"The 1960s Pop-Rock Music and TV Shows Net" Roundup

April 2010

The weather in April, like most other Aprils, was rather normal with periods of lovely cool temperatures and some very warm highs with a lot of wind. It is certainly that time of the year when Mother Nature is torn between winter and summer and can't seem to make up her mind which it should be.

As for The 1960s Pop-Rock Music and TV Shows Net, participation was down some from previous months with some members, shall we say, "disappearing from the proverbial radar screen". I know some of our Net participants have work schedules that seem to conflict with the Net on Wednesdays while others are dealing with various situations at home. It is my hope that in the months ahead, participation will increase to levels of 2008 when the Net first took to the airwaves. Net members - please try and recruit some new stations so that there are a viable number of check-ins each week to keep the Net more interesting and engaging. Remember, without your participation, there is no Net!

The Net was conducted all four Wednesdays of the month with moderate-to-low participation. A total of 11 stations checked in at least once or more during the month. There were two stations with Perfect Attendance during April - K7UNL (Bob in Scottsdale) andK7DMF (Dave in Vail). Thank you, Bob and Dave for being on the Net each week!

The second and third weeks of the Net were very difficult to host as a result of an extremely high static noise level making communications anywhere from very hard to impossible. At first everyone was convinced that high winds throughout the state were responsible for the difficult operating conditions, but, in checking with N7EOJ (Budd in Tucson and the repeater owner), high winds were apparently NOT the cause; rather, military communications eminating from the Tucson area precipitated the noise. According to Budd, there is apparently little hope of resolving the noise issues with the government. So, we will do the best we can in terms of dealing with this periodic problem and go from there.

As always, there were a lot of interesting and challenging trivia questions covering both 1960s pop-rock music and TV shows. The three featured segments of the Net, "This Week In 1960s Rock and Roll History", "#1 Hits For The Week Of.....", and "This Week In 1960s Television History", continued to be an integral part of the Net each week.

I would again like to encourage all our '60s Net participants to actively recruit some new members as we move further into the year. As we all know, weekly participation historically dips during the upcoming summer months. We have a terrific core group of Net members, but it is imperative that to sustain the Net over the long term, other hams, too must be invited into the fold. The Net could be moved to a more popular band such as 70 CM or 2 M where there is a much greater pool of potential participants, however, this is not keeping in line with the primary reason for starting the Net when it first began in June 2008 - to encourage and promote the use of the 1.25 M band, lest we lose it to commercial interests.

Until next month, I hope to hear you on the Net each week as we relive those very memorable days of the 1960s. I'll see you on Wednesday, and until then, "stay young and keep the '60s alive!"

73',

John N7LQR

Maricopa, AZ