![]() | NAQCC News |
Jun 6, 2009 | NAQCC Web Site | Issue #095_096 |
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In this issue: 1. June Sprints 1a. May Sprint Results 2. June Challenges 3. General Club News 4. Featured Award of the Month 4a. Latest Award Winners 5. The NAQCC Elmer Project 6. CW Cartoon of the Month 7. News Items and Articles by Our Members |
1. JUNE SPRINTS: Two sprints this month. Our regular monthly sprint will be this Wednesday, June 10th at the usual times of 0030-0230Z which turns out to be Tuesday evening for this part of the world. The special award for this sprint is for portable operation. Then as our participation in World QRP Day on June 17 we'll have a special 1 hour QRPp sprint that evening which turns out to be June 18 0000-0100Z when converted to UTC. As always, full details on our sprints can be found in the Contests/Sprints section of the club web site. Check there and read the rules completely before participating, especially the log submission rules. We get several logs each month that do not comply to standards and we (I) must take up a lot of time converting them to the format we need for our cross-checking procedures. ![]() 1a. MAY SPRINT RESULTS: A new record number of logs this month (65) containing some impressive results and one very close race. In the Eastern SWA division, N8BB with his w5gi mystery antenna at 50' beat out K3WWP and his attic random wire by just 4 points. K3WWP had 54 QSO's - 11 more than N8BB, but 4 fewer multipliers. Here now are the full statistics clearly showing the great turnout we had. I was surprised and a little disappointed in 20M here at my QTH, but 40M was fantastic and 80M quite good also. Overall 20 and 40 were great, but 80 had the fewest QSO's since last August. 40 and 20 should be quite good for the next few months with the longer daylight hours: STATS - current month, previous month, all time record, mo/yr (blue indicates a record set this month): May Apr Rec Month Logs - 65 64 65 5/09 &4/09 Autologger logs - 59 59 59 5/09 Stns in logs - 106 96 110 5/08 Hour 1 QSO's - 557 542 564 9/08 Hour 2 QSO's - 464 424 476 9/08 Total QSO's - 1021 967 1040 9/08 20M QSO's - 137 11 185 6/08 40M QSO's - 720 617 720 5/09 80M QSO's - 137 339 481 12/07WINNERS: 1st SWA East - N8BB 1st SWA Central - W7JI 1st SWA Mountain - NO2D 1st SWA Pacific - WA6L 1st Gain - K4BAI Special Award (first time entrants) Drawing Entrants: N8BB, K9IS, VE5BCS Drawing Winner: N8BB 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 7 stations who didn't submit a log show up 6-10 times in the 65 logs we received and cross-checked. Hopefully those 7 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: N8BB, VE3FUJ, WB1HJS, KA3NZR, K9IS, KT4FJ, NA7US, VE5BCS, KA1SAW, N6HE, W8BI Full sprint info here. ![]() 2. JUNE CHALLENGES: We're again having our traditional Field Day challenge this year, and as usual to complement it, a month long challenge as well. It's the Call Sign Construction challenge designed by Mike KC2EGL originally a couple years ago. It's an alphabet type challenge with the 'words' being members' call signs. We'll have the May challenge results in the next newsletter or you can simply check the Challenges section of the web site. As you should do for every challenge, sprint, and award, read and understand the rules completely before ![]() Full Challenge info here. ![]() 3. GENERAL CLUB NEWS: ![]() W4SEC says about our careful log checking procedures, "Hi John, Thanks for the correction. I pre set up a genlog file and save it with a bogus contact (can't save an empty file) and delete it at the end. I just forgot to correct the numbers..... Thanks for all of your efforts. 72, Pete" N8XMS about our challenges, "Thanks to all the creative people who come up with these great challenges and who work so hard to make the NAQCC such an outstanding club! 73 Paul" WY7N about the NAQCC in general, "Thanks again for putting together this club. I feel like a kid with my novice license again. It's more than fun. 73, Bruce" N9IV about his suggestion for a new club award which we will be announcing shortly, "Thanks for your prompt response. I'll look forward to applying to be the number 0001 recipient of the award. I appreciate your listening to me. Russ" N8XMS about the hidden callsign in the newsletter, "The hidden callsign in the newsletter is a great idea. It will be interesting to see how many people find their call. I had to read through the newsletter twice before I spotted the ******! To bad it wasn't mine :-) It's almost like doing a word-search puzzle. 73 Paul" K8BP about the newsletter, "I always look forward towards reading the NAQCC Newsleter. Great job I must say......Keep up the great work and have an enjoyable summer. Best 73' Clarke" VE3FAL on various matters, "As usual another great newsletter... I have to admit that I am one of those members who lurks in the background, but lacks the operating time that I used to have years ago. That means "Times They R a Changing" I also offered my time when the ARS ran the special call, just as the NAQCC has done, but due to certain rules and regs that was not allowed.... Great group, great club, keep up the good work. Fred" W1OH on our anniversary celebration in October, "....yes, I'm still on for the 5th anniversary operation! Keep me posted. And let's put in a request for excellent propagation for those 7 days in October!! 73, geoff" To be fair, I should also report the negative comments here, however there aren't any to report. I guess we must be doing something right at the NAQCC in our efforts to preserve and protect CW and QRP. