NAQCC News

Dec 8, 2007	NAQCC Web Site		Issue #060

In this issue: 1. December Sprint. 2. November Challenge Results 3. General Club News 4. CW Cartoon of the Month 5. Member News

1. SPRINT: Our sprint is this Tuesday evening, Dec. 11th at 8:30-10:30 PM EST (Wednesday 0130-0330Z). Who among our participants in this sprint has been licensed the longest time?...the shortest time? We hope to find out and award a certificate to both persons. That's our Special Award for this month's sprint. All you need do is tell us when you received your first ham license and we'll do all the figuring. If you use the autologger, and we hope you do, Select 'Yes' in the Special Award eligibility box and put the date of your first license in the Special Award data box. I'm looking forward to processing over 50 logs this time. We got 44 for our last sprint despite it being Thanksgiving eve. This month their is no such conflict. In fact there is not even a conflict with an SKCC sprint since they have finally re-scheduled their sprints to the 4th Wednesday of a month. So unless you have work or other commitments, there's no excuse for missing this one and having a ton of fun. There are the usual prizes and certificates topped off by our monthly giveaway of the CW books on CD donated by Chuck K7QO who also is including his wonderful CW learning/improvement course on CD. There are currently 12 books included in Chuck's offer valued over $100 normally but given free this month to a member drawn at random from among all who are qualified (no officers nor previous CD winners) and make and report at least 5 QSO's in the sprint. See the complete specifics in the December sprint rules. When the sprint is over, please submit your results and log via our autologger. We've got it working perfectly no matter what browser/operating system you use. Last sprint of the 44 reports received, 34 came via the autologger along with many comments how easy it is to submit a report that way. If you use paper logging during the sprints, there's our log and summary form with instructions for you to download and fill in with your text editor to email to us or you can transfer the info to our autologger mentioned above. If you use GenLog for the sprint, be sure to get the latest GenLog data file here. After the sprint, use the 'Log' menu - 'Write ASCII log [K3WWP.log]' selection to create your log, and submit the K3WWP.log file via the autologger, email, etc. Of course obviously your log will have your call in the menu choice and log file name, not K3WWP. 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. Last month we had 6 hams who submitted a log for the first time ever: KB4QQJ,KU4GW,WB8ENE,W4ONC,N4NI,N8CX. Full Sprint info here. 2. NOVEMBER CHALLENGE RESULTS: It is so gratifying when you work on something so hard and finally see it become successful. I think that is true of our NAQCC challenges. For three years now, our challenges only seemed to interest a few members, mostly the same ones each month. However, I noticed a real change in our November challenge, both from the number of reports and the soapbox comments. For example please read N9AKF's comments about the challenge in the member news below. Perhaps that will make you re-think our challenges and lead you to participate if you haven't done so yet. I think our challenges are really starting to catch on now. I hope that continues. Although the deadline for submitting your November challenge report is still a couple days away, we've already received reports from 13 folks who made all the words and 3 others who made at least one of the words to qualify for a participation point. We'll have the final results in the end of December newsletter when we announce the January challenge. Of course our drawing for the bug/paddle handles donated by Gregg WB8LZG still has to be held also. We'll also announce the winner in the next newsletter. You can see examples of the handles on Gregg's web site. Full challenge info including my tutorial/work sheet for our alphabet style challenges here. 3. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: - Since it is only one week since our last newsletter, there is not much in the way of club news for this issue other than to remind you that we will be holding our annual 160M sprint on the 25th of January (UTC). Info on that special sprint has just been posted in the Contests/Sprints section of the web site. - I don't understand why as of this date only a couple folks have expressed interest in the following giveaway, so I'm repeating the info here. Let's not embarrass Karl and Gregg by turning our backs on their generosity. Perhaps you misunderstood step one. We want your email notification NOW, not after you make the qualifying sprint QSO's. After we know you are interested, we'll watch for your reports in the Dec and/or Jan sprints. The winner of the QRP Transceiver Kit in our October sprint (Gregg WB8LZG) has decided that since he already has several QRP rigs for 40 meters, he is re-donating the kit to be given away again. He has also added a printout of the complete assembly instructions and an enclosure for the rig. To refresh memories, it's a Hendricks QRP transceiver kit, the DC40 for 40 meters. Thank you Gregg for your thoughtfulness. Here is how the giveaway works: 1) Email stating you are interested in winning the kit. The subject of the email should be "QRP kit" and the body of the email should state that you would like to win the kit and include your call and NAQCC number. 2) Make a combined total of at least 5 QSO's in our Dec 2007 and Jan 2008 sprints. 