F  E  E  D  -  P  O  I  N  T

Summer has arrived. The landscape is summer green. Wildflowers are blooming. Strawberries are ripening. Thunderstorms send us scurrying to disconnect antennas and phone lines. Insect repellent or mesh jackets are part of every day. Abundant rainfall encourages the grass to grow rapidly. Lawnmowers have taken the place of snowblowers and shovels. Then, of course, there are weeds in the garden. I always wonder how weeds can grow, flower, and set seed much faster than any garden plant.

N7GLR is replacing his Butternut vertical with a Hustler 4 band vertical. He is in the process of tuning it up. I hope he has good luck with it. My Mosley vertical does not seem to be doing a very good job at the moment. I am not sure why. KJ5KV, Louisiana, and WA1SZZ, St.Stephen, N.B. have been talking on 20 meters the last few evenings. I cannot hear them at all, or only very faintly. If anybody has any suggestions, I would very much like to hear them.

The reports on Field Day are excellent. I hear ten meters was wide open, and that 20 and 40 meters were good, too. Unfortunately, I could not join the Presque Isle club for their field day operations, as I did for the last few years. I had been invited to the Dow Family Reunion in Allagash and did want to see the Dow family.

The July QST has an interesting article about the condition of the HF bands. It is titled "When Will the Bands Improve?" K9LA writes that if you talk on 160 and 80 meters propagation is good and improving, and will continue. However, 15, 12, and 10 meters are generally lousy. The Field Day success with 10 meters must have been a good exception. He says that good signals in the lowest point of the sunspot cycle are caused by the "sun hiccupping" with short term increases in sunspot activity (which can result in short-term electron density increases). But, as we all know, these events are few and far between. How nice that one occurred on Field Day!

The reason for the low-band improvement as the sunspot cycle decreases is because the Earth's geomagnetic field becomes quieter as the ionosphere becomes less disturbed. These quiet conditions and excellent DX opportunities should continue until 2009 for 160 and 80 meters.

Tour De La Valley Sunday August 20. We have been asked to provide radio communications for this event. Please offer your help for this event. Contact N1FG for more information.

Aroostook Adventure Race Saturday, August 26th. Lots of ham radio operators are needed to cover this three stage race: Biking, Hiking, and Canoeing.

The SJVARA Club Picnic will be in August at the Cross Lake Picnic Area. We need to pick a date. The first or second weekend in August are the choices. In the April Feed-Point I reported the ARRL's "Hello" program. ARRL suggests that clubs hold an open house to show various aspects of ham radio. I think it would be a good idea to do this during our picnic. There is an internet address reported in the April Feed-Point for finding ideas for planning such an event. Please let's have some ideas about what we could set up at the picnic that might interest the public. Our public information officer, N7GLR, will need to write up a press release about it.

The July QST has an article titled Tune In A Beacon Station. The FCC allows automatically controlled stations that are authorized to transmit one way signals on certain band segments. The beacon stations are limited to 100 watts. Though bands may seem dead, if you can hear a beacon signal, you can be quite sure propagation to the area where the beacon is will be open.

You can even get software for connecting your computer to your radio to monitor beacon signals and tell where propagation is good.

If you are interested in trying to locate active bands by listening to Beacons, you can find some information at http://www.nccdxf.org/Beacon/intro.html