![]() | NAQCC News |
August 9, 2008 | NAQCC Web Site | Issue #076 |
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In this issue: 1. August Sprint 2. July Challenges Results 3. Operating Tips 4. General Club News 4a. N3A Update 5. CW Cartoon of the Month 6. Member News |
1. SPRINT: Our sprint is this Tuesday evening, August 12th at 8:30-10:30 PM EDT (Wednesday 0030-0230Z). This month's special award was suggested by Paul N8XMS. It is for using a vintage (pre-1939) straight key. The SA will be awarded by drawing among the top scorers from each of our sprint divisions who use such a key. There are also the other usual prizes and certificates topped off by our monthly giveaway of a CW book on CD donated by Chuck K7QO. Chuck is currently giving away one CD to the high scorer who hasn't won a CD before. As with the special award, the CD is awarded in a drawing among the top qualifiers from each of our sprint divisions. There is now a list of all the current CD's available in the General Sprint Rules. Club officers are not eligible for the CD's. Our autologger has speeded up reporting of results so much we have now changed our log submission deadline. The deadline from now on will be 2400Z on the Sunday following the sprint. The log must be RECEIVED by that time. We may make allowances for regular mail entries if they have been postmarked early enough but may have been delayed in the mail system. 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. Remember this is only a brief overview of the coming sprint. Be sure to always read and understand the full general sprint rules and any specific rules for the current month's sprint. Complete sprint results and rules always can be found here. ![]() 2. JULY CHALLENGES RESULTS: Randy KB4QQJ's poker challenge turned out to be very popular. We had many favorable comments on it, both privately and in the soapbox. We most certainly will re-run this one at a later date. We will adjust the points value for each hand for the next running based on how many of each hand were made this time. The odds of making hands with call sign prefixes definitely varied from the odds of making hands with a regular deck of playing cards. There are still two full days left before the results are final, but so far we've had 11 reports submitted with K3WWP and N1LU leading the way to get the two certificates we are awarding to the two top scorers. Full challenge info and final results (after August 10th) including my tutorial/work sheet for our alphabet style challenges here. ![]() 3. OPERATING TIPS: Every once in a while a writer gets bored or gets into a devilish mood or for some other reason he puts a bit of mis-information in his writing just to see if anyone will notice and mention it to the writer. I'm afraid I plead guilty to doing that in our last newsletter. I said 73 meant 'Best wishes' instead of 'Best regards', and hey, someone did notice and mention it. Thanks Don W4DON. You're a good observer. Don also thought I should have mentioned that Q signals are only for use on CW, not phone. I thought that was just too overly obvious to mention, but maybe I was wrong, so I've now mentioned it. OK enough fooling around. Let's get down to tips now with the reminder that Ron K5DUZ and Karl N3IJR should be starting up the NAQCC Elmer project before too much longer. I'm looking forward to what they have to offer to newcomers. Many members seem to be finding our sprints a good way to get some contest training, so let's talk about the proper (or best) way to operate our sprint. These tips also apply equally well to other contesting as well. The key word in contests is BREVITY. You don't have to send at 40-45 WPM to be brief. Those just starting in contests sending maybe 10 WPM or less can be brief equally well. The briefer you are, obviously the more time you have to make contacts. If you can complete a contact in 15 seconds, based strictly on time consumed, you can make 4 times as many contacts as someone who takes a full minute to complete a contact. Therefore, keep everything short. Look at the following example of a complete exchange between K3WWP and WY3H. The blue text is what is sent by each station. K3WWP - CQ NA K3WWP WY3H - WY3H K3WWP - WY3H 569 PA 2 WY3H - TU 599 PA 1 K3WWP - TU CQ NA K3WWP and so on The very minimum of info. The TU's (Thank yoU) are not necessary but I personally believe in being polite in contests no matter how frantic they are. Let's look at each exchange briefly. The CQ is simply CQ NA K3WWP with a pause to listen for about 5 seconds for a response. If no one answers, you call again and keep that pattern until you do get an answer. To answer a CQ all you do is send your call (WY3H), nothing more. K3WWP then sends WY3H's call so he knows who K3WWP answered and then sends his info 569 (RST) PA (SPC) 2 (NAQCC NR) WY3H says thanks and sends his info 599 PA 1 K3WWP says thanks and continues his CQing til the next answer. Even at 10 WPM the full exchange probably takes only 30-40 seconds or so. Learn that procedure and you'll be set for even the biggest contests since that is how they are done also. More tips can be found on the web site here. ![]() 4. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: - The big news this week is our wonderfully successful recruitment drive. Paul KD2MX wrote an excellent recruitment letter and Dave VA3RJ emailed it to virtually every email list and other sources that have an interest in QRP and/or CW. As a result we added 115 (so far) new members in a two day period. The drive was done in an effort to reach those hams who have an interest in CW/QRP, but for one reason or other never found out about the NAQCC until now. It was also done to recruit those hams who may have gotten the wrong impression that our club is only for dedicated QRP/CW operators. The fact is that we welcome anyone who has even the slightest interest in CW and/or QRP. They must understand however that all club activities are designed for QRP/CW. We do not have any QRO events, nor events for any other mode but CW. Of course as stated in our sprint rules since the beginning, anyone may enter at any power level, but they are not eligible for any awards or certificates if they operate more than 5 watts output. Also we want the QRO operators to be considerate of the QRP ops if they do enter our sprints. One very strong QRO station can create havoc amongst a group of QRP stations trying to work each other. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 4a. N3A UPDATE: - Thanks to those who have signed up to be N3A ops so far. Our special event call has now been approved and we're ready to go in October. We still need ops from the following call areas though: 2, 5, 6, 8. Here's who we have as ops so far: N3A/1 - W1OH (MA), K1YAN (MA) N3A/2 - N3A/3 - WY3H (PA), K3WWP (PA), AF3Z (PA), AE3J (DE) N3A/4 - K4UK (VA) N3A/5 - N3A/6 - N3A/7 - KH6OZ (MT) N3A/8 - N3A/9 - K9JWI (IN), AI4AW (WI) N3A/0 - AB0TX (KS) I'm a bit disappointed that only WY3H and K3WWP have signed up among those who operated N3A last year. We hope to hear from more of you who said you had so much fun last October and did such a great job then. How about it? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 6. MEMBER NEWS: Send your news items to our news editor Paul KD2MX at ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |