NAQCC Newsletter

NAQCC News

Sep 27, 2008	NAQCC Web Site		Issue #079

In this issue:
1. October Challenge.
2. September Sprint Results
3. Latest Award Winners
4. Operating Tips
5. General Club News
5a. N3A Operation
6. Member News

1. CHALLENGE: Our October challenge is an annual challenge that always deals with our special event station N3A. You can learn more about the operation in the special N3A Operation section later in the newsletter. You master the challenge by either operating N3A (you must apply to us to get permission to do that) or working N3A and reporting your results.

Full Challenge info here including a link to a worksheet example that makes our alphabet challenges a snap.

2. SEPTEMBER SPRINT RESULTS: As sort of a preamble to this section, I'd like to offer this:

Ever since I (K3WWP) got into contesting, I thought it was totally unfair to punish me for an error on the part of the station I work. If I work station XX2XXX and our QSO is not in his log because of something he did, I get penalized for his error. When I became involved with our NAQCC sprints, I vowed to address that matter. Putting it simply, when I cross-check logs, if X2AAA's log shows a QSO with X2BBB, but the QSO is not in X2BBB's log, we remove the QSO initially, but then give X2AAA the opportunity to check with X2BBB and if X2BBB simply forgot to include it for whatever reason, the QSO is restored to X2AAA's log and added to X2BBB's log. I believe you can't be any more fair than that. And Chas W2SH agrees with that philosophy with these very kind words:

"To John, Ed, all members and prospective members:
And that is just one thing that puts NAQCC head and shoulders above ALL other similar clubs.
May the amply demonstrated fairness and integrity of the Club's administrators, that also seems to prevail within the membership, long prevail! 72, Charles, W2SH"

Thank you Chas.

This was a record setting sprint thanks to you, our wonderful members and the propagation gods who helped you all to contact each other to the tune of 1,040 QSO's in my cross-checking software this month. That's well over 100 above our previous record. The number of logs submitted (64) was also a record. There were also other records broken as you'll see in the table below.

This is the last month for the CW Books on CD giveaway. We certainly want to thank Chuck K7QO for his wonderful generosity in giving away these CD's completely free of charge for these many months now. One way to show appreciation would be to visit his web site and purchase one of his CD's while they are still available.

STATS - current month, previous month, all time record, mo/yr (blue indicates a record set this month):

                  Sep   Aug   Rec   Month
Logs -             64    58    64   9/08
Stns in logs -    108    93   110   5/08
Hour 1 QSO's -    564   379   564   9/08
Hour 2 QSO's -    476   375   476   9/08
Total QSO's -    1040   754  1040   9/08
20M QSO's -        77   127   185   6/08
40M QSO's -       709   512   709   9/08
80M QSO's -       254   115   481  12/07
Autologger logs -  57    53    57   9/08

WINNERS:

1st SWA East - K4CNW
1st SWA Central - W5TM
1st SWA Mountain - W0JFR
1st SWA Pacific - NU7T
1st Gain - K4BAI

Special Award (all 10 digits in member numbers) Drawing Entrants:
K4CNW, W5RCP, W0JFR
Drawing Winner: K4CNW

CW Books on CD (donated by Chuck Adams K7QO) Drawing Entrants:
K4CNW, W5RCP, K9JWV, NU7T, AB0TX
Drawing Winner: NU7T

Congratulations to all including winners and non-winners. Actually everyone who participated and sent in a log is a winner because that shows the ham radio world that there are many folks still using and enjoying CW on the ham bands. That's one of our main goals here at the NAQCC.

Very special thanks to those who reported their results even though they made only a few QSO's. Your reports are important also.

We had 13 stations who didn't submit a log show up 5 or more times in the 64 logs we received and cross-checked. Hopefully those 13 and many others will be back next month AND submit a log. Remember submitting a log doubles the strength of your statement that you support CW operation.

We welcome these hams who submitted a sprint log for the first time. We hope they will continue to participate and report their results:
W0RSP, W3RT, W4SEC, K2HPV, WA9VEE, W6GMT, VE3KI, WA1WQG, WD0K, WB0OEW, VE4WI, NB1I, WX5SD

Full sprint info here.

