![]() | NAQCC News |
DEC 26, 2009 | NAQCC Web Site | Issue #109 |
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MERRY CHRISTMAS! In this issue: 1. January Challenge. 2. December Sprint Results 3. General Club News 4. Elmer Project 5. Latest Award Winners 6. News Items and Articles by Our Members |
1. JANUARY CHALLENGE: Tom WY3H is now in charge of all details relating to our challenges. If you can't find an answer to your question in the challenge rules or elsewhere on the club web site, contact him. Tom's choice of a challenge for January is an intriguing one. An item that always seems to be exchanged in a QSO is the weather including the current temperature. Tom challenges you to collect as many different temperatures as you can during the month. Submit your results at the end of the month listing the number of different temperatures you collected and the highest and lowest among your collection. All temps must be in Fahrenheit. A certificate goes to the one collecting the most temperatures, the highest temperature, and the lowest temperature. As you should do for every challenge, sprint, and award, read and understand the rules completely before you do anything. Here in the newsletters we just give a brief synopsis of the event. Full Challenge info here. ![]() 2. DECEMBER SPRINT RESULTS: Before getting to the results, remember there is a second sprint this month - our annual mW sprint, this time being held in December. It's this coming Thursday at 0130Z. We hope to see you there. Details as usual in the Contests/Sprints section of the web site. Now on to the results of our regular sprint. In looking back over our 60 plus sprints' results, for some reason December's seem to regularly have the poorest conditions of the year. This year was no exception. Except for the very Southeastern and Southern USA, conditions could be kindly described as horrible. As just one example (and there are many similar ones), K3WWP made 46 QSO's easily in November, but struggled mightily to get 13 QSO's in December. Still even with the horrid conditions our wonderful dedicated NAQCC members turned out in great numbers with 59 logs being submitted. Many of those took the time to submit a log even though they made only a few QSO's. A couple even reported making no QSO's at all, but wanted to say they were in there trying. I bet not many other clubs, if any at all, have the kind of great members that we do. And we appreciate it very much. Our stats show the conditions better than anything else we could say here so let's get to them. STATS - current month, previous month, all time record, mo/yr (blue indicates a record set this month): Logs - 59 71 71 11/09 Autologger logs - 53 66 66 11/09 Stns in logs - 91 110 110 5/08&11/09 Hour 1 QSO's - 225 486 564 9/08 Hour 2 QSO's - 174 533 533 11/09 Total QSO's - 399 1019 1040 9/08 20M QSO's - 1 2 209 6/09 40M QSO's - 151 424 720 5/09 80M QSO's - 247 593 593 11/09WINNERS: 1st SWA East - K4BAI 1st SWA Central - W5AG 1st SWA Mountain - WB0OEW 1st SWA Pacific - NU7T 1st Gain - n/a Special Award (homebrew from scratch rig) Drawing Entrants: KE9DR, W3TS Drawing Winner: KE9DR Congratulations to all including winners and non-winners. Actually everyone who participated and sent in a log is a winner because that shows the ham radio world that there are many folks still using and enjoying CW on the ham bands. That's one of our main goals here at the NAQCC. Very special thanks to those who reported their results even though they made only a few QSO's. Your reports are important also. We had a total of 6 stations who didn't submit a log show up 5-29 times in the 59 logs we received and cross-checked. Hopefully those 6 and many others will be back next month AND submit a log. Remember submitting a log doubles the strength of your statement that you support CW operation. We welcome these hams who submitted a sprint log for the first time. We hope they will continue to participate and report their results: W3RL, VE1RSM, KM6NN, W8GX, W4HH, K0MIS Full sprint info here. ![]() 3. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: ![]() 1. I will try to recruit at least one new member for the club each month. 2. I will try to participate in as many sprints and challenges as I can. 3. I will try to check into the NAQCC QRS net as often as conditions permit. 4. I will be sure that my NAQCC membership number is always mentioned in any ham radio related email that I send. 5. (for those with an Internet presence) I will talk up the NAQCC as much as possible on my web site, blog, etc. and include a link to the NAQCC web site somewhere on my site. 6. I will share my CW/QRP accomplishments with other club members by regularly submitting news items for the newsletter. 7. When I enter non-NAQCC events, I will mention the NAQCC prominently in my soapbox comments for those events. 8. If I write any kind of article about CW/QRP for any publication, I will mention the NAQCC prominently. 