Notes from 11 May Rappahannock Chapter PVRC meeting

The meeting was called to order by Frank K4EC at 10:20AM Saturday. There was no new or old business to discuss.
As usual we went around the room so each attendee could discuss recent happenings.

K3ZO – Always great to have Fred attend. He was qrv in the phone WPX. Talked a little about his antennas. He will be advising the 15M NU1AW group (N3RR & Co.) for the IARU HQ effort.

K4GMH – Mike has been using “Two Tone” rtty software as well as “MMTTY”. He said he finds that “Two Tone” is at least marginally better then the latter. He also discussed the new self contained PUKE box. The PUKE box began life as a lockout system for having a second radio on a band. Somewhere we learned that there are actually modes used with a second radio. Most common is multiplier hunting. The other mode has two operators working a pile up on the same frequency. Actually one operator is generally listening somewhat on the low side of the frequency and the other on the high side. Anyway the original device ended up consisting of 3 or 4 boxes and lots and lots of cables. For this iteration he’s got it down to a single box (still lots of cables). It’s set up on 15M at NR4M for WPX CW.

K7SV – Larry talked a little about NR4M losing the 160M 8 circle and all beverage to ice and wind a few months ago. The 8 circle has been rebuilt (beefier elements as one would expect at Da Farm). Steve and Mike KA4RRU got the single direction Eur Bev and the bi-directional NW/SE bevs back up as well. At home the ice bent half an element of the rotatable 40M dipole into a tree, so he currently can rotate things. There was some damage from an earlier storm to the KT34 as well.

W0CN – Dan has been a ham for 36 years and was really excited to be going to Mecca (Dayton) for the first time. Dan was part of the KH6MB team that won the extreme category in the CQWWSSB contest last year.

K3ZM – Petah is always full of interesting stories from his monster on the river. He now has high speed cable all the way into the shack. Being in the sticks as he is, it kind of made others who are less remotely located jealous!  He is using a DX Engineering box to control Hi Z receive antennas. He’s got a pair of receive 4squares on top band.

K4EC – Frank’s R5 was taken down by a neighbors tree in a wind stop so he’s seriously looking at getting a horizontal loop up in the air again.

K4FJ – Steve has been playing with “Two Tone” on RTTY as well. He is happy to report that nothing is broken for a change!

N3ZV – Whit spoke of the big Prosistel rotator that spins his huge stack of aluminum breaking. Seems a fuse (shear pin) broke. He was looking for a means to use a shear pin that is a little harder.

The turnout for this meeting was rather small, but that had it’s advantages. The smaller group had a great time talking about AM Broadcast radio, CQWPX CW contest and the W1AW/4 – NU1AW/3 IARU events.

After adjourning the meeting everyone enjoyed grilled burgers and brats.

73 de Larry K7SV