NJ2X

For New Jersey area hams, the Cherryville ARC Hamfestis tomorrow - March 17, 2012.

Weatherproofing your coaxial cable connections is absolutely essential to avoiding moisture  damage which can result in high SWR and other problems which diminish your system performance.  DX Engineering has published a helpful document showing how to do it correctly and effectively.  Be sure to give this a read:

DX Engineering - Weatherproofing Coaxial Cable Connections

Winter has a way of accelerating the deterioration of cable weatherproofing.  With the return of Spring and warm weather (at least here in New Jersey), this is an excellent time to get out and inspect and maintain your coaxial cable connections and weatherproofing.  A few minutes of preventative maintenance is a low cost way to assure your cable system continues operating at peak performance.

73,
NJ2X

The ARRL has published an excellent guide to 60m operations.  60m privileges were recently revised by the FCC and came into effect on March 5, 2012. Be sure to read up on these important changes, 60-Meter Operations – New Privileges and Recommended Practices.

Here are a few upcoming New Jersey area hamfests to add to your calendar:
Cherryville ARC Hamfest March 17, 2012 Splitrock ARC Hamfest March 24, 2012 Raritan Valley Radio Club Hamfest June 16, 2012 Sussex County Amateur Radio Club (SCARC) Hamfest July 15, 2012

March 5, 2012 is the day that new rules for the 60 meter (5 MHz) band go into effect.  The new rules were published in the February 3, 2012 edition of the Federal Register.

Summary of the changes to the 60m band in the Amateur Radio Service:
Replaces one of the channels with a less encumbered oneIncreases the maximum authorized power amateur stations may transmit in the bandAuthorizes amateur stations to transmit three additional emission designators

We recently experienced a hard drive crash with our laptop which was running Windows 7.  The hard drive problem wasn't immediately apparent as the root cause.  The were a number of symptoms that indicated that something was progressively going wrong with the system including system freezing up, extreme slow performance, inability to make a backup, and other strange behavior.



During the process of diagnosis and eventual identification of the root cause we also discovered a wonderful tool called Iolo System Mechanic.  Iolo System Mechanic is a powerful tool set to keep a PC running at peak performance.  The tool does all the hard work and does not require you to be an expert.  It automatically performs important maintenance work such as:
Repairs registryAccelerates start upRecovers memory leaksBoosts Internet speedDefragments drivesStops CPU-hogging items After we finally determined that our hard drive was failing and replaced it, we reloaded Iolo System Mechanic and have been using …

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. -- Frank Herbert