3) If you currently don't have any kind of HF rig at all with which to satisfy step 2, send a statement to that effect to the email address in step 1, and the QSO requirement in step 2 will be waived in your case. All who thus qualify according to the three steps will be entered into a drawing near the end of January to select the winner. Full giveaway info here. - Thanks to suggestions for our challenges submitted by you, our members - in particular KC2EGL, VE3HUR, and KB4QQJ - I've now posted rules for our challenges through June 2008 and am working on July's which should be posted shortly. There's a real variety of challenges for you to choose from in 2008. If you can't participate in them all, I'm sure a couple at least will really appeal to you personally in one way or another. - Because of our squeezed schedule of these past 3 newsletters it is now only a day after the publication of our previous newsletter as I write this. That hasn't given any more of you a chance to send in your picture for our gallery as we've described the past couple issues. I hope the coming days will find some more pictures in my email inbox. If you're into digital photography, it is so very simple to do. Just take a picture of yourself and email it to us. Your face should be at least 120x120 pixels if you know about such things. If not, just make your face as large as possible. Large pictures reduce nicely, but small pictures look pretty bad after being enlarged in most cases. C'mon now, don't be bashful. - I know there are many different religions represented among our 2100+ members, but most all have one thing in common - some kind of celebration this time of year related to their particular religion. Our wish from the officers of the NAQCC is that each of you has one of the best such celebrations of your life this year as well as a wonderful 2008. It's also a good time to say thanks to each and every one of you for your support of the NAQCC making it the largest and best QRP/CW club in the world. We hope you will continue your wonderful and dedicated support to help us become even bigger and better in the coming years so we can enlarge our part in helping to keep CW alive and well on the ham bands. - One of the easiest ways to support our club is to simply display your affiliation with the club wherever you can. Some places that come to mind are on your QSL card (both your regular mail card and your eQSL card), on your web site if you have one, in your ham related email signature, on any ham related postings you make anywhere on the Internet,..... I'm sure there are more I haven't listed here also. There are many life-long QRPers who have not joined the NAQCC, and the only reason I can figure out for that is they haven't heard about it, despite the tons of publicity we have gotten, and continue to get. Maybe one of those folks will see the info you provide and sign up. Should you want to promote the club in a little more fancy way, our logo is available in different sizes for download here. - The NAQCC newsletter brings results. Lor F8BBL reports a couple of new sign-ups for his QRP Challenge after I mentioned it in our last newsletter. - To check the current status of all the giveaways the NAQCC has going, see here and make plans now for what you are going to try to win. 4. CW CARTOON OF THE MONTH: Let's take a comedy break now courtesy of Dick Sylvan W9CBT. Dick has been a long-time QRP/CW operator who recently joined our club. One of his many talents is being a cartoon artist, and he is supplying a cartoon each month for the newsletter. The NAQCC is very honored to become the third organization to feature Dick's cartoons in their publications. Dick's cartoons appear monthly in The K9YA Telegraph, an on-line only Ham Radio E-zine and also in RadCom Magazine, the British Ham Radio publication. Dick has also authored a book entitled "Hi Hi - A Collection of Ham Radio Cartoons" available via his web site at http://www.k9ya.org/w9cbt/ A new cartoon will be appearing in each of our 'before the sprint' newsletters. Those are the ones with the even numbers, and this one qualifies so here we go. Now back to the news after you stop chuckling. 5. MEMBER NEWS: Thanks to your news submissions, this is becoming a very popular section of the newsletter. We hope you will continue telling us of your QRP/CW doings and including the wonderful pictures as well. Remember we only accept POSITIVE news here unlike the TV newscasts. There is so much that is wonderful going on in the world, it's a shame only the negative is emphasized in so many places. Send your news items to our news editor Paul KD2MX at . From Bart N9AKF #1252 - This was the first time that I've attempted the Thanksgiving word challenge. I've seen this challenge in years past, but always figured it would be difficult to make all of the words. On the 13th of November, I went through my log book up to that date and was surprised to find that I already had completed three words without even trying! For the rest of the month I made an effort to work stations with remaining letters that I needed. I completed Mayflower, Squanto & Venison, all except for the "O". Alas, the combination of poor band conditions (when I had time), too many holiday activities, and lack of more days in the month overtook my hunt for the elusive "O". Well, there's next year. And if this year's experience is any indication, it really won't take a lot of effort to complete the list. I thoroughly enjoy this type of challenge. There is the immediate gratification for every new letter that is found and each new word that is completed. Plus the added sense of purpose to turning on the radio and calling CQ, or just listening around and trying to work stations with the desired letters. I also like the self-paced and non-competitive nature of this challenge. Next year I'll get my venison! From John K3WWP #0002 - I had a great time in the ARRL 160M contest. Conditions were great and I wound up with 181 QSO's from 38 sections with my 5 watts and attic random wire. That's the best I've done since 1996. 160M is definitely a non-conformist band. It's best propagation conditions come at sunspot minimums, not maximums. There's a full story of my contest on the web site so I won't repeat that here. I'll just remind you that there are other 160M events coming up in the next couple months including the W1BB contest later this month and our NAQCC 160M sprint and the CQWW 160M contest in January. This will probably be the best 160M season until the next sunspot minimum, so make plans to enter these events. 160M, QRP, and simple wire antennas do work well together, especially now.

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