Greetings VAPOites and 'ites of every description everywhere! I trust you all had a good summer, full of radio-ether activity. Cutting to the quick, it is my pleasure to announce that:

Please get there by 0945 so we can coffee up and shmooze a little.

Big nooze is that your directors, sysops, and other luminaries met on the evening 13 September at the palatial estate of the Secretary to discuss future directions for VAPO. We will be presenting the results of our intense deliberations for discussion at the AGM. We look forward to your presence and your input!

One of the recommendations to come out of the directors/sysops meeting was the reinstitution of PACKBARF. The real thing – not the revisionist packbarf pirated by a few malcontent ex-pacqueteers. No sir, so listen up: The first real PACKBARF of the new millennium will take place at 0800 hrs., Saturday 14 October, at the ABC Country Restaurant, 7380 King George Highway in beautiful Surrey. Come one come all… you don’t have to be a VAPO member or on packet. Bring friends if you have any. Revisionist pirates also welcome, but will have to sit with a dunce cap on facing the wall. That’s is friends, PACKBARF rises from the ashes.

In other nooze… it is rumored that Lane is painting the ceiling of the Panorama Church, much like Michaelangelo at the Sistine Chapel before him. See it at the meeting -- give him your opinion of his art.

El Presidente

The minutes of the last meeting are on the VAPO website http://www.rainbowcountry.bc.ca/vapo

Hone your netsearch skills; see if you can find them (Ed.)

The financial situation in our bank account is $2,537 and our present paid up membership is at 70 members. We have 2 members whose membership has very recently expired and hopefully these folks will continue to support the club.

Our major expenditures since the last printing of a hard copy of the gazette about 6 months ago have been the following: $230 to upgrade the hard drive in the computer at VE7SFU; $31 to renew our membership in TAPR; $21 for a data cable for VE7SFU as a 10BaseT Hub was installed; $230 for a UPS for VE7SFU to protect the LINUX based computer.

At the last meeting it was voted to lower the annual dues to $15/member, so hopefully that will be adequate maintain the system for the next few years. As the system has been very reliable no great expenditures are anticipated. If we should run into some major funding issues we will address them at that time.

That’s all the cheerless news from the money department.

...73 Tom ve7did

By Fred Engel, VE7EE

Pleasantola to you all, Great Survivors of the Age of Paquette.

Have the gloom and doom mongers gotten to you yet?

Well, don’t you let them…we shall overcome….

So how was your Summer? Too hot, too cold, too wet, neither? Good, than it’s business as usual!

Did you enjoy the fallout after Field Day, I mean all the bragging and boasting from the Amateurs that were telling you that your scores were kind of marginal…and you didn’t even take part in the Festivities? Seriously, if you didn’t take part, you missed an opportunity to have some good old fashioned fun with Ham Radio..

I had a blast of a time with my Club, the North Shore Amateur Radio Club Radio Club. The Weather, was perfect, the company pleasant and the Food, Drink and Fellowship at it’s best, especially with only like minded people showing up. As you all know, the "watchers" usually don’t show. Although you always have the folks attending, that don’t want to do any work and just pretend they’re doing something. You know the ones that wear white shirts and look important to the Visitors!

It’s a Hobby right…!?

So the summer is behind us and everyone is back to the usual routines. It’s got to be fall with the Langley Flea Market upcoming. Most Swap Meets went along peacefully, especially now that Bill, VE7QC stayed away from winning all the door prizes.

Bill is actually getting to be a bit of a concern to some of us. Mood swings I think they call it. The most alarming event happened recently when he deserted the Packet Fraternity by turning his gear off. Sounds good to me, I think impeachment would be appropriate!

On a visit to Burnaby Radio ran into Robert, VE7HBG. Some of you know that this Computer, Amateur Television and Ham radio Wizard hails from Poland. So if we call people from Poland Poles? Why don’t we call people from Holland "Hols?"

Another mystery to figure out.

Overheard at another Swap meet: "Why is a person that plays the piano called pianist, but a person that drives an Indy car not called a racist? Oh my! Please keep the Defamation League away from my door, I’m innocent, really Your Honor!

And as an newly baked Grandpa I am beginning to wonder, if olive oil really comes from olives, then where does Baby oil come from?

And from our Democracy in Action column: Recently got brave enough to sign into the RAC. Web page, (I am a Life Member), where the news headline was, that RAC had surveyed it’s members and determined that they should join the ARRL at the next ITU meeting in an joint chorus to lower the CW requirements to 5 WPM. So when your usually meek and timed writer, was invited to comment , I wrote as follows: …

." HOW SAD…."

Little did I realize that when RAC asked you to comment, they only want you to follow the Party Line. Oh boy, did I get told off about my comments. First got an E. Mail shot from an old friend, Ralph,VE7OM, (or formerly known as VE7BVG) and now newly baked Vice President of RAC. After digesting his comments ( sorry Ralph, your arguments for 5WPM CW tests did not convince me the least bit!) I got another barrage of heavy duty flack from various other RAC Officials.

