Month: September 2006

GYFWW Score Sheet


Score=225 18 7 11 8
DATE TIME CALL E N RST
SENT		 RST

RCVD

 NAME QTH FISTS# PWR LIC YR BAND
9/15/2006 1:50 K1LOG N 589 579 Herb ME 12159 4 40
9/15/2006 15:40 AA4TB E 599 599 Tommy SC 12494 61 40
9/15/2006 23:19 K5CQB N 599 559 Jim TX 11703 3 20
9/16/2006 1:50 KG4W E 599 599 Ed VA 12448 77 80
9/16/2006 2:25 N5RDN   N 599 599 Rob TX 11984   5 40
9/16/2006 3:02 KO4ZS   N 599 569 Paul GA   25 91 80
9/16/2006 3:19 KC2LSD   N 599 599 Cody NJ 11793   3 80
9/16/2006 3:45 K2ZR E   599 599 Dick NY   50 50 80
9/16/2006 4:01 K4WFM E   599 599 Frank GA 10245   57 80
9/16/2006 4:42 K8NVR E   599 599 Ed OH 7957   0 80
9/16/2006 5:10 VE3HUR E   599 559 Don ON 11349   75 80
9/16/2006 12:25 KG4RRT   N 579 579 Bill FL 9503   2 40
9/16/2006 13:25 KC2OJZ   N 599 579 Larry NJ   100 5 40
9/16/2006 15:55 K1LOG   N 559 559 Herb ME 12159   2004 20
9/16/2006 20:10 N5RDN   N 569 599 Rob TX 11984   2005 20
9/17/2006 12:45 WB2LOS E   599 559 Mike NY 6178   77 40
9/17/2006 21:00 KC9DSE   N 569 559 Jim IN 10401   2 40
9/17/2006 21:25 N5RDN   N 599 599 Rob TX 11984   2005 20

BT, AR, es K

BT &nbsp &nbsp Break in text. Used as a separator between thoughts or a pause. Also something good to send when your mind goes blank or you are talking to someone in your shack, etc.

WX IS CLDY BT AGE HR IS ….

AR &nbsp &nbsp End of message. Use when you are through sending info, and turning it over to the station you are working. Also used when answering a CQ.

blah, blah, blah, hw? AR KB3BFQ DE K3WWP K. – or – To answer KB3BFQ’s CQ, KB3BFQ DE K3WWP AR

K &nbsp &nbsp Go ahead. Used to tell the station you are working you expect him to transmit now. Use after a CQ to invite someone to answer you. Do not use K after you answer someone’s CQ since you don’t know he is going to answer you, use AR.

HW? AR KB3BFQ DE K3WWP K

Sep 21, 2006 80/40/20M Straight Key/Bug Sprint

See General Sprint Rules for rules common to every NAQCC sprint [http://www.arm-tek.net/~yoel/sprintrules.html]

RULES specific to this month’s sprint:

Date and time:
Thursday, Sep 21, 0030-0230 UTC
(Remember that’s Wednesday evening here in the USA)

Bands Used This Month:
80 meters, 40 meters, and 20 meters

Special Award:
For the most QSO’s with Canadian stations.

Entry Deadline:
All entries must be RECEIVED before 2400Z on Sep 27, 2006. So submit as soon as possible, especially regular mail entries.

Results (to be posted after the entry deadline):

SWA Category
Call QSOs Mbrs Pts Mul Sco Bonus Final Awd 80-40-20 Antenna

GAIN ANTENNA Category
Call QSOs Mbrs Pts Mul Sco Bonus Final Awd 80-40-20 Antenna

# – Top score from a previous non-winner

* – Special Award (Most Canadian QSO’s) entrants:

Special Award (Most Canadian QSO’s) winner:

Monday night QSO

Had a nice 80M CW QSO with Jim, K8DEH. He had a great signal from Ohio, solid fist, nice speed. His speed wasn’t too fast, but I still had problems copying. I need to keep working on my copying to build up some speed.

