San Antonio Hams

05/22/2015 from ARRL

The FCC is eliminating the regulatory fee to apply for an Amateur Radio vanity call sign. The change will not go into effect, however, until required congressional notice has been given. This will take at least 90 days. As the Commission explained in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Report and Order, and Order (MD Docket 14-92 and others), released May 21, it’s a matter of simple economics.

“The Commission spends more resources on processing the regulatory fees and issuing refunds than the amount of the regulatory fee payment,” the FCC said. “As our costs now exceed the regulatory fee, we are eliminating this regulatory fee category.” The current vanity call sign regulatory fee is $21.40, the highest in several years. The FCC reported there were 11,500 “payment units” in FY 2014 and estimated that it would collect nearly $246,100.

In its 2014 Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) regarding the assessment and collection of regulatory fees for FY 2014, the FCC had sought comment on eliminating several smaller regulatory fee categories, such as those for vanity call signs and GMRS. It concluded in the subsequent Report and Order (R&O) last summer, however, that it did not have “adequate support to determine whether the cost of recovery and burden on small entities outweighed the collected revenue or whether eliminating the fee would adversely affect the licensing process.

See full article at….

http://www.arrl.org/news/view/fcc-eliminates-amateur-radio-vanity-call-sign-regulatory-fee

W2IK

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Date:  Tue, 5 May 2015 23:30:12 -0400 (EDT) HB 939 — Thank You For Calling/Faxing Your State Representative But, More Calls & Faxes Need To Be Made

HB 939 is still scheduled to be voted on by the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday, May 7, 2015.

We have a very, very good chance of passing this Bill — IF we have the same effort that everyone made on the cell phone bills. John Robert Stratton, N5AUS, West Gulf Vice Director and his XYL, Mary, visited the Capitol today to speak to each Representative to personally ask them to vote for HB 939. A lot of State Representatives and their staffs commented that they had been called and/or faxed by Hams, asking them to vote for HB 939 — they were impressed. But, many of you have not yet called or faxed your State Representative. We need you to do so. The ARRL cannot pass legislation beneficial to Ham Radio — or defeat legislation that hurts Ham Radio — unless you help us. For those who did not call or fax, we really, really need you to do so on Wednesday. You may determine who is your State Representative — and their fax and telephone numbers — by going to this link and inserting your zip code or your zip code and your address: http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/find-your-representative/

Please DO NOT CALL OR FAX STATE REPRESENTATIVES TONY DALE, RENE OLIVEIRA OR MATT SCHAEFER. These Gentlemen are our Sponsors — they don’t need to be convinced.

DO NOT EMAIL — the ONLY effective contact methods are either faxes or telephone calls. Whether you contact your Representative by phone or fax: BE POLITE – ALWAYS — elected Representatives and their staff are not our enemies. They want to hear from their constituents — the people who vote for them — about Bills their constituents want passed. Some staff members may ask where you are from or for your telephone number – it is ok to tell them – it makes you “real” and convinces them you are not a phony caller. If you call or fax and their telephone numbers are busy – that is good news, because it means other Hams are calling. KEEP CALLING OR FAXING UNTIL YOU GET THROUGH. Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas O Caldwell
April 17th 2015
Amateur License: WD5GXH
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
San Antonio, Texas 78280

Mr. Caldwell,

Please consider this official notice that effective on this 17th Day of April 2015, you are hereby directed that you are not authorized for any purpose beyond an Actual Life or Death Emergency to use any of the Repeaters Owned or Operated by N5XO.

This includes but is not limited to the following Repeaters: 927.0750 / 443.025 / 147.120 / 145.350 and any future repeaters that I should bring on the air. Failure to heed to this notification will result in immediate notification to the F.C.C Enforcement Bureau.

You are in receipt of this notification due to your consistent behavior that is contrary to the Spirit of Amateur Radio, the direct personal abuse aimed at myself personally, as well as the members of our local Radio Group. I also personally believe that you are responsible for the placing of the Jamming transmitter in the creek bed behind my home, as well as guided John Watkins in his actions against me and my family. All actions are contrary to the good Amateur Practices and civilized behavior.

With this, it is my belief that permitting you to use my equipment would not be of benefit to the myself, the local Amateur Community or our Amateur Radio Group.

Gregory Lewis
Amateur License: N5XO

CC
Laura Smith of the F.C.C
Mark Stennant of the Texas VHF Society
Kim Molder, Converse P.D

Note: This letter was sent via registered USPS mail to the ham’s mailing address.  Address was marked out in the above letter.