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 4. FEATURED AWARD OF THE MONTH: - This month it's the QSO-A-Day Award. This award was suggested by K4UK and is based on K3WWP's making at least one daily QRP/CW/simple wire antenna QSO for over 5,400 consecutive days dating back to Aug 5, 1994 and still continuing. You don't have to go to that extreme to earn the award though. All you need to do is make 1 or more QSO's a day for various periods of time ranging from 2 months to a full year. Or you can make 2 or more QSO's a day for shorter periods of 1 month or any 30 consecutive days spanning 2 months. And you don't even have to use a simple wire antenna for every QSO like John does, although your QSO's must be CW/QRP of course. Any kind of QSO is acceptable with two exceptions. A regular sked with a station designed to keep the streak alive and a regular net check-in QSO do not count. As always, read and be familiar with the complete rules before embarking on earning this or any award. Full NAQCC Awards info here. ![]() 4a. AWARD WINNERS THE PAST TWO MONTHS: WA9KPI - 1000MPW # 0054 K2QPN - 1000MPW # 0055 K7HV - 1000MPW # 0056 VE6RI - 1000MPW # 0057 NU7T - 30-30 # 0007 (one month: April 2009) N8XMS - AlphaPrefix USA # 0007 K2QPN - DXCC # 0004 With the Suffix Award he earned in December, Paul N8XMS is now the second winner of a K1/K2 custom knob donated by Gregg WB8LZG. Paul has a K1 rig, and should be receiving the knob about the time this newsletter is posted. NU7T was our first winner. If you're not familiar with the knob giveaway despite the complete description on both the giveaway and awards pages on the web site, here is a brief synopsis. Gregg WB8LZG has donated a set of beautiful knob inserts for the K1 and K2 rigs. The Giveaways page in the main section of the web site has a picture. You can win one by earning and applying for any TWO of the following NAQCC awards. QSO-A-DAY 30-30 Alphabet Prefix Worked Members - Advanced Suffix Words Only new applicants on or after October 1, 2008 are eligible. Full List of all award winners here. ![]() 5. ELMER PROJECT: From Karl N3IJR - Hello from the QRS net and NAQCC Elmer Project. The QRS net is well under way now and we have had Seven Net nights so far. We have had 20 check In's and it has been a lot of fun. We are now meeting on 7.122.5 MHZ on Sunday evenings at 8:30 PM EST and even with band conditions not being the best Net Control has been able to dig out those QRP signals. Just wanted to say a word about checking in, DO NOT be afraid to check in! It really is easy. Listen for N3AQC/NAQCC QRS NET QRZ K and send your call Net Control will pick you up and we will exchange RST and name. Then net control will ask you to PSE AS (please stand by) and then we will try to see if anyone else is out there. Then net control will go back through the call up list and look for comments. It is great CW practice and lots of fun. If net control is sending to fast ask me to slow down, we are here to learn together. I wanted to thank our club President Tom, he is our back up for net control. I also must thank KC2NRQ/Jay for being faithful to all of the nets so far. So please join us on Sunday evenings even if you have this code thing down pat, we all need the practice and help. 73 Karl/ N3IJR net control If you are interested in helping out or need help with any CW and/or QRP matters contact: K5DUZ - ![]() N3IJR - ![]() Also see Elmer Project on the web site. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 7. 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 ![]() ![]() Here are some pictures of Tom setting up the equipment in the tent, Tom operating the HW-8 and me operating the HW-9. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I hooked the 725 up to my Cushcraft R7 vertical through a tuner that has a fairly wide matching range and turned the power down as far as it would go. I was easily able to make a contact with WD8Q in OH but a check with a watt meter showed that the lowest power that I could set the rig to was 8 watts - not quite QRP. I double checked with John, K3WWP, to see if the QSO would qualify and he confirmed my suspicions that it would not. After doing a little bit of internet and email list research I came across a clever idea to get that power down. It turns out that a small negative bias voltage applied to the ALC jack on the Icom will trick it into decreasing its output power. (The ALC jack is normally used with amplifiers to prevent overdriving of the amp.) I grabbed a 9-volt battery, a potentiometer, some resistors, and alligator-clip test leads and threw together a simple voltage dividing circuit to bias the 725s ALC. It looked like a rats-nest but it worked! I got the power down to about 4 watts and answered a CQ from WA2TDL in NY. It turns out that he was running QRP as well. Conditions were not too good but we were able to exchange all of the vitals and complete a QSO - and I had my 4th band! ![]() ![]() ![]() I Used my DK9SQ push up tower, a folded 20 meter dipole (abt. 30 feet), my MFJ 9020 (5W), my MK-44 paddles and a homebrew battery pack. I set up right on the beach. The darn mosquitoes were fierce as the air was very still and muggy (very unusual for that area). I had to recess a few times to re-dose myself with insect repellant. I was grateful to so many who had gone out of their way to try to work me. I was astonished to hear KG4FXG (Bill) calling me when I came up on frequency! Bill was my first contact and he called me! (Those Kentucky/Georgia NTS guys are hard to beat!). WA9AQN (John), NC9T (Dan) & NS9F (Gene) were close behind representing 9RN/ILN. I worked a total of 27 stations including UA9CK/Anatoly, JH2QLC/Shiba & HA5KF/Fred. It took me about two weeks to get a special photo QSL made and out to all I worked. I was very appreciative to all for providing me with a great time on the beach! I learned that posting exact operating times / dates and frequency on the QRP-L and other places really pays off. I also learned how to manage a small pile up. Great fun. Portable QRP is just awesome! ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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