![]() | NAQCC News |
Nov 1, 2008 | NAQCC Web Site | Issue #081 |
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In this issue: 1. November Challenge. 2. October Sprint Results 3. Latest Award Winners 4. General Club News 4a. N3A Operation 5. Member News |
1. CHALLENGE: If it's November, then it must be time for the annual NAQCC Thanksgiving challenge. Yep, that's right. A standard alphabet type challenge with the target words dealing with Thanksgiving. This will be the 5th running of this always popular event as we enter our 5th year of the NAQCC. If you've never tried a challenge before, we invite you to give them a try. We're sure you'll like them. Full Challenge info here including a link to a worksheet example that makes our alphabet challenges a snap. ![]() 2. OCTOBER SPRINT RESULTS: With 20 and 40 meters shut down for a good part of the country, this sprint harkened back to the early days of the NAQCC when we had 80M-only sprints. As a result of basically just having one band to work with, our stats were down a bit this month, but all things considered, it was still a great turnout. Actually my 35 QSO's was one of my better sprints of late. 34 of the QSO's came from just sitting on 3559.5 and calling CQ. The other one came on a brief QSY to 3559.0 to answer a CQ from KA8MPT. Three of our N3A ops had some last minute misfortune and made a total of 1 QSO among the three. However otherwise even with the poor conditions, our N3A ops totalled 113 QSO's or about 1/5 of the total QSO's in our logs. Nice work! STATS - current month, previous month, all time record, mo/yr (blue indicates a record set this month): Oct Sep Rec Month Logs - 54 64 64 9/08 Stns in logs - 92 108 110 5/08 Hour 1 QSO's - 320 564 564 9/08 Hour 2 QSO's - 262 476 476 9/08 Total QSO's - 582 1040 1040 9/08 20M QSO's - 3 77 185 6/08 40M QSO's - 131 709 709 9/08 80M QSO's - 448 254 481 12/07 Autologger logs - 42 57 57 9/08WINNERS: 1st SWA East - K3WWP 1st SWA Central - W7JI 1st SWA Mountain - WB0OEW 1st SWA Pacific - W7IEX 1st N3A - N3A/2 (KD2MX) 1st Gain - W8FV Special Award (working most different N3A stns.) Drawing Entrants: K3WWP, W8FV, N3A/2 Drawing Winner: K3WWP 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 10 stations who didn't submit a log show up 5 or more times in the 54 logs we received and cross-checked. Hopefully those 10 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: AF1E, KA8HFN, W0EJ, W5AG, W7IEX, W7JI, W8FV Full sprint info here. ![]() 3. AWARD WINNERS THE PAST TWO MONTHS: NONE (very disappointing) We now have a nice incentive to work towards and earn our NAQCC awards thanks to Gregg WB8LZG. I'm sure you all know by now of his beautiful hand-crafted bug/paddle handles, and how we gave away 13 sets of them to participants in our monthly challenges. Now Gregg has designed some beautiful hand-crafted knob insets for the K1 and K2 rigs. If you own one of those rigs or are planning on purchasing one in the future, read on after you look at this picture of them. ![]() We're giving away 5 of Gregg's K2 knobs and 2 of his K1 knobs. You can win one by earning and applying for any TWO of the following NAQCC awards. It's first come, first served, so make haste. QSO-A-DAY 30-30 Alphabet Prefix Worked Members - Advanced Suffix Words See the 'Current' page in the 'Awards' section of the web site for rules for these awards. Only new applicants on or after October 1, 2008 are eligible. Full List of all award winners here. ![]() 4. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: ![]() ![]() Progress on the "Elmer Project" has been far slower than I had anticipated, due mainly to unanticipated personal business, work projects and finally Hurricane Ike. My apologies to everyone that has been looking forward to receiving some guidance from the NAQCC in learning Morse Code or improving their proficiency with it. Members may want to refer back to N/L 067 http://naqcc.info/newsletter_067.html for a brief description of where we are headed with the "Elmer Project". Currently we are begining to test and perfect some of the minor "tweaks" to the Koch method of learning Morse Code that we will be recommending. We are now asking for a few volunteers to help with the testing. We need two small groups of volunteers, those with little or no training and those that are "stuck" at ten wpm or less. Volunteers must be able to spend thirty minutes per day practicing and willing to provide us with weekly feedback on their progress. To volunteer, please e-mail "The Elmer Project" at ![]() In the meantime, the on-line book "The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy" at http://www.raes.ab.ca/TASRT/index.html is highly recommended reading. ![]() So if you're a FISTS member, count up those N3A/# band QSO's and check the N3A Special Event page for how to send in your report. ![]() ![]() ![]() 4a. N3A OPERATION FOR OCTOBER 2008: ![]() Not much more to say about the operation for now except thanks to all our ops including those who because of circumstances beyond their control weren't able to make any QSO's. All 25 of you deserve equal credit for being willing to help out your club in this endeavor. THANK YOU! Also thanks go to FISTS who helped out our operation by a co-operative agreement to include our N3A stations in their Fall Sprint as special bonus point stations. And finally thanks to all of you who worked our N3A stations. Don't forget to send in your info telling us how many you worked for the October challenge. Details in the Challenge section of the web site. ![]() 5. MEMBER NEWS: We all want to hear about your exploits using CW and QRP, and this is the place to post that info. So send the info to our news editor Paul KD2MX at ![]() ![]() ![]() Currently, I have my portable 40M doublet up on an MFJ mast at 30 feet and I'm having a great time making contacts about half the time during October as N3A/1 (I share the month with K1YAN, alternating every few days). My rig of choice is an Elecraft K2 which I built last Christmas. While the FISTS Sprint on October 11 was a dud due to terrible propagation, later that evening, and especially Sunday, October 12, conditions on 40M and 80M were fine for the PA QSO Party, with lots of stations to hunt down as I did S&P on Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday evening, October 14 here (October 15 UTC), conditions were quite good on 80M for the short time I had for the NAQCC Sprint, under my own call as it was K1YAN's turn to run N3A/1. I even got answers to a few CQs on 80M - unheard of the past few years on the indoor antenna! Wow! So, even with my temporary portable antenna outside, I'm looking forward to more N3A/1 operation for the rest of October, plus the coming season with ARRL SS CW and all the other great CW events coming up! I've been gathering stuff to get my benchwork completed in the new shack so I can unpack and setup all my gear, plus have a good sized area to build more gear (gotta start working on the backlog of little QRP kits and gizmos that have piled up)! And I hope to have a more permanent antenna, an 80M doublet that should be up at least 50 feet with any luck, in place by early November. I'll report back on my new launching system for getting lines over tree branches if it all works out well! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The publication of our next newsletter will be announced via email to all members for whom we have a valid email address unless you specifically have unsubscribed from the email. Past on-line newsletters beginning with issue #042 are now archived on the site. So if you missed seeing any past issues, you can check them out in the archives. 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. |