9. I will try to earn at least 3 different NAQCC awards, more if possible. 10. I will try to help out the club's Elmer Program by volunteering my services. 11. If I need help with any ham radio matters, I will contact the Elmer Program. 12. I will proudly display my NAQCC membership certificate on my shack wall. 13. I will show my gratitude to FISTS for their wonderful cooperation with the NAQCC by entering as many FISTS events as possible. 14. I will make a small donation to the club - either monetary or as a prize to be given away. That's a pretty wide selection to choose from, and we hope each member will adopt at least one or two choices to add to their resolution list. It will certainly help our club to become even greater than it is now, and you'll have fun and receive satisfaction from doing it. Thanks. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We often receive kudos for our work in keeping things updated as we do. Here's a quote from Charles KW6G (ex-WB6IYM): "John: You guys are impressive!!! The change just got posted yesterday around 8AM PST.....I haven't got around to changing over all the sites, just ARRL (they take 3 business days, can you believe it) and QRZ.com. Thanks for the updated certificate and sprint schedule....Participating in some of your sprints for 2010 is definitely on my New Years resolution list...Keep up the good work! Thanks again and Merry Christmas and Happy 2010!!" ![]() ![]() N8XMS - 9 K3WWP (ineligible) - 8 W2JEK - 7 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 4. ELMER PROJECT: Report from N3IJR: The NAQCC QRS Net meets Sunday evening at 8:30 Eastern time which is Monday at 0130Z on 3595 kHz. Please check in and help out. Everyone is welcome from the rank beginner to the seasoned veteran CW op. We need YOU to make our Elmer project work. If you need help with any ham radio matter or are willing to help others with your expertise, please contact our Elmer directors: K5DUZ - ![]() N3IJR - ![]() Also see Elmer Project on the web site. ![]() 5. AWARD WINNERS THE PAST TWO MONTHS: CERTIFICATES: NONE ENDORSEMENTS and/or WEB SITE LISTINGS: Alphabet Prefix Honor Roll: N8XMS - 224 - WORLD - 11/12 Suffix Words Honor Roll: N8XMX - 75 - SWA - 11/11 Worked Members: Basic: K3WWP - 600 - 11/1 Full List of all award winners here. ![]() 6. NEWS ITEMS AND ARTICLES BY OUR MEMBERS: This section is a forum for you to tell other members what you've been up to on the ham bands or to submit an article dealing with some aspect of CW and QRP operation or equipment. Send your news items and articles to our news editor Paul KD2MX at ![]() DISCLAIMER: Any views expressed in this section are those of the member submitting them, and may or may not be those of the NAQCC or its officers. ![]() ![]() In Nevada, a fiberglass pole travels with the radio due to Mother Nature's gracing us with beautiful landscapes rather than obscuring views with trees. But, California has trees. Lacking a suitable launching device, a green pine cone lifted one leg of the doublet. The 4 year old refused to climb the tree. The KX1 output of one and a half watts did limit the number of contacts. The final QSO brought more fun. I was 599 to KF6FIX, DG, to whom I immediately delivered an "Eye Ball QSL". He lives in the apartment next to our children. We had an interesting hour long chat, off the air. ![]() I didn't have a box for the finished rig so I laid it out on a single board with the plan of moving parts to fit the space of a future container. Using ugly construction techniques is fun because it is free form and very flexible for layout. First I wound all of the toroids to get that hard step out of the way. There are a variety of toroid winding techniques, my approach is simply to sew the wire through the hole and use a dab of rubber cement to hold the ends in place. Once the toroids were ready, I did a rough layout on a copper board and then built the RF chain followed by the keyer and T-R switch circuits. To my joy there were no sparks or smoke when I first powered it up. The drive is adjustable and the rig can easily put out 4 watts on 40M. I ran the rig at about 1 watt during the December sprint. Conditions that night were very poor and I did not make any QSOs with the rig that night; N8XMS and W5YDM were both on the air near 7.040 MHz, but none of us could hear each other. Next time I hope to have better luck. Figure 1. The ugly 40M board prior to adding the T-R circuit. Oscillator section is to the upper right and RF amplifier is to the lower right. Keying circuit is to the upper left. Coax is terminated with a 51 ohm dummy load. ![]() Figure 2. Measuring output power with my vintage VOM. Variable capacitor (near the top of photo) for the VXO was salvaged from an old tube AM radio. Output being measured during testing is about 50 mW. ![]() ![]() ![]() qsl-mapper-gadget. I put a working sample on my web server if you would like to test it: http://linkgen.net/mapping.html. ![]() ![]() |
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