"That ought to learn you", my old grandma from Winnipeg used to say…

So when the time comes, I will respectfully decline to be re appointed RAC Coordinator at the NSARC, after all, I don’t know any one around here who would want to sit down quietly while RAC is dumming down the already dummed down IC Exams. Is it any wonder then, that there are very few elections for RAC officials any more, just the ever more popular "elected by acclamation" announcements. Eh’ RACmen, perhaps you should mend your ways before your membership declines even further. I can assure you this member has taken his cue…! Me silent now!

And while we were talking about RAC officials, congratulations to Dennis, VE7DK "acclaimed" to yet another term as Pacific Director of RAC.

And while rambling on, "If it’s true that we are here to help others, than what exactly are the others for? Sigh…

On a recent photo opportunity session , overheard one to the other (I did not say Blondes!) "What does a cheese say when it gets its picture taken…?

Sorry, I don’t know that answer folks…

And words of praise and warnings coming from Riley Hollingsworth of the FCC, he really likes the way his interventions have been appreciated by the Ham Fraternity.

Have a look at the FCC Web Site. It’s refreshing reading.

Too bad we do not have any one in Ottawa that gives a damn about Ham Radio, especially now that we’re no longer paying our "dues"…

And from the "Local Front" comes my story of the month, that originated on the VE7NSR Repeater which is located on the North Shore. This in broad daylight folks.

Trust me, I heard it myself:

Ham One: OK Fred, I am on Lonsdale now, I’ll try 20 watts, stand by. Ham Two: OK, you’re full scale, beautiful signal into the machine. Ham One: OK I’ll try 40 watts now, ready. Ham Two: Boy you’re now really full scale into the machine…

I had previously worked into the Repeater from the Upper Levels near Lonsdale,

with half a watt…I rest my case.

And to the newly baked groom, Mike VE7AK, here’s my question.

"I am" is supposed to be the shortest sentence in the English language, could it be that

"I do" is the longest sentence? Just asking…

And I trust former VAPO Pioneers like VE7FU, VE7RI, and the legendary Doug, VE4KV are alive and well, playing Games on the InterNet, all this fun without

Radios, Licenses, and all the other fun things on Amateur Radio that they used to enjoy.

Send us a card, a QSL card, remember 5.5.9 etc… remember you guys !

Hope to see all the real Packateers on September the 30^th in Surrey, stand firm….

So if lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked and dry cleaners depressed? O.k. who did I miss…!?

I am out of here, going that away, remember, you never really learn to swear until you drive across the Lions Gate Bridge during re construction, only the folks from Victoria would repair a rusty old bridge that has been abused since 1939 -- but then we still have to pay for "our" fast ferries first. Keep saving your money, who knows what the NDP have in mind next…!

Seah Yeah at the VAPO Meeting, Tom VE7DID is bringing the Road Maps!

Best of 73

Fred, VE7EE

The wizard says, for this edition, his good works will have to stand in for his good words. In the past month he has been reconfiguring the hardware and the software on the SFU gateway, helping old Orange, as well as doing whatever else needs doing. He's a busy boy. (Ed.)

I have been described recently as a walking contradiction trying to shovel fecal matter against the tide with a toothpick. This from an ex-vapoite of substantial technical and intellectual prowess. Presumably the fecal matter was packet and the tide the internet.

To be sure 1200 baud packet as we knew it from 1986 'til the early 90's is gonzo. Except for a small bunch of believers, winpacks and tpk's dueling with belching bbs', the majority of us have been seduced away by other related things: the seemingly boundless net, aprs, psk31, dx and the packet cluster, hf, 6 metre grid-square collecting, to name a few.

Yet, at Orange Central, packet is alive and well; the internet is alive and well; and the fusion of both is forcing old-dog Orange to learn new tricks.

Learn new tricks… that's the secret, folks. In the early daze, there was lot's to learn and lots of folks to learn with. That's the glue that is missing now. You had to learn what a TNC was, how to hook it up to your transceiver, how to deal with the bbs, how to configure your client software, and how to keep it all running. VAPO sprung up to create and maintain the server network and to help user folks learn the ropes. After a few years, the network became very stable, and aside from occasional frills added to winpack, there wasn't much more to learn. People drifted onto other things and the tncs began ending up in the closets of the members. I don't need to tell you that the number of people accessing the system these days is small -- mighty small.

But I'm as excited now by ham radio now as I was 50 years ago when I built my first rig, or in those heady days when I unpacked my first tnc. So what's happening to keep the excitement going? -- Read on.

