NAQCC News

Aug 11, 2007	NAQCC Web Site		Issue #052

In this issue: 1. August Sprint. 2. July Challenge Results 3. Latest Bear Hunt News 4. General Club News 5. Member News

1. SPRINT: You've asked for it, and we've done it. We now have an on-line autologger here. It may be easier than using email or regular mail to submit your log. It's still in its testing stage, and there will be bugs to work out, I'm sure, but with your help we can make it work. Give it a try and report anything confusing or any bugs you find. You will be notified within a day if your log was received OK via this method. We are continuing our prize giveaway this month. For the second month now and continuing indefinitely we're giving away a set of books in CW on CD and a CW course on CD to the highest scoring MEMBER who hasn't won the CD's previously. Club officers (WY3H, K3WWP, W2LJ, KD2MX, K5DUZ, VA3RJ, and AA4W) are not eligible, nor are previous winners (K4BAI). The CD's are generously donated by Chuck K7QO. Thank you Chuck. In addition to the CD's we also have our usual array of goodies. Our Special Award certificate this sprint goes to the one making the highest score whose log contains calls beginning with each of the 4 letters assigned to the USA - A,K,N,W. For example working AF4LQ,K3WWP,N3IJR,WY3H would qualify you. Then of course, our usual certificates for 1st place in our two categories, or 1st and 2nd if we only have entries in one category. We also offer a nice certificate to the one making the highest score who has never won a certificate in any of our previous sprints. Those of you who have never won any kind of certificate in our sprints probably don't know what they look like, so here's an example. All the sprint certificates are similar with different wording for each achievement. So there is a lot to shoot for in this month's sprint. Let's see if we can break our record for number of logs submitted this month! If you use paper logging during the sprints, we have a log and summary form available for you to download and fill in with your text editor or you can transfer the info to our on-line form mentioned above. Download here - Form - Instructions. If you're entering one of our sprints for the first time, we welcome you and hope you will be a regular participant from now on. Full Sprint info here. 2. JULY CHALLENGE RESULTS: If you were on the bands at the right time, making 5 QSO's on 5 different bands was a very easy challenge. In fact it wasn't even a challenge at all. One member (VE3HUR) completed the challenge the first day of July and another (K3WWP) on the 2nd of July. If K3WWP hadn't been fishing and caught the 10 meters opening in the RAC contest on July 1st there would have been two members complete it the first day. W2JEK and K3WWP went above and beyond the call of duty. W2JEK made 5 QSO's on 7 bands, K3WWP on 6 bands. Others completing the challenge were KD2MX and KS4L. We welcome KS4L as a first-time challenge participant. Full challenge info here. 3. LATEST BEAR HUNT NEWS: From our Bear Master Ron, K5DUZ: If you have plans for operating portable during these last few days of summer, now is the time to sign up for the NAQCC Bear Hunt. Your fun in the woods will be increased by having Bear Hunters looking for you to appear on schedule. Just let us know the times/frequencies of your planned operations and we will line up the Bear Hunters for you! Thanks, Ron Full bear hunt info here. 4. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: - Tom has a very interesting concept for the club. He is still working on it as of writing this item, so all we can say is tune in to the next newsletter for details. It's something completely different and could be very beneficial to club members. - K3WWP - PLEASE if you have a web site, a listing on QRZ or other Internet presence, be sure to proudly display your NAQCC number with a link to the NAQCC site if possible. Remember if you want to make the link a bit more fancy, our logo is available in different sizes for download here. Many folks still don't know about the club and may find out through your web site or QRZ listing. Another thing you can do to publicize the club is to be sure to include your NAQCC number proudly in any signature you have for your ham radio related emails. Also of course on your QSL cards. Don't forget your eQSL card as well. - K3WWP - So far AE5BH is the only non-officer member who has expressed interest in operating our special call of N3A in October. Scott sounds very eager to do so, and rightfully so. If you've never operated a special 1x1 call before, let me tell you, it is a real joy to do so. It is also a great opportunity to plug the NAQCC to those you work that are not members. Perhaps I'm being selfish when I say I actually hope not too many of you express interest in operating N3A because that will give me all the more chance to have all the fun to myself. I still remember the blast I had last year. If you want to share that fun with me and the other officers and AE5BH, let us know before the end of August or you may be left out in the cold come October. - K3WWP - As we mentioned previously, Karl N3IJR donated a Hendricks QRP Kit - the DC40 transceiver - to be given away to some member. If this keeps up, we'll need an additional officer just to handle our prize giveaways. That's wonderful. The kit includes all components and a PC board, but an enclosure and plugs will have to be supplied by the winner. Tom and I decided we'll give it away in conjuction with our third anniversary in October. Tom wants to give it to the highest finisher in our October sprint who has never won a sprint 1st or 2nd place certificate or any of our oher physical prizes. - K3WWP - Continuing with the prize theme, remember this month we are starting our giveaway of a set of key paddle handles donated by Gregg, WB8LZG in conjunction with our challenges. This will continue at least through September 2008. They are just beautiful to look at, and anyone would be proud to have them on his or her paddle or bug. Having seen them in person so to speak, I can say that they appear even nicer than the pictures on Gregg's web site. - K3WWP - To keep track of all our many giveaways, we're posting a