18 Oct 2014 Rappahannock Chapter PVRC meeting notes

The meeting was called to order by Frank K4EC at 10:30. Old and new business were called for with no response. This was the second meeting for W6LWG and K4GTF. Dick and Gary were voted into the club. Applications should be forwarded this week. As usual we went around the room to see what new and exciting things the gang has been up to. W0CN Dan worked the W1AW/4 event on phone from KA4RRU, working mostly Eur and JA. He has about a thousand Qs on 15 meters. Dan will be part of the KH7XX operation in the CQWW SSB test. He mentioned that Dave N2NL, who many of you know, is now stationed in Hawaii. Dave’s call on the islands is WH7AA. Dan will be qrv in SS SSB from KA4RRU. W7IY Stu replaced the beverage hardware at W4RM. He developed switching software to be used with the new scheme. He’ll be qrv in SS and WW ssb from W4RM. Stu is the one that put together the great logging WAN collaboration used by the VA stations during the W1AW/4 operation during the IARU contest! W4RM Bill is running M/M with 7 or 8 regular operators from Northern VA. They do 7 to 12 M/M contests per year. The primary reason they went M/M is to make it easy to meet CQ radio lockout rules. Great and effective station! K3ZM Peter is adding infrastructure to allow him to operate his great station on the Bay from his home in Charlottesville. He’ll be using a K3/0 to get the most out of the time and money he put into the outstanding station on the bay. We’ll never hear the end of the King of Top Band now! K4GMH Mike has all his antennas on the ground for refurbishing. He’s recoating the fiberglass poles from his SteppIRs and replacing his 2 el F12 40M yagis with Moxons. He mentioned that the F12s are both for sale. He has been working to convert a lazer printer to do printed circuit boards. He got one side working very well and has been in a huddle with Steve NR4M to engineer what’s necessary to expand that to two sided boards. K4GM George continues his remote operations through the station in New Mexico. He has moved to a new qth in Caroline County that has some great trees to hang his wires from, so we should hear K4GM from home again soon. K3ZO Fred will be doing SS CW and WWSSB from home. He’ll be on with the HS0 gang with his HS0ZAR call for WWCW. Unfortunately he’ll be in Bali for the Seanet Convention during SS SSB. Fred will be able to operate remotely from the HS0ZGD station in the near future. He spoke to Thai licensing where the best route is to get a US general class ticket to upgrade to HF. Lack of licensing testing also le Champ E21EIC to conduct a class of instruction for US licensing for Malasians. W6LWG Dick got his first taste of contesting working the W1AW/4 event on phone he had a terrific time and he thinks N1MM is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Dick is the president of the Culpepper Amateur Radio Association (Cara) and spoke of recent activities of the club. The clubs efforts during the Culpepper Air Fest gave amateur radio a lot of good exposure. As a result a group of Boy Scouts has asked the club to conduct a ham licensing class for them. The club provided a service moving WWII vets around to get a close up of the different aircraft via a golf cart. Tremendous PR! KA4RRU Mike has been busy authoring a music text so he hasn’t spent a lot of time with the radio. He did spend a couple of hours on TTY doing the 2nd stint of the VA W1AW/4 thing. He also put in a good amount of time from NR4M in the CQWW RTTY contest. KK4URZ Owen is another member of CARA. He spent some time operating in the WW RTTY contest from NR4M and enjoyed it a lot. He’s been a ham for a year and is getting a 40M dipole up to get on HF. KG3V Tom lives in Whitestone down on the Northern Neck and works in Warrenton. SSCW is his favorite contest and he operates remotely. He runs low power and wires. He’s also a member of the Faquier Amateur Radio Association (FARA). K4GTF Gary is another a new ham and another CARA member who is still taking it all in. He is interested in public service but W1AW/4 activity on 10, 17 and 20 meters as well as Field Day has interested him in contesting. KS4Q Skip who has been licensed a number of years is in his second year of activity after becoming re-interested. He enjoys RTTY and operated in the WW RTTY test from NR4M. He recently added 24 sixty five foot radials to his Hi Tower vertical. Sez he didn’t realize how poorly it was working before putting the radials under it. Now the vertical is working so well, he’s questioning how well his tribander is doing! He made about 700 Qs as W1AW/4 on 10 and 12M rtty. He celebrated his 75th birthday by working on the CARA two meter repeater at 130 feet! K7SV Larry has been qrv in the CWOPS CWT and the mini-sprint contests during the week. He’s been spending most of his spare time at NR4M helping to finish up the infrastructure wiring replacement with Green Heron RF devices and doing antenna maintenance. G2YL Sally (aka KB2NRN and ZL2SAL) is a Brit working in the DC area. Her apartment in Alexandria is not at all conducive to radio activities, so she is one of the NR4M RTTY ops. Sally is a great op. She may be moving back to the UK in July. Her smiley face and great skills will be greatly missed if she does. On the other hand we look forward to working her from the other side of the big pond. K4EC Frank has been QRL helping his wife Kate who has had medical issues after falling down. Fortunately she’s doing much better. As part of the discussion on public service, Frank mentioned his involvement with AREAs and activity as District and State Emergency coordinator. NR4M Steve starting removing the wiring to control rotators and antenna switching about six months ago. He decided to go with Green Heron “Everywhere” networking. He built a new shed behind the shack to house the switching hardware and GH rotor controllers. The top yagi in the 15M 3 stack is showing high swr, so that’s going to be removed from the tower for maintenance during the next couple of weeks. After experiencing problems with the prop pitch that has rotated the top two yagis in the 20 meter 4 stack, it was removed last week for refurbishing. About 3000 feet of trenching was completed recently to bury heliax and control lines for various antennas. He’s also been busing removing shelves at all operating positions and putting wall mounts up to support the computer monitors. Computers are now under the work bench on castors. He removed a pad recently placed on the input of the 40M 8877 amp, going back to a direct coax feed. He picked up an ALPHA 76 from one of the NC PVRC gang. Progress is slowly being made in construction of transmit 4SQRs for 40, 20 and 15. This is going to facilitate second radio on those bands. It was found that the active devices in receive only antennas was not handling the RF field well during contests. After replacing the stack match on the 15 meter tower, it once again developed high swr. Ants had gotten into it, leaving bodily waste around the relays, providing an arc path. It really tore the board up! Steve spent some time speaking of Sweepstakes activity. For phone SS some of the CARA members are going to be at the farm for training. If any of you know how Steve feels about fone operation, you know he’s going out of his way to help bring new folks into contesting. We polled folks on planned contest activity: SSCW – W4RM will be doing a multi, K3ZO will be on from home as will KG3V. K4GM and K4GMH will be operating from NR4M as separate entries under their own calls. K7SV is looking forward to doing SO2R, but activity will be somewhat limited by station building exercises at NR4M. SSSSB – N3AHA will operate from W4RM. NR4M will be Elmering CARA folks (somehow this just doesn’t sound right!). K7SV will work as much phone as he can stand. CQWW SSB – W4RM will be M/M, K3ZM single op, K7SV will be on some single op low power. CQWW CW – W4RM will be single op by NR4M, K3ZM will be single op, NR4M will be manned by K4EC, W0CN, K4GMH, K4GM, K7SV and NR4M amongst others. The meeting adjourned around noon, then copious amounts of adobo pork (thanks Mila), burgers and brats was consumed. K7SV