January - Auction and Swap
The Club trailer is over stocked!!! There are radios and cables bursting the seams, so in an effort to reduce our stock this Januarys program we will be holding an auction and member swap. Over the last several months the club has received various donations of equipment and ham radio related items. The club can not use all of the equipment, but the members can. This is your opportunity to get some sweet deals on some quality equipment. All of the proceeds will go directly into the club treasury. Included in some of the items are full HF stations, CW stations, UHF/VHF mobile radios and even a couple of HT’s. A detailed list was not available at time of this publication, so you’ll have to come in January to see what kind of goodies you can get. Any of the equipment not sold at the club auction will be offered to non club members thru an electronic auction house like E-bay or E-ham. The goal is to have all of the equipment go to club members. It is a great way to get some equipment to build that go-kit, or get a new ham or friend some equipment. There will be space available for members to bring in some of their own equipment to sell to other members or donate to the club auction. All auction proceeds will go to the club. So save up all of your Christmas pennies and be sure to bring them to the meeting in January. The treasurer will accept cash and check at the time of the sale. Private transactions between members should be handled separately.
My First Sweepstakes
I was first licensed in December of 2008 so this was of course my first sweepstakes. My only HF experience before Saturday was operating for a short time at Field day, so I am truly a rookie at this. As of a month ago I didn’t even have a single piece of HF equipment. I borrowed a Kenwood TS-570D from my club (Thank you Motor City Radio Club) and bought a G5RV that I planned on hanging from my neighbors trees diagonally over my house. But as of Friday evening I hadn’t even taken the radio out of the box, and the antenna was up in one tree and just draped over my house and lying on the ground in my front yard. Friday night and Saturday morning featured me getting only about 4 hours of sleep as I frantically worked at getting the radio set up and completing some other tasks that needed to be done over the weekend. Finally, at a little after 3 pm (EST) Saturday, I had everything set up and was ready to try it out. I fired up the radio and began trying to get a signal report, but with the 4 pm contest start time quickly approaching I had yet to make a single QSO to verify that I was even putting out a signal. Finally, at 3:54 pm, I caught someone on early establishing their frequency and made contact. Everything worked! I wasn’t sure how much I’d like contesting but as the contacts from places like Texas and California started coming in I was hooked. I ended up working about 23 and a half hours and made contacts everywhere from Maine to Southern California and British Colombia to Puerto Rico. I heard the Virgin Islands once and Hawaii twice but was unable to get through the pile up to make contact. I ended up with 157 contacts in 60 sections, which, while nothing compared to the top operators, I think I did OK for a rookie using borrowed and newly set up equipment which I didn’t even verify was working until 6 minutes before the beginning of the contest, on little sleep, running completely solo (no one to feed me), operating from a small city lot in suburban Detroit. All of my contacts were made by answering CQ’s, I never called CQ. I thought about doing it when things got quiet late at night but by that time I was so sleep deprived that I was having a tough time keeping my log straight as it was. I don’t think I could have handled managing a bunch of people trying to answer my call at the same time. Thank you to all who put up with my newbie mistakes and fumbling operation, and who work patiently with me to make to make the contacts. I definitely plan on being back next year, hopefully better prepared. Who knows, maybe I'll go for the clean sweep. 73’s Bruce KD8JTZ
In Search of a Clean Sweep
November Sweeps is a rite of passage for many hams. There are two goals; make a lot of contacts and try to work all 80 U.S. and Canadian sections. In 2008 I got 76 of 80 sections and determined to do even better this year. I decided to just focus on sections rather than QSO totals. My logging program makes that easy by coloring missing sections brown and turning them into blue when I log that section. I also use telnet to help me spot missing sections, so I thought I was ready. 4:00 P.M. Saturday I started on 15 meters and the band was hopping. I logged section after section by tuning across the band and hunting and pouncing. For example at 4:39 I heard AL6G and pounced on him. I logged the section as AL and less than a minute found N6KN in LAX. I stayed on 15 until 5:10 when things slowed a bit. Shortly after 5 PM I moved to 20 and quickly logged Santa Clara Valley, Los Angeles, and after some more work, logged the Texas sections I moved briefly to 40 about 7:00P.M. and found Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Then I moved back to 20 at about 8:30 and found KH7XS and six minutes later WH6R, both Hawaii (PAC).I stayed on 20 until after 9 and then moved back to 40 in hopes of getting some closer in states and provinces. During this period I found Vermont, Rhode Island and Virginia. By 10:30 I had many distant call sections but no near ones. I went on 80 and found a spot at the top end of the band and ran a number of local states and a few Canadian provinces. When I shut down for the night Just before 1 AM I had 69 sections. I was hopeful. Sunday morning let me fill in the few missing sections including the Virgin Islands, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec. By early Sunday evening I lacked only Kentucky, Northern territories and Alaska. Then I spotted NT on 15. But it was weak at about 3X3 and the west coast stations were working him one after another. It didn’t look good. And still no Alaska! Then another NT sprung up on 20. He was about 5X7 and easy copy. I shouted after him for nearly an hour and he never heard me. And still no sign of Alaska. Then I found Kentucky on 40 and worked him. 2 to go But I never heard Alaska. And the clock ticked down to 10 PM. I got 78 of 80. I forwarded my log to the ARRL and called it a contest. On Monday, I downloaded my sweeps log to my ACL log and then I uploaded them all to LOTW. 15 minutes later I checked my upload and found that I already had about 10 confirmed responses. As I looked at them, I noticed one gave a county as Anchorage. Was it my missing Alaska? It was. I had logged AL6G as AL not AK. So did I only miss a sweep by one, the Northern Territories? When I correctly gave the section as AK instead of AL then I was still missing 2: Alabama and Northern Territories. .I never looked for Alabama because I had incorrectly logged my Alaska as AL- Alabama!!!! Next year I will really really be ready, maybe… By Don Novak, K8THU
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