Here some of Jim’s info from QRZ.com:

I was a Novice, KN8DEH, in 1954 – 1955 until I got into school and sandlot baseball. I ran a homebrew 6146 on 40 meters to a folded dipole strung between my father’s house and a telephone pole. My receiver was a BC348Q. After a stint in the Navy, college, marriage, kids, grandkids, and now retirement, I am again finding interest in my old childhood hobby. Although it has been 50+ years, it’s still fun to work CW. The current RIG here is an old Kenwood TS-520se (also running ICOM 746PRO purchased at 2006 Dayton Ham Fest) into a fan dipole up about 25FT in the trees. Look forward to meeting you on the air…..

I’m hoping I’ll get to work Jim again soon.

Online electronics course

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm

The Scots Guide to Electronics

This course is designed to help you learn about components, circuits, and the use of electronics. You can explore the contents in whatever order you wish.The emphasis is on providing information starting at the ‘absolute beginners’ level, but we hope eventually to provide material of use to anyone interested in electronics and its applications …

This weekend in the shack…..

GYFWW: Get Your Feet Wet Weekend. This was an interesting event… all CW. My CW skills are atrocious and this was my attempt at improving. I enjoyed it, although at times it was very frustrating. The exchange was RST, name, state, FISTS #, and year licensed. Most folks were good at slowing down and repeating missed parts of the exchange. I spent a lot of time just sending CQ without a response. A contest doesn’t have the personal interaction of a regular QSO. At the end of the contest I had 18 contacts and over 200 points… no records broken here. I still have a long way to go on the CW. I would like to get my speed up to 15-20wpm – that will take a lot of consistent work.

Virginia Beach Hamfest: My second year attending the Virginia Beach Hamfest. A two-day hamfest, I went on Sunday. $5 to get in. There were a few vendors, but I had primarily come this year for RadioWorks, a local company from Portsmouth that makes great wire antennas. I purchased a Carolina Windom, 133′ long, good on 80M to 10M. The challenge now is to hang that bad boy. I’ll be assisted by my CSV19 Pneumatic Antenna Launcher.

T-238+ APRS WX Project: The main board was good to go. I put the modem board together Friday night, checked out and good to go. Then came Saturday, I was interfacing the WX sensors (temp, wind speed and direction)… it worked! I was getting the data to read out properly. However, when I tried to interface the modem board with the radio, the LCD screen started showing all solid squares instead of text and the heat sink got very, very hot. The LED heartbeat light is still functioning, but clearly there is something wrong. Hope I’m not back to square one. http://www.tapr.org/kits_t238plus.html

Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre

Author Danny Gregory went to a flea market and found a ring binder containing 369 colorful and cryptic-looking postcards. Intrigued, he bought the collection and did some investigating. These cards were ham radio QSL cards, which are postcards that hams send to one another after they make contact over the airwaves. This particular collection once belonged to a man named Jerry Powell, an aeronautical engineer who died at age 93 in 2000. Jerry was a lifelong ham radio enthusiast his earliest QSL card is from 1928. Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio won’t teach you how to become a ham, or show you new ham radio techniques. Its not a technical book at all. Instead, this book is about Jerry Powells life as seen through his lifelong hobby, and its a compelling and absorbing read, even for readers who aren’t hams. All QSL cards are unique. They feature the call sign for a radio station, and includes cryptic notes on the conversation, the kind of radio equipment used in this connection, and little personal touches that reflect the ham’s personality. Each QSL card is either made by or for the ham, and it’s very much like a picture postcard from that region. Some cards look like regular tourist postcards, and others are hand-drawn, or feature photos of the ham with family or, more commonly, in their radio shack.

Hello World was designed by Paul Sahre, a well-known illustrator. His design work in this book is amazing and carefully organized so both diehard ham radio operators and novices can appreciate Jerry Powell’s worldwide ham radio contacts over the course of his lifetime. All the pages are adorned with colorful QSL cards with detailed annotations for many of them. There’s a fold-out map of the world with little dots for all of the ham connections Powell made worldwide, so readers can cross-reference the QSL cards in his collection. There’s also a chart graphing the number of QSL cards that Powell received per decade. 1940-1949 was his most prolific period, with 98 contacts.

http://www.theconnection.org/photogallery/hamradios/default.asp?counter=1

Talk of the Nation, April 30, 2003 Join host Neal Conan for a discussion on
ham radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1248508

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