new page on the web site. Check it out here and make plans now for what you are going to try to win. - K3WWP - We're still awaiting the signing of our 2,000th member. As I write this on August 10, we're at 1986 members. Probably due to the summer doldrums, new member signing has been down somewhat recently. Those who made their guesses based on the projection from the past few months' signings are going to be dropping out of contention soon if the pace doesn't pick up. As a reminder here is how the guesses stand: Aug 3 - KC9LZK - eliminated Aug 12 - AE5BH Aug 14 - WU7F Sep 11 - NT9K Nov 30 - N3IJR The following submitted a guess but are not eligible to win or have requested we donate the CD to someone else if they win. Since we have enough qualified participants, we'll simply eliminate the following from the contest while still noting and appreciating W0CH's kind offer. Aug 14 - W0CH (donate) Aug 15 - WY3H (officer) Aug 31 - K3WWP (officer) Now we just have to wait for that memorable date to arrive. The three winners then will be notified via email as well as announced in the first newsletter after the date. The CD's will be sent as soon as possible after the date. - K3WWP - I'm sure you must realize by now if you didn't already know that I'm a nut for statistics and keeping records of things. I've been keeping track of how our NAQCC sprints compare with the early days of the ARS Spartan Sprints in terms of logs submitted or in their case number of reports filed. Here's a graph showing the comparison of the first 33 sprints for each organization. Thanks to KI4DEF for supplying the ARS statistics. I'm very proud of you, our members for getting us off to such a great start in our sprints. If we only required number of QSO's to be reported (and we never will) instead of complete logs, we probably would be even further ahead. That's very encouraging for the future, and I hope to see the day when we regularly get 80-90 or even more logs submitted as the ARS is doing now after 11 years of the Spartan Sprints. - K3WWP 5. MEMBER NEWS: This is YOUR section of the newsletter. We want to know what our members are doing with CW and QRP on the ham bands. We will only present POSITIVE news here. Brag about that new rare country you worked last week. Tell how you finally worked KL7 to finish your 40 meters WAS. Share your excitement in working halfway around the world to Australia with 100 mW. Tell us how you built that new little QRP rig or keyer paddle from scratch. Give us the URL to your brand new CW/QRP web site so we can all take a look. Do a review of your K1 you just finished building. I think those are enough examples to let you know what kind of news we want here. Basically anything POSITIVE that concerns CW and/or QRP. Nothing about other modes or QRO please. Send your news items to our news editor Paul KD2MX at . From Scott, AE5BH #1876 - 37 states worked, 31 confirmed at the writing of this article. After a few months of getting back into Ham radio and working 100% QRP and CW during sunspot minimum, I don't think that is too shabby. It is a lot more than I expected. Every new state I work is a thrill. But you might be suprised of the states I am missing. I have Montana and I also have North Dakota (twice!). Of course I still don't have Hawaii or Alaska, but I think that is going to take some creative directional adjustments to my wire antennas when I get down to those. I live in Texas, and I don't have Nebraska, nor Arakansas, nor Utah, nor Nevada. I am also missing most of New England, although I do have Maine. Now, I am a patient person, so I am not in a rush, but I do enjoy "hunting" stations. I really enjoy knowing when somebody is on the air and trying to work them... even if I have their state. I imagine it is the same thrill of chasing DX. It is the satisfaction of trying to work a station that I know is on the air. For me, in this sunspot minimum, every new state is like trying to work a DX station. I've learned a great deal of operating skill from hunting states. I've learned to listen! I've learned a bit more about propagation, which bands are open, and when. These skills are valuable and would only be obtained if I had a goal of working certain stations in certain areas. In a contest, you take what you can hear or hear you. But when you are hunting, you are trying to find that "rare" station. At least it is rare for you! I was a bit discouraged about the potential fate of the WAS Bear Hunts. It sounds like such a neat concept and one I am planning on taking advantage of. I don't have UTAH and UTAH is going active this week, hopefully that will make it 38 and growing! For those ops who do activate, remember, just because it's stateside, doesn't mean it isn't a hard to get state that somebody has been trying for. For those in the East Coast, Maryland might be your workhorse state, but for some of us a bit further down the interstates, it is a tough to get state! I thought for sure TX was an easy state to get, after all, we are huge and we have lots of hams... but then again, TX might be to you what Arkansas is to me! So, I am going to be a bear and do my part. Look for my call on the Bear Sked sometime in the near future. Even if I get one QSO from somebody who even has my state, then I'll consider it a success! Remember too that WAS is something that a lot of new ops, like myself, are after. What better way to help along a new operator than to help them make those long distance or rare Qs that are only acheiveable with the beautiful mode we call CW! I know for a fact, that if I were using SSB, I would not have been able to dig out a 2x QRP 419 QSO with Maine on 20m at 9pm like I did that one night.... From John, K3WWP #0002 - I try to participate in each and every one of our NAQCC activities since I think they are so important in helping in the fight to preserve CW on the ham bands. However I have been neglectful of our 'Activity Days' program. My only participation to date has been getting on 30M on the 30th of July. My CQ's yielded 3 QSO's so I at least did a little bit to help out. I hope in the future to be more active on our NAQCC Activity Days and I hope you will be also.

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