Gary R Sheets
April 17th 2015
Amateur License: WD5FWP
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
San Antonio, Texas 78218

Mr. Sheets,

Please consider this official notice that effective on this 17th day of April 2015, you are hereby directed that you are not authorized for any purpose beyond an Actual Life or Death Emergency to use any of the Repeaters Owned or Operated by N5XO.

This includes, but is not limited to, the following Repeaters: 927.0750 / 443.025 / 147.120 / 145.350 and any future repeaters that I should bring on the air. Failure to heed to this notification will result in immediate notification to the F.C.C Enforcement Bureau.

You are in receipt of this notification due to your consistent behavior that is contrary to the Spirit of Amateur Radio, the direct personal abuse aimed at myself personally as well as the members of our local Radio Group. I also personally believe that you were involved in the placing of the Jamming  transmitter in the creek bed behind my home, as well as guided John Watkins in his actions against me and my family. All actions are contrary to the good Amateur Practices and civilized behavior.

With this, it is my belief that permitting you to use my equipment would not be of benefit to the myself, the local Amateur Community or our Amateur Radio Group.

Gregory Lewis
Amateur License: N5XO

CC
Laura Smith of the F.C.C
Mark Stennant of the Texas VHF Society
Kim Molder, Converse P.D

Note: This letter was sent via registered USPS mail to the ham’s mailing address.  Address was marked out in the above letter.

Fellow GVARC members and other hams,

No, it isn’t a spelling error, it was plagiarized from WD5GWT to hopefully grab your attention to start going through your piles of ham stuff and pulling out unused antennas of any sort, superseded ARRL publications, hf. vhf and uhf rigs, meters, ‘scopes, computers, solder stations and such like.

Talk-In Repeater: 147.00- (103.5PL)

Location & Time: You will want to bring those items Saturday morning to GVARC’s swap meet at 0900 Saturday morning, February 14th, 2015,  at the New Braunfels Fire Training Facility, 1311 Industrial Drive here in New Braunfels.

GVARC had hoped to use Granzin’s overflow parking lot diagonally across from the main entrance, but it was discovered this morning that the lot now belongs to a local church.

GVARC requests that you bring only ham related stuff. That is to say, no kittens, puppies, sheep or Avon products. GVARC’s expectation is the honesty typically associated among hams. If you say something works, it should. If you don’t know, say so.

Here’s how is going to happen. Everyone is invited to join us for GVARC breakfast at Granzin BBQ Restaurant (660 West San Antonio Street, in New Braunfels, TX 78130) at 0730 or so Saturday, and then promptly at 0845, we will saddle up and ride over to parking lot where K5GST and his VE team administer GVARC ham exams.

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Gary Stock WF5Y aka Grumpy”

The local ham store he operated, Grumpy Shop, was closed at the end of September 2014.

Some of his inventory was purchased by Mark Lacey W5TXR, who is considering opening a new Ham Store up in New Braunfels (time period unknown).

As of 09/28/2014, San Antonio does NOT have a local Ham Radio store.

Friday December 5th 6:00 p.m. to Saturday December 6th 6:00 p.m. We still have multiple slots open for this event.

Especially 10:00 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Saturday. All license classes invited to participate.

Contact Louis – K5STX at k5stx@k5stx.net or by phone: 830-305-2889

“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make”
The Beatles

Please forgive me for a little bit of nostalgia by starting off this e-mail with Beatle Lyrics. But they are very apropos for this e-mail. The lyrics simply state that what you get out of something equates to what you put into it.  Me myself and I have personally discovered what I put into Amateur Radio equates to me getting even more out of it.

For almost all of us starting off in Amateur Radio we can find some one to thank for assisting us with this wonderful hobby. For me originally it was the 70 year old man who seemed older than the hills to my 10 year old mind, but never before or since had I met anyone with so much patience in helping a very annoying little neighbor kid. We became introduced twice originally once as I was delivering papers on my route and one summer afternoon….I saw him in the yard and asked him what those antennas were for {he had what seemed to me at the time a 500ft tower with dozens of antennas}, he showed me his shack, his wife offered cookies and lemonade and I proceeded to ask 40 million questions {and yes the rest of the papers on my route that evening were very late}.

That fateful day, followed by science class on Marconni and a ready source of old model T-Spark coils…..and a friend as insane as me….had us building crude versions of spark gap transmitters and using the AM radio as our receiver. It never occurred to us we were destroying anyone in a 5 mile radius….ability to listen to the towns only station and watch television {those were the days when moms blender and a VW beetle would do the same}. Once again introductions were made to the kindly gentleman down the road and this time in made it his goal to get me on the air properly, I think he felt I needed focus for that energy.  Read the rest of this entry »