Well, about two years ago or so (was it three?) Lane (the wizard) set up a linux machine (an old 486/33 with 8 megs of ram) for me as a firewall/gateway/router with the prospect of having it turn into a full-fledged internet/packet gateway. I was a logical candidate for no other reason than that I had a static ip address (one requirement). Although he talked me through a lot of stuff when he installed it, most of it was so far over my head that it resulted in a migraine that lasted two weeks. It occurred to me months later, that the old 486 gateway box which now served to shield my two windows boxes from the evil hackers on the net, made totally dependent on something I knew nothing about, LINUX. This dependency sat so poorly in my little anal, control-freak mind, that in addition to migraine, I was suffering sleepless nights. What to do? The answer was to construct a back up 486 gateway box complete with linux operating system and two network cards. No shortage of old junque at Orange Central. Next, out to Multimedia on Broadway to by a 5 pound, 2,032 page book called Dr. Linux - the complete linux reference, followed by Linux Unleashed (1176 pages), and last, a four cd set of Slackware 3.4. Did I really think I was going to read some 3,000 pages before the install? More sleep loss. I thumbed through those weighty books for hours and hours, grasping only the very basics. I was no further ahead. I decided to open the jewel case and expose linux CD's to the dank atmosphere of Orange Central. There was a little pamphlet, maybe 3.5 inches square and a whopping 33 pages long called 'Installing Linux Slackware 3.4'. I put the ten pounds of books on the shelf and decided to follow the 33 pages in front of me. The hardware came from an old dx66. I decided to try the install by scrupulously, and I mean scrupulously following those skimpy 33 pages.

As the old 'persons of colour' spiritual relates in song: "Nobody knows the trouble ah seen…..". Those of you who have installed linux know you ain't goin' nowhere unless the system can recognize the cdrom drive, eh? Calls to Lane showed I had an obscure scsi drive. All one needed to do was tell linux the right stuff, and away the install went. There were lot's of things that I couldn't get going by myself, that the wizard had to help me with. But it did install, and finally, it all worked (read a couple of weeks of playing). The wizard was sometimes parsimonious in his advice, which forced me to do a lot of things for myself. Mostly the wizard was overworked. In the end, the big mother books started to make sense as did the linux 'man pages' and 'how-to's'. It was a great feeling getting that gateway going.

From there, I converted all the computers in the house (two pentia and two 486's and a 386 to linux. Each install was plagued with its own set of very unique problems, but I had to call the wizard less as time wore on.

Finally, I decided to try and set up a JNOS system on one of the linux boxes. This was a very humbling experience, let me tell you. I pondered the config files for months, getting nowhere. One day the wizard called and said that he was going up to SFU to take the dos based jnos box that keeps the entire network connected and change it to linux based jnos, and that he would do my jnos install at the same time. Whatta deal! It worked. I then moved jnos from box to box, making sure I could now do the install. More power!

JNOS is really quite interesting. I'm sitting on 440.775/+5 the VAPO 9600 baud repeater on Seymore. I can send and receive ax25 mail, send and receive e-mail, telnet into any machine that allows it anywhere on the internet, do ftp file transfers from any anonymous ftp site, ping stuff 'til the cows com home, have YVRASS:VE7ASS netrom node seen world wide, connect almost instantly to any node or bbs on the vapo system, nodehop around the world, and host a convers server that's connected around the world (I'm linked to Victoria -- good old ve4kv) who's linked to a gataeway host in Hungary) Right now there are over 120 stations linked in what can best be described as a world-wide ham chat room on some 40 different channels. It's a gas. You can do it too! You can run jnos from a dos based machine or a linux machine. You can watch packets of various protocols fly by and begin to understand what it's all about.

Yep…. I'm excited, jnos is up 24/7 I've had guys from almost 20 countries poking around on my machine. This afternoon, a guy in Calgary was using my convers server to chat with a guy in Germany. As we speak, the system is on 440.775/445.775 (9600 baud) and 145.07/67 (1200 baud). Get those doorstop 486's working again, be the first in your neighborhood to have your own network node.

Finally, W0RLI would have to give at least partial marks, as I'm connected into things via RADIO, RF, the ETHER.

Now here's the payback: The wizard helped me lots in virtually every aspect of learning my new tricks. Those of you who have helped others in this ham game realize that the payback in indirect: it comes when the guy you’ve helped is able to help someone else. So if you’re at all interested in getting a linux system going or getting on with JNOS, I’m willing to put some energy into helping you.

That's it. I leave you with what I think is the greatest truism in education. It was on the first page of a book called Calculus Made Simple, by a fellow named Sylvanus P. Thompson. He said: "What one fool can learn to do, another can also". So, let's move it on out -- here's to new tricks!

Orange

P.O. Box 100,

Tierra del Fuego,

Argentina

Don’t forget to visit the VAPO website regularly -- Sec'y DID has been keeping it up to date. Lot's of good stuff on there. Plunk your magic 'twanger' and point your browser at :

and….. don't forget

See you there, eh?