Here it is March of 2000 and OVH continues to have many "irons in the fire." You are reading this from an OVH Director, (not a Club President), because no member has stepped forth to volunteer their services for this important job. The three Directors will take turns conducting the meetings in the interim until a Club President can be found.

At this month’s meeting, Art, KW4AW, will demonstrate a Pixie II QRP rig and some QRP Test Equipment. Some club members have recently built these little "rigs" and are enjoying their use.

We want to say Thank You to the Outgoing Club Officers for their unselfish dedication to the club over the past year – or two in some cases. Cathy/AE4UM, Steve/N4OGR and Lloyd/N4OOM spent many hours arranging for programs and fulfilling club activities – their efforts were greatly appreciated. JOB WELL DONE!!! We also want to say thanks to Bill, N4WJN for staying on as Treasurer for another year – his expertise is certainly welcome.

We’re looking forward to another great year ahead for OVH and it’s many upcoming activities such as the Manassas Hamfest, Field Day, License Classes, VE Testing, etc. The new club officers will be beginning their duties and participation with this month’s meeting – good luck to them and let’s give them all the support that we can.

Butch Blasdell

W4HJL

The OVH Times is the official publication of the "Ole Virginia Hams" ARC, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and enhancement of Amateur Radio. The OVH ARC meets at 8:00 PM every third Monday of the month at the NOVEC Tech Center in Gainesville. Prospective members are invited.

Local information can always be obtained, at any time, through the usage of the OVH repeaters (146.97- & 224.660- Mhz). All are welcome.

Permission is hereby granted for the reprinting of articles and quotations in this letter, provided full credit is given to the OVH ARC, and the author of the article. Contribution of printed articles by both members and non-members is encouraged. The deadline for submissions is the 5th of each month. Submissions should be forwarded to OVH TIMES EDITOR: Steve Meade KB4OF, PO Box 1418, Manassas, VA 20108-1418, or to sameade@erols.com

Letters to the Editor and Classified Ads are accepted and welcome. Approx. Circulation - 170

Happy March Birthday to our fellow Hams: Matthew/KC4ZPM, Scott/KE4LYN, and Rita/KE4TMU!

I understand Congratulations are in order for Alan/KD4KBX, for upgrading to General, but I don't find evidence of it on Buckmaster! I've also heard rumors that others have upgraded, but again, can't find the evidence, and haven't been notified.

Please notify me of any events in your Ham life, certainly, but also in your "other" life -- birthdays, births, deaths, marriages, upgrades, anything you'd like your fellow Hams to know! (Birthdates are no longer posted by the FCC, so I don't have them for many of you -- you might want to check with me, so you aren't disappointed when your birthday rolls around, and I don't let folks know!)

You may contact me by phone at 703.257.0897, on email at jansteve@erols.com, or on the radio, of course!

The following dedicated OVH members need to be 'exposed' for helping in the '99 club year:

The Directors, The '99 Officers, All Committee members, Especially: Steve/KB4OF: our OVT's editor, Jack/N4YIC: HFest, Scholarship, Butch/W4HJL & MaryLu/KB4EFP: who are THE HELP, Art/KW4AW: Rptr Trust, Tech, behind-the-scenes detail, Steve/N4OGR: multi-faceted talents, Bill/N4WJN: Hpage/packet, Fday, Ruth/KU4WH: FAR Rep, advertsg, education, finance. And.......... all the other hard-working OVH folks who gave their time and abilities to make the Club Year a GO!

Cathy/AE4UM J

Some OVH members will soon be constructing another solid state project for the shack. A marker generator to provide test signals for receiver calibration and general frequency checks. The ARRL Handbook and QST have published several designs for marker generators, and they are good ones. But the VE3DNL Marker Generator kit is a neat project because it uses only one IC, one resistor, three capacitors and a crystal to accomplish its purpose. Which is to generate marker signals at 40 kHz, 20 kHz, 10 kHz or 5 kHz intervals throughout the HF spectrum.

One IC! Well, the IC is a CD4060B (or equal) which consists of an on-board oscillator/buffer and fourteen master-slave flip-flops. We get the appropriate marker signals by providing a "binary-friendly" crystal frequency to the oscillator then feeding it to the chain of fourteen flip-flops. The frequency gets divided by two through each flip-flop in ripple fashion. This provides a halved frequency at each flip-flop output and it is just a matter of picking the outputs desired and connecting them to a convenient output lug. Digging deeper, the IC has 397 FETs to "make it happen!" Try getting that all done with discrete components and a sixteen pin outline! Back in the old days, enough vacuum tubes to make an oscillator, buffer and 14 flip-flops would fill several drawers in an equipment rack - and keep you fairly warm to boot.

The only thing to be careful about is the battery voltage for this little dude. The kit version and several other chip variations will work anywhere from 3 to 18 Vdc, but some chip versions have a max voltage (Vcc) of 6 volts (e.g., MC74C4060A). In that case just add a simple 78L05 voltage regulator, two bypass capacitors and a nine volt battery to provide regulated 5 Vdc for those ICs.

The logic diagram next shows how a signal fed from the oscillator stages would propagate down the chain of flip-flops. Different frequencies can be picked off the output from each flip-flop as shown. Halving is binary, of course, and so it goes 2-4-8-16-32-64-128 etc. Hope this scratches your itch and gets a discussion going. How many useful signal "pick-offs" would we have if we used a 1 MHz crystal, or a 4 MHz crystal? What would the ubiquitous color burst crystal give us (3.579545 MHz).