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BEL-ARC NEWS

    The Bellaire High School Amateur Radio Club ended the 1998-1999 school year
with many contacts with other hams in more than 24 states  and 8 foreign countries
worked. As mentioned in last month's newsletter the student-built and installed
10-meter beam antenna with rotator added greatly  to the quality of the contacts.

    Our two student officers with the highest class licenses have both graduated.
Gary Raney, KM5TY, club President, passed his Advanced Class during the year
and plans to try to pass the Extra Class in the near future as well as begin college.
Philip Eckhoff, KS4JV, club Vice-President, will return to Haiti in July where his
parents are medical missionaries. He will be working primarily 10 and 20 meter
bands from there. As can be seen, our club will need to develop some additional
General and above class licensees so that we can continue the good HF contacts.
Two students plan to get their Technician license during the summer.

    Gary applied for a club amateur radio call and got it: BEL-ARC is now KD5GMA.
He further set up a club web page,
                          www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/6810/bel-arc.html  
All  are invited to visit the web page and look at the pictures of the students installing
the quad-beam.

    Next year the club plans to begin a regular newsletter and develop its emergency
radio disaster response capabilities.

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BELLAIRE HIGH SCHOOL ELECTRONICS PROGRAM REPORT

  The Bellaire High School Electronics program is enjoying some of the Audio and
Video equipment donated by KPRC-TV, Channel 2, thanks to Don Saenger,
KHTV-TV, Channel 39, thanks to Claude Sessions, and others. The students have
been able to get an introduction to some of the challenges of connecting the
equipment properly and safely. Audio and video signal levels and quality
considerations have been addressed during the year. Also, thanks to George Shank
and his FORMER radio station, KXYZ, our students (and their teacher!) have made
use of a donated 3 meter satellite dish (mounted on a rolling cart) to learn about
setting up a dish antenna to receive signals from 23,000 miles away, above
the equator.   Their faces, as well as my own, lit up when the first satellite signal was
located. The students assembled the dish and mount on a rolling cart that we
confiscated from the school maintenance department. It was in bad repair, so,
we made good use of it.

    Support from the broadcast industry certainly has enhanced our electronics
program at Bellaire High School. A great big "THANK YOU!!!" is extended to each
individual and station involved as well as to all the members of the Society of
Broadcast Engineers. Additionally, having the resources of so many great minds
has helped me tremendously when I run into some of the many areas that I need
updated information in.

Frank Secor
Electronics Technology
Bellaire High School

Danney, I really appreciate you and the rest of the members of Chapter 105.
                                                                                                    Frank Secor