W9REG Link Page

Updated [06/07/01]

[Audio News]
[Equipment]
[Hamfests]
[Links]
[Misc...]
[Organizations]
[On-Line Magazines]
[Nearby Clubs]
[Repeater Links]
[Resources]
[Service?]

This page will likely be broken up into smaller pages at some point. Feedback on that would be very welcome.

Organizations

FCC (Federal Communications Commission) - the BIG BROTHER that oversees all licensing and governmental regulation of amateur radio in the U.S. Its a BIG site. Most amateurs will be interested in Wireless Telecommunications Bureau - Amateur Radio Service (the main body of FCC info for hams) or in FCC Forms . Also, the ARRL has a good set of FCC Related Links on their site.
ARRL (American Radio Relay League) - the largest membership/service organization of amateur radio operators in the U.S. This is another BIG site, totally devoted to amateur radio. Be sure to check out their Site Index or you might miss some stuff. For example, as an ARRL member, you can get free e-mail forwarding based upon your callsign; like kb9sss@arrl.net You will find links to the ARRL pages scattered all throughout this site. TARA is in the Indiana Section of the ARRL, which in turn is in the Central Division (which has no WWW site of its own)
IARU (International Amateur Radio Union) - a federation of amateur radio societies from around the world. Sort of an international form of the ARRL, in fact, the ARRL is the secretariat for the IARU.
Ten-Ten International - an amateur radio organization devoted to just the 10 meter band (28Mhz - 29.7Mhz)
Amateur Radio Satellites - an organization devoted to the launch and operation of amateur radio satellites.

On-Line Magazines

ARRLWeb Extra - official ARRL on-line magazine (for ARRL members only).
QRZ.COM - an on-line amateur radio magazine or a comprehensive information resource? Whatever you call it, it's great. A particularly nice feature is their callsign data, which we've put to extensive use here on this page.
eHam.net - news, DX spots, classifieds, reviews, callsign server, and just about everything else you could want.
Amateur Radio Trader - they claim that they are "becoming the world's most comprehensive buy/sell resource for radio and related products and services". Could be.
hamradio-online.com - less frequently updated than the big boys, this is still an interesting site.
AntenneX - an on-line "subscription" based magazine devoted primarily to antennas.

News Feeds

These are all on-line audio news feeds devoted to amateur radio. Many activity and traffic nets play these over the air. At these sites, you can either read or listen at your convenience.

ARRL Audio News - produced and distributed by the ARRL.
Amateur Radio Newsline - amateur radio news from around the world
RAIN (Radio Amateur Information Network) - an amateur radio news feed produced by Hap Holly, KC9RP .

Service?

Part of amateur radio's purpose and legacy is service, and W9REG is no exception.

Tippecanoe County Red Cross - W9REG / TARA help out the local Red Cross chapter with emergency communications. The Red Cross very kindly let us use their basement for the club radio station.
TEMA (Tippecanoe County Emergency Management Agency) - W9REG / TARA also help out the local emergency management agency.
Central Indiana Skywarn - These are the folks we coordinate with down in Indy during our weather nets.

Other Nearby Clubs

You already know about us ( TARA / W9REG ) After all, you are reading one of our WWW pages. Here is the other club in our town.

Purdue Amateur Radio Club - W9YB is an amateur radio club for the students and staff of Purdue University located in West Lafayette, IN

TARA and PARC may be the only 2 amateur radio clubs here in Tippecanoe county, but, there are plenty of other clubs scattered nearby.

BCARC (Boone County Amateur Radio Club) - - Lebanon, IN
CCARC (Cass County Amateur Radio Club) - - Logansport, IN -- these folks maintain an e-mail forum on eGroups.com
CCARC (Clinton County Amateur Radio Club) - Rossville/Frankfort, IN
GCARC (Grant County Amateur Radio Club) - - Greentown, IN
HCARC (Hancock County Amateur Radio Club) - - Greenfield, IN
HCARES (Hamilton County ARES) - - Indianapolis, IN
IUARC (Indiana University Amateur Radio Club) - K9IU is an amateur radio club for the students and staff of Indiana University located in Bloomington, IN
(Broken?) KARC (Kokomo Amateur Radio Club) - - Kokomo, IN
(Broken?) NDARC (Notre Dame Amateur Radio Club) - ND1U is an amateur radio club for the students and staff of Notre Dame located in Notre Dame, IN
(Broken?) VCARA (Vermillion County Amateur Radio Association) - - Danville, IL

Or, you can go even further afield.

