:30PM. The states covered by 9RN are Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Kentucky. So drop by when you can. You just might pick up some traffic you can take to the ITN and pass along there!

WB9FHP will be conducting a forum on Digital Modes at the Columbus Amateur Radio Club's Columbus Hamfest on Saturday March 27th at the Bartholmew County Fairgrounds. The Forum will discuss Soundcard Modes including the New Winmor Mode. The forum will start at 9 AM in the Conservation Council Building. For further Details go to www.qsl.net/carc .

Most radios built today have either Auto Tuners built in or a place you can plug in an external Auto Tuner, but what if you have a older rig and a manual antenna tuner? It really isn't good operating procedure to set the and hold a steady carrier while you crank on a manual tuner to get it to make the radio "think" it's looking at a fifty ohm antenna. To solve this problem you can purchase an "off-line" matchmaker or as they are sometimes call a "pulser". What happens is the "little black box" generates a constant rf noise pulse and by simply tuning the tuner till you hear the pulsing stop (or 'notch out" then you know you have a perfect 1:1 match between your radio and your antenna and you never had to put a single carrier out on the air. "Pulser's" are not expensive and make for a more courteous way to tune that antenna "right on the money"!

If your a ham who lives in Southern Indiana and you know of a good Amateur Radio related news tidbit please send it to me Larry Jones WB9FHP at our email address listed at the bottom of this page and we'll be glad to post it right here in the Local News Block.