Rappackers Meeting

PVRC Meeting and discussion of the IARU HF contest in July. The PVRC has been chosen by the ARRL to put the HQ stations on the air: W1AW/4 and NU1AW/3.
Various PVRC stations in the 4 call area will put 6 phone and 6 CW stations on the air for the duration using the call W1AW/4.

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The meeting was called to order at 10:30 AM by Frank K4EC.

The most important thing we can note is that Chip N2YO just became an American citizen. He recently earned his MBA, so it’s been quite a year for him. We extend our congratulations to him on both counts. Well done our friend!

With no new or old business to discuss, we did the customary trip around the room giving everyone a chance to identify themselves and brief the group on what they have been up to in the hobby and otherwise in recent months.

K3ZM Peter said there wasn’t much news. What’s old is stuff at his 160M superstation on the Potomac continues to break. Seems like right now it may be the feedlines to his receive vertical arrays. He also mentioned that he’s really gotten into the chiggers and wondered if anyone knew of something he could spray on before going in the field to keep them off. Someone mentioned using a product years ago in NC that seemed to work but he couldn’t remember what it’s called. Someone else mentioned that Chiggerex (available in drug stores) provided fairly good relief. Peter is going to be doing the 160 cw and fone from the river in the IARU with the W1AW/4 call.

W4OGH Bob who is a Culpepper club member attended the meeting. He is a plank owner of the Sterling Park club and was involved with moving the W4 QSL bureau from FL to VA.

AE4ML Mike is just back on the air after losing everything to a house fire. He’s on HF and satellite. After the meeting he spent some time working with Sally G2YL getting a digital adapter to work.

W6LWG Dick met Steve NR4M some years back when Steve wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle. That led Dick to getting involved once again with ham radio. Dick is one of the Culpepper members as well.

Mila, Dicks wonderful XYL joined us and had fun with K0DER and BA1LEY (K7SVs dogs).

K4GMH Mike said he’s into the dog days of summer. He’s got a lot of projects going on but doesn’t seem to be getting much done on any!

K4EU Steve did field day from home with his generator. He was surprised to have someone from W4CUL (the Culpepper club) call him at a fairly good clip on cw. Later he learned that K4GM and NR4M were operating with W4CUL from Orange VA. Steve commented how loud the Asians were in the AA CW contest and was just about knocked out of his chair when A52SV called him during the contest. Steve discussed the 2014 100th ARRL anniversary operation. He said that he let Frank W3LPL know that he volunteered to be the Virginia coordinator if no one else wanted to do it.

K4EC Frank said he didn’t have much news and that he’d been contesting with the NR4M group since the early 90s.

K7SV Larry Spoke some to working on repairs to his antennas during the last ice storm was had. He also mentioned that the 8 circle rx antennas at NR4M were once again working and that all the beverages were back up. The NR4M group made a good showing in CQWPX CW this year but it looks like a FL group beat them this year.

KA4RRU Mike did field day with the W4IY group. He has been spending some time at the farm helping Steve with antenna maintenance. He’s also operated some of the RTTYcontests.

N3ZV Whit said he’s got the rotator on his massive stack of aluminum working again and he’s been having a lot of fun. He commented as well on the bodacious signals out of Asia during the AA. Whit said he’s looked high a low for Egypt for DXCC and then worked five of them in a week! Isn’t that the way it goes?

AC8Y Mike worked the CQWW RTTY contest with K8LF. They also did the RTTY Roundup at a team. K8LF was Mike’s first QSO as a novice and said it’s great to find himself back in the same area as Gerome again.

G2YL Sally joined us again. Someone asked her to speak up, but she said that ladies don’t shout! Sally really enjoys rtty but lives in an apartment in Alexandria, so she has operated the tty contests from NR4M this past year. She’s a member of the Brimham Group in he UK. Her OM is G5KC.

N4NW Tom has been a PVRC member since 1980. He’s more of a dxer than a contester and just got his 160 meter DXCC. He’s looking at the new low band receive loop shown by Array Solutions. He had a couple of C17 2 M beams given to him and just bought an Elecraft 2M transverter. He like to operate in the ARRL 100th anniversary event but doesn’t care to get involved with coordination. Tom spoke some to PVRC possibly getting 501C status.

N4JOW Joe is looking for a ten foor 2 inch mast. He got WinWarbler working and just received his first batch of N4JOW qsl cards. He’s needs to bring his log periodic down to change out the balun so it will work right in the WARC bans. As always, he’s having a blast with ham radio.

N4DSF Dave has been licensed since 1980, but recently got his general. Congrats Dave. He operated FD with the Culpepper group and learned a lot!

KC4QP Skip has been licensed since 1958. He Farms in Unionville VA raising huge (42lb) turkeys. He is a member of the Culpepper club and did Field Day with them.

NR4M Steve groused some about someone connecting with a site that infected his admin computer with a nasty adware during CQWPX CW. It took 3 weeks to finally get rid of the popup. He just bought a used 24foot travel trailer for Field Day use. Steve’s daughter Jennifer just passed him Tech test and is licensed as KK4RTF

K4ZW Ken reported that he and Sue are now proud grandparents for the first time. They have a grandson. Ken recently completed a work related trip to Mauritania where he met 5T0JL who is 82 years old. He likes cw and uses a Kenwood 570 with wires and a vertical. He uses paper logs and doesn’t like operating split. Ken also spent some time at ET3AA working on the club station with the students. He helped one of them build a 40 M dipole and explained to the student that he’d probably have better luck working someone at night rather than mid day on 40. On 11 July he’s going back to ET3AA and will be operating IARU with them.

As a final note, Sally G2YL has attended the required two meetings and was unanimously voted into PVRC. Paperwork in the works.

73 de Lar K7SV