EARS Club List - The EARS repeater organization down near Indy maintain a list of clubs as well.
ARRL Affiliated Club Search - will help you search for nearby clubs (within 20, 50, or 100 miles) anywhere in the U.S.
The QRZ Ham Radio Club Page Listing - a large listing of ham clubs nation-wide, organized by state and provided by the folks at QRZ.COM

Repeater Information

Lafayette Area Repeaters - W9YB at Purdue University maintains a list of local area repeaters (however, the list is too far out of date to be very useful. Maybe we'll do our own soon.)
EARS (Electronic Applications Radio Service) - W9EAR runs several repeaters in central Indiana
511 Repeater Association - another repeater group based in Indianapolis, IN
Chicago Area Repeaters - maintained by KB9RTM / KG9PQ
On-Line Repeater Database - extensive and searchable database maintained by ArtSci Publishing who (coincidently) publishes a good repeater directory.

Central Indiana Net Update - KB9RRN maintains an excellent list of VHF/UHF activity nets (mostly via repeaters) throughout central Indiana. He also maintains an e-mail list for distributing updates.
Chicago Area Activity Nets - a list of VHF/UHF activity nets (mostly via repeaters) in the Chicago area, maintained by KB9RTM / KG9PQ

NFCC (National Frequency Coordination Council) - attempts to coordinate repeater frequency and sub-tone assignments on a nation wide basis.
Indiana Repeater Council - in charge of frequency and sub-tone coordination here in Indiana. Works in cooperation with the NFCC above.
Illinois Repeater Association - in charge of frequency and sub-tone coordination over in Illinois. Also works in cooperation with the NFCC above.

Hamfests

Sure, there are more hamfests than you can shake an antenna at. These are the close or important ones that actually have WWW sites.

Lafayette, IN Hamfest - always held the third Sunday in August, sponsored by us (TARA) at the Tippecanoe county fairgrounds in Lafayette, IN

Indianapolis IN Hamfest - the Indianapolis Hamfest Association sponsers this event held at the Marion county fairgrounds near Indianapolis, IN .

Dayton, OH Hamvention - THE HAMFEST OF ALL HAMFESTS. The Dayton Amateur Radio Association puts on quite an event at the Dayton Hara Arena.

ARRL Hamfext/Event Calendar - Not enough hamfests listed here for you? The ARRL has hundreds listed.

Links, Links, and More Links

There's no point in us trying to maintain a monster link list when so many other people have already done such great jobs. These folks provide enough WWW links to keep you busy for a long time.

First, here are some directory based portals. They each have search engines in addition to their directories.

Yahoo Ham Radio Directory - the standard by which all other link directories are judged. Yahoo is arguably the first and greatest of the portal sites.
Excite Ham Radio Directory - with an excellent web site guide and search engine, Excite is rumored to cover many sites that Yahoo misses (and visa versa).
Lycos Amateur Radio Directory - Lycos, fetch. Yet another excellent portal. Lycos had a good reputation even before the commercial campaign.
iWon Amateur and Ham Radio Directory - Novel. Each link you follow enters you into their multi-million giveaway. The more you surf at iWon, the greater your chances of winning. ($10,000,000 is nothing to sneeze at)

Then there are search engines

alta-vista - A classic. Another standard by which the others are judged. This was one of the first attempts at a comprehensive, WWW-wide search engine, and its arguably still the best. Judge for yourself.
Google - strictly a search engine. Their unique way of ranking relevance allows some astonishing results.
deja news - some claim that deja news has copies of every usenet newsgroup article ever posted. That's doubtful, but you'll have a hard disproving it.

The biggest problem with most link pages is that they simply list links without much (or any) explanation as to what they are. (a trait this page attempts to buck) The following link lists at least attempt to catagorize, and sometimes even explain what the links are. They are also HUGE.

A6CV's Amateur Radio and DX Reference Guide - A6CV boasts to having everything from "Abbreviations to Zones". If it's not here, then you'll have to dig pretty deep.
(Broken?) K4DND Ham Links - Another big collection of links maintained by K4DND
KB9JJA Ham Links - Another big collection of links maintained by KB9JJA

A webring is a collection of related WWW sites that are interlinked into a big loop or ring (hence the name). The idea is that once you've found one of the sites, you can find similar sites by following the ring of links.

