![]() | NAQCC News |
Nov 15, 2008 | NAQCC Web Site | Issue #082/083 |
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In this issue: 1. November Sprint. 2. October Challenge Results 2a. December Challenge 3. General Club News 4. CW Cartoon of the Month 5. Member News |
1. SPRINT: Our sprint is this Wednesday evening, November 19th 8:30-10:30 PM EST (Thursday 0130-0330Z). In the summer of 2007, Stan K4UK sent us a picture of a homebrew straight key which immediately triggered the thought, "That would make a great idea for a sprint special award." So in November of 2007 we held our first homebrew straight key special award sprint. It turned out to be very popular, and gave the proud builder and owner of a homebrew straight key a chance to show off their skills by sending in a picture of their key which was included in their soapbox comments. Obviously I'm leading up to this month's sprint being the second annual sprint with a homebrew straight key special award. This year there is an additional incentive besides the pride in being able to build and use a straight key. A $25.00 gift certificate from "Uncle Cy, the LED guy" K1TES #0911 who sells LED's and QRP parts will be given to the winner of a drawing among EVERYONE who uses a homebrew key as described in the sprint rules and also on the Giveaways page in the main section of the web site. This year, you must have designed and built the key yourself, not use one built by someone else. 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 welcomed W7JI, W0EJ, AF1E, W5AG, W7IEX, KA8HFN, W8FV as first time participants and/or log submitters. Remember this is only a brief overview of the coming sprint. Be sure to read and understand the full general sprint rules and any specific rules for this month's sprint here. ![]() 2. OCTOBER CHALLENGE RESULTS: Probably the easiest of all our challenges is our annual N3A October challenge. All you needed to do was to either volunteer to operate N3A and make at least one QSO, or make at least one contact with an N3A station. However, the challenge was not automatic. In addition to doing what I described, you must have SEPARATELY notified us that you mastered the challenge. It wasn't enough to send in a log as an N3A operator or show up in one of the N3A logs. We had a total of 17 claims received from those who mastered the challenge - 6 from N3A ops, and 11 from those who worked an N3A station. Each of the six ops (KD2MX, K3WWP, KC2EGL, WY3H, K1YAN, W1OH) and the member who worked the most different N3A/# stations (K3WWP with 7) will be getting a certificate. ![]() 2a. DECEMBER CHALLENGE: - Because this is a combined issue (see General Club News below), we are also including a 'promo' for our December challenge here. Ever since the club was founded in 2004, one of the most popular type of activity seems to have been something dealing with rag chewing. So as we've done every December, again we have a rag chew type challenge. We'll give a certificate to the three members who make the most 20 minute or longer rag chews during the month. I know, I know, rag chews are more or less standardized as being 30 minutes or longer, but remember, the NAQCC is the club with a difference, so for this challenge, a rag chew is 20+ minutes. We're taking a brief break in our prize giveaways in a challenge, but that will resume in January with the giveaway of a RockMite kit, enclosure, knobs, and a set of crystals for the 40 meter band. Full challenge info including my tutorial/work sheet for our alphabet style challenges here. ![]() 3. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: - This is the second of two combined issues of our newsletter this year. Because of the innovative scheduling of our sprints, it sometimes happens that the sprint newsletter and the end of the month newsletter come just one week apart. That just involves too much work in too short a time for everyone involved in putting out the newsletter. So whenever the two issues would come just a week apart, we are eliminating the end of month issue and combining the material that would go into that issue with that of the sprint issue. HOWEVER, there will be a special edition of the newsletter on November 29th. This 'EXTRA' edition will contain a complete history of the NAQCC written by club president Tom WY3H, and club vice-president John K3WWP. We originally intended to publish this in our anniversary month of October, but the article just kept growing and growing as we thought of more details to be added. So we decided to make it a special issue unto itself. It's amazing how this little club of maybe 50 members at the most as first conceived has grown into the largest QRP/CW club in the world with just a few short of 3,000 members at this time. Maybe we'll hit 3,000 by the time of the special issue. Wouldn't that be nice! So go recruit us some new members in the next couple weeks, and we'll make it. ![]() ![]() N3A/1 - W1OH (MA), K1YAN (MA) N3A/2 - N2JNZ (NY), W9VES (NJ), KD2MX (NJ) N3A/3 - WY3H (PA), K3WWP (PA), AF3Z (PA), AE3J (DE), KC2EGL (PA) N3A/4 - K4UK (VA), KB4QQJ (NC), AA4W (FL), W4ONC (VA) N3A/5 - W5TM (OK), AE5BH (TX), WA5TCZ (LA) N3A/6 - K6BBQ (CA) N3A/7 - KH6OZ (MT), WY7N (UT) N3A/8 - WB8LZG (MI), K8KFJ (WV), KB2FEL (WV) N3A/9 - K9JWI (IN), AI4AW (WI) N3A/0 - AB0TX (KS) Total QSO's - 1,598 160M - 1 80M - 550 40M - 702 30M - 71 20M - 205 15M - 2 CA QSO Party - 182+ FISTS Sprint - 167 PA QSO Party - 328 NAQCC Sprint - 113 QRP ARCI - 126 States worked by our ops - 49 (all but Montana) Provinces worked - BC, NL, NS, ON, QC DX worked - EI, F, G, HP, I, S5, XE, YN Considering the propagation conditions and the fact all our QSO's were made with QRP power, we think this operation stacks up very favorably with other special event stations and is a credit to our wonderful members. Although we only listed contests and sprints in which over 100 QSO's were made, there were also other contests and sprints during the month that had fewer QSO's. Making over 100 QSO's in five sprints and contests during the month was great. ![]() ![]() Other than that though, our award applications continue to come few and far between for whatever reason. Perhaps our members believe the propaganda that the bands are really horrible and it's impossible to work anyone but your next door neighbor. That's just not true. The lower frequency bands (160,80) are as good now as they ever get. 40 and 30 have good and bad days, mostly good. 20, as one of the more popular bands is fairly good as is 17 from time to time. 15, 12, and 10 can be very good at times but not on an every day basis at this point in the sunspot cycle. Why the bands sound worse than they are is because everyone listens, and no one transmits. Naturally in that situation, the bands are going to sound dead. We keep hammering this into people's heads and I'll do it again here - IF YOU HEAR NOTHING ON A BAND, CALL CQ - NOT JUST ONCE, BUT MANY TIMES. In most situations unless the band is really dead, you'll be surprised at how easily you'll get a QSO that you can apply toward one of our beautiful award certificates. ![]() ![]() We've also been getting a regular supply of photos and bios of those members desiring to be honored as NAQCC member of the month. We currently have 2 members per month scheduled through the end of January, but that time will be here quickly, so keep the pix and bios coming, please. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 5. MEMBER NEWS: Send your news items to our news editor Paul KD2MX at ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It still truly amazes me what can be accomplished by using only 5 watts or less of transmitting power. ![]() ![]() |
The publication of our next newsletter will be announced via email to all members for whom we have a valid email address unless they specifically have unsubscribed from the email. Unless otherwise credited, all items are written by K3WWP. If you came directly to this newsletter, we invite you now to browse the NAQCC Web Site. |