Denny Hahn called me the other day to ask if the SACMARC would be
interested in participating in a couple of small, one-day events coming
up in the SAC Museum's calendar in the near future. I told him I would
ask the membership and give him an answer in a week or two.
I appreciate the short lead time on these events, and that I am
essentially asking someone else in the membership to step forward and
take a leadership/organizing role. I am quite occupied this time of
year, such that I cannot promise personal participation. When elected
President, I indicated that the September QSO Party event was the only
one I could definitely commit to organizing. If it is the case that we
cannot cover these two events, I will politely decline, and we will
support the SAC Museum's mission in September as originally planned.
The two events Mr. Hahn asked if we could provide a presence for are:
- Family Day, Sunday, April 2nd, 11-5 PM
- Armed Forces Day, Saturday, May 20th, 9-5 PM
For Family Day, Mr. Hahn was looking for a demonstration/participation
of exhibit such that parents and children could be occupied and
entertained. Our experiences with HF radio contacts proved tricky in
terms of interesting a wide audience when we were at the Museum in
September (and on April 2nd we won't have the advantage of a
nationally-advertised and organized operating event to provide us with a
tailor-made on-air audience, like we would have for Armed Forces Day or
the QSO Party). Some alternative possibilities, although admittedly
more ambitious, would be a demo of either Automated Position Reporting
System (APRS) or amateur satellites.
APRS combines elements of high technology, including those that are
military-derived like GPS, with easilly demonstratable and
understandable features like position reporting and tracking. The
communications component for a demo could be all VHF-based, making for
easier setup and more reliable operation (at least in terms of making
external contacts). Mark Conner, N9XTN, mentioned the desirability of
either a temporary or permanent APRS node at the SAC Museum. There is a
long-term plan afoot to have an interconnected packet radio relay
between Omaha and Lincoln (the SAC Museum site being an ideal location
for a station in such a relay network) for the transmission of severe
weather data to the National Weather Service in Valley. Running a demo
station at the Museum might be an excellent proof-of-concept for
demonstrating the usefulness of a permanent APRS node in the vicinity of
the SAC Museum. This APRS node could both serve the SKYWARN mission,
and (if the weather data network is set up) provide a permanent
interactive exhibit for the SAC Museum (obviously this is long-term and
blue-sky, subject to SAC Museum approval, but some initial planning and
prototyping now could be worthwhile). An APRS demo in downtown Bellevue
by the Bellevue Amateur Radio Club was rather successful (even greatly
impressing the Chief of Police when we were able to pin-point his
APRS-node-equipped automobile to within half a block).
Former SAC Museum Director Wayne Schmidt mentioned SAREX (Shuttle
Amateur Radio Experiment) in the past, though obviously that is
dependent on shuttle missions in orbit, and requires coordination with
the ARRL and SAREX to actually have communications with astronauts (as
opposed to just passive reception, which could be spotty at best).
SAREX would clearly be a longer-term, and longer lead-time, type of
project, but trying to do some amateur satellite communications now
might allow us to debug such a setup for the future.
For Armed Forces Day, we could run a simple HF station and participate
in the annual cross-band tests using both voice and data modes (as we
have done on our own in the past, such as in John Sheffield's back yard
in Papillion). One of the pitfalls is the "ho-hum" nature of
established HF technology, though we do have an actual operating event
and a guaranteed list of contacts (in the form of military MARS
stations). Another is that the Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS)
is having a current mission crisis, rendering most of the operator
recruiting aspects moot. Worldwide availability of cheap
telecommunications, along with generous bandwidth and capacity of most
military satellites, has pre-empted MARS in its traditional role
delivering radiograms and providing phone patches for overseas
personnel. Other purposes of having these cross-band tests still
remain, however:
- worthwhile public relations for amateur radio and the armed
forces
- continued demonstration of cross-band communications capability
between military and amateur radio communicators (as a contingency in
times of national emergency)
Please take the next week or so to think about these two events.
Suggestions are OK, but what would be needed most are volunteers, even
leaders and organizers. Such volunteers should be able to make a firm
commitment, and count on doing a lot of grunt work to recruit, organize,
set up, operate, demo, tear down, and provide the SACMARC with
after-the-fact analysis for future event planning (logging,
photographing, and otherwise recording the sound and video of the event
could be a valuable part of this ). I will report our decisions to
participate in either event to Denny Hahn on Monday, February 22nd.
Questions and feedback may be directed to me.
73, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU
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