Radio Technique
YOUR TURN! We need membership discussion of the most important subject to affect the hobby for years: i.e., "How best to use the 50 channels assigned exclusively for RC aircraft?" I have received some thoughtful reader letters which should be shared with you. Let's begin. Here's the first one from Thomas Wilk, Treasurer, Duluth Radio Control Club, 212 W. Austin St., Duluth, MN 55803: "Re: your August 1988 column: Who is using OWBAMs? (OWBAM: old wideband AM radios-Ed.) We are, a club of 60 members. There are about 125 radios. I doubt if 25 are narrow band. I have not yet seen one on the lower frequencies, nor have I seen a PCM or heard anything good about them.
Radio Technique
A LEADER RETIRES. Bob Aberle-past chairman of the AMA Frequency Committee, prolific model designer/builder/tester, and Technical Editor of Flying Models magazine for the past 15 years-has retired from writing for model magazines. He has not retired from working for a living as a manager in a large aerospace firm. Bob is one of my best friends, and I can testify that he put more time and effort each and every week into being FC chairman, writing, and photography than most people put into the jobs that pay their way through life. That's what filled a file cabinet at AMA HQ, and made his writing good enough to earn the McEntee medal from the WRAMs.
Radio Technique
THE AUTHOR of a recent column in another modeling publication took me to task about certain things I had said in my June 1988 "Radio Technique" column. The specific criticisms were that I had called RC crystal swapping "illegal," and that I had claimed that the ICOM IC-R7000 receiver was not good enough to use in measuring transmitter power levels in the tests necessary to certify that a transmitter meets the AMA/RCHA "Gold Sticker" or "Silver Sticker" performance tolerances-and that I was not technically qualified to make the latter statement.
Radio Technique
IT AIN'T CHEAP, but it is cheaper. It used to be that all a Contest Director for an RC meet wanted was a scanner, in order to be able to verify that the flag on a contestant's transmitter matched the transmitter's operating frequency. Now he/she may want to verify transmitter power levels as well. The AMA rule book authorizes the Contest Director to make whatever measurements are necessary to insure that he/she is able to conduct a contest that doesn't create any unnecessary risks for the contestants. What tool makes these measurements possible? Section 3.4 of the "AMA Guidelines for Narrow-Band Operation of 72-75 MHz Radio Control Frequencies" (hereafter called the "AMA Guidelines"-which were published in the September and October 1987 editions of AMA News) calls for a transmitter frequency tolerance of ±1,500 cycles in the 72 MHz band.
WRAM Show 1988
EACH YEAR THAT I HAVE attended the annual WRAM Show (traditionally held on the last weekend in February), my mission has remained the same. I go to find the new products in the radio field which represent a significant trend for the coming year. This time, all I had to do was look in the AMA rule book to know that 1988 has to be the year of the narrow-band transmitter. Gold and Silver stickers loomed large in everyone's mind at this year's show. The volunteers at the AMA booth, Frequency Committee Chairman Bill Hershberger and member Dave Hilsenhoff, tested and stickered about 750 transmitters in two days. Two-thirds of the transmitters presented for testing received Gold stickers; the rest got Silver. There were only about six outright failures.