Amateur Radio Webring Gateway - I'm not sure this site is even a member of a webring, but it does serve as an entry point (gateway) for several others.

Equipment

This is NOT a listing of what's in the club shack, but it will give you some clues. These links relate to equipment we own or use on a regular basis.

DC Power - a good supplier of PowerPole connectors from Anderson Power Products. Most of the club is standardizing the 12vdc wiring for all of our equipment upon this connector. This way, in an emergency, all of our equipment will be inter-compatible.
Astron Power Supply Schematics - The folks at Repeater-Builder.Com have Astron linear power supply schematics along with a bunch of other stuff. I have not found any on-line schematics for the switching supplies (yet).
[4-26-01] Sealed-Lead-Acid Battery Technical Handbook [PDF] - The folks at Power-Sonic have an excellent technical paper (in Acrobat format) on all aspects of SLA batteries. (from construction to charging)

FT-847 Home Page - reviews, mods, tips, links and a bulliten board devoted to the Yeasu FT-847 HF/VHF Transceiver.
[4-26-01] FT-847 E-mail Group - over 200 hams banded together via Yahoo Groups devoted to the Yeasu FT-847 HF/VHF Transceiver.
FT-847 FAQ - Jay (W1EMT) maintains a list of frequently asked questions about the Yeasu FT-847 HF/VHF Transceiver.
FT-847 SuperControl - computer software control program specifically designed for the Yeasu FT-847 HF/VHF Transceiver.
Kingsmith Software - another computer software control program for the Yeasu FT-847 HF/VHF Transceiver, only they intend to support several makes and models.

[4-26-01] IC-746 E-mail Group - almost 400 hams joined together via Yahoo Groups devoted to the Icom IC-746 HF/VHF Transceiver.
[6-01-01] IC-746 FAQ - Dana (KB9SSS) maintains a list of frequently asked questions about the Icom IC-746 HF/VHF Transceiver.

[6-06-01] Ten-Tec Virtual Museum - Paul (W8KC) maintains a wonderful collection

Resources

Is there such a thing as a perfect band chart? Probably not, but here are several attempts.

U.S. Amateur Radio Bands - home of the ARRL's color coded chart of bands, frequencies, and privileges.
US Band Plan [PDF] - Updated, two-sided, Y2K compliant, color coded, PDF chart of the U.S. ham bands brought to us courtesy of Icom. Now, if only ICOM would stop moving it around! This chart (in Acrobat format) has all HF/VHF/UHF bands on one side and misc info on the other side like common prefixes and such. Icom's older charts for the VHF/UHF Band Plan and the HF Band Plan seem to come and go. They are probably not long for this world.

What the following charts lack in flash, they make up for with detail.

ARRL Band Plan - a detailed, band by band listing of all U.S. amateur radio bands and their proposed frequency assignments.
IARU HF Band Plan - HF band plan as laid out by IARU region as well as by band/frequency. Knowing what part of the band other regions use might just make contacting them easier.
U.S. Frequency Allocation Chart - not just the ham bands, but a chart of ALL bands in the U.S. courtesy of the National Telecomunications and Information Administration

Computerized antenna modelling

Antenna Modeling - L. B. Cebik (W4RNL) has more information about antenna modelling than most of us will ever learn.

Grid square resources

US Grid Square Chart - Full color, two sided, grid square map of the U.S., complete with Alaska and Hawaii, brought to us courtesy of Icom. Now, if ICOM would just stop moving it!
Grid Square Locator - from ARRL WWW site

Misc

While not specifically related to amateur radio, these are generically useful sites for either hams or site visitors.

Tippecanoe County's WWW Site - what our county tells the world
City of Lafayette's WWW Site - what one of our city tells the world
City of West Lafayette's WWW Site - what our other city tells the world

Tippecanoe County - from Yahoo's point of view.
City of Lafayette - from Yahoo's point of view.
City of West Lafayette - from Yahoo's point of view.

Lafayette On-Line - everything(?) you'd ever find on Lafayette on the WWW

Lafayette Weather - The Weather Channel's rendition of the U.S. Weather Service forecast for our area.
Lafayette Weather - Yahoo's rendition of the U.S. Weather Service forecast. Yahoo also has an interesting variation where they try to predict weather conditions more than a month ahead with their Weather Planner

Special Thanks to Dana (KB9SSS) muck@mdbs.com for creating this page