"The Shamrock"
The Monthly Publication of the Midland Amateur Radio Club
Volume 18, Number 1
January 2000
PAGE 5

Message from the President


—Steve Hopkins,K5RS
K5RS

Happy New Year to all. By now everyone is safely passed the non-event of Y2K. We didn't know it was going to be a non-event though. Thanks to everyone who stood by as a matter of precaution, just in case something were to happen. Now we need to think positively about this year that is about to unfold. There are lots of things to think about now that Winter is about half-way done. The Hamfest in Spring is the obvious upcoming event that we all look forward to, but we also have field day this Summer, Airsho & Jamboree on the Air in Fall, and our Christmas Dinner this coming Winter. Not to mention the usual meetings with informative topics, local events in which we can give assistance for communications, and selecting a worthwhile candidate to receive our annual scholarship donation. Maybe in our next issue of the newsletter we can have a cut-out calendar with highlights of the year 2000 events cuz we don't want anyone to miss out on the fun. Any body know what their going to call this Decade anyway? The "Double-Oughts"? After that are we going to have to go through our teens again? Then the "Roaring Twenties?", depression of the 30's? I guess we'll see.......

Today’s Stock Market Report

This appeared in the November 1998 issue of “Watts News”, the newsletter of the Olympia ARS, George Lanning-KB6LE, Ediotr, JN, January 1999.
•Helium was up, feathers are down –
•Paper was stationary.
•Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.
•Cows lost a few points.
•Pencils lost a few points.
• Hiking equipment was trailing.
•Elevators rose, which escalators continued their slow decline.
•Mining equipment hit rock bottom.
•Light switches were off.

All Things Considered

From National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” on April 23, 1999. JN, Dec. ‘99.
 JONATHAN KERN: I grew up in a bilingual household. There was English, and here was this.
KERN: Some of my earliest memories are of my father sitting in front of his ham radio set, the beeps of Morse code coming from his black Bakelite headphones, his hand on the telegraph key. By the age of three or four, I could spell my name in code, though I didn’t know the letters of the alphabet; da, da, da, da, da, da, da, dotted. I knew from the start that Morse code wasn’t dots and dashes, as other people described it. It was sound. It was how we could talk to people who were far away. In fact Morse Code was a sort of ditital Esperanto. Thanks to an international list of abbreviations, you could carry out a simple conversation in code with someone half a world away, even if he didn’t speak any English. QRM meant there was interference. WX was shorthand for weather. 73 was goodby, best wishes.
KERN: I learned all these things and the code itself the way any picks up a second language. As I entered adolescence, the code and ham radio connected me with my father. My dad used a special sort of mechanical key with springs that made it easier to send code quickly. His code had a swing to it. Da, da-da-di, da-da. Do-da. My father and I aren’t the only ones who don’t use Morse code anymore. The Coast Guard gave it up a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, the International Maritime Organization decided to drop the code in favor of a satellite-based system. Radio amateurs will continue to use it, but increasingly, even they will start thinking of the code as an antique, the electronic equivalent of a flintlock rifle. Like vacuum tubes, Morse code may have been primitive by today’s standards, but it’s served us for the most of the century. For soldier, for people at sea, it was literally a lifesaver. For me, it was a tangible connection with the earliest days of radio.We should all wish it “73”.
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