3. AWARD WINNERS THE PAST TWO MONTHS:

NONE (very disappointing)

We now have a nice incentive to work towards and earn our NAQCC awards thanks to Gregg WB8LZG. I'm sure you all know by now of his beautiful hand-crafted bug/paddle handles, and how we gave away 13 sets of them to participants in our monthly challenges. Now Gregg has designed some beautiful hand-crafted knob insets for the K1 and K2 rigs. If you own one of those rigs or are planning on purchasing one in the future, read on after you look at this picture of them.

We're giving away 5 of Gregg's K2 knobs and 2 of his K1 knobs. You can win one by earning and applying for any TWO of the following NAQCC awards. It's first come, first served, so make haste.

QSO-A-DAY
30-30
Alphabet Prefix
Worked Members - Advanced
Suffix Words

See the 'Current' page in the 'Awards' section of the web site for rules for these awards.

Only new applicants on or after October 1, 2008 are eligible.

Full List of all award winners here.

4. OPERATING TIPS:

Hurricane Ike added another delay to our postponed NAQCC Elmer program when it roared into Houston, Ron K5DUZ's hometown. Thankfully Ron was spared any direct serious damage, but it did delay his work on the Elmer project.

And because I am so busy organizing our October anniversary events, I only have time for a brief tip in this newsletter. I apologize for that, but there are only so many hours in a day.

It's a tip for those of you who operate our NAQCC sprints. Did you know that if you log on paper and then after the fact type all the log info into a word processor, notepad, etc., that there is a much easier way to do it?

GenLog has an 'after the contest is over' mode. All you need to do is to start GenLog with your paper log at your side, then:

1. Choose our NAQCC Sprint from the list of contests.
2. Enter a file name (Sept2008NAQCC or some such name).
3. Set the band to the one you made your first QSO on.
4. Set the mode to 'After contest'.
5. Enter the time of the first QSO, press the spacebar.
6. Enter the call of the station worked, press space.
7. If you have the latest GenLog data file loaded, the St/Pr/DX and member number fields will fill in automatically if the station is a member. If needed, type in the RST received and press space.
7a. If the station is a non member fill in the needed info, pressing space each time.
8. press space 3 or 4 times till the QSO is logged in the box at the bottom of the screen.
9. The cursor will return to the Time field. Go to step 5 and repeat the steps for each contact.

After you've entered all the QSO's, Use the Log menu, Write ASCII file [K3WWP.log] to create your log file you can copy into our autologger. Of course it will be your call, not mine as the name of the file.

It's harder to explain than to do, so get out an old paper sprint log and practice. Questions? - Ask.

We'll have more tips to help you improve your operating skills in each newsletter until Ron and Karl get the Elmer section started on the web site. Then we'll just refer you there for the great tips they will have. YOU can help US by letting us know what you would like to see discussed here. Just email

. Thanks.

5. GENERAL CLUB NEWS:

- Since it began around July 4th, our member recruitment drive has netted us almost 400 new members thanks to the efforts of Paul KD2MX who wrote the recruitment email and Dave VA3RJ who distributed it to many CW/QRP related sources. And Dave says (threatens?) it's not over yet as he continues to search out new CW/QRP sources to post Paul's excellent letter. Even with the thoroughness of Dave's and Paul's work, there are still many CW/QRP ops out there who don't know about the club. That's why it is important for each and every one of you to do your own mini-recruitment drive. Every time you run into a QRP/CW op who is not a member, tell them about the club. Mention it on your QSL card. Use our club stationery for all your ham related emails. There's no limit to the ways you can assist in bringing new members to the club and it won't take the huge amount of work that Dave and Paul are doing either. If you bring in only a single member, that's important also. We want the NAQCC to shout as loudly as possible, "CW LIVES". The more voices that can help shouting, the more widespread it will be heard.

- Of course, the big overriding news now is our 4th anniversary operation of N3A in October. Although it is also mentioned in the special N3A section below, I'm going to say it here also. We want to have N3A ops from all 10 call areas participate in the FISTS and NAQCC sprints in October. We still have the following call areas open if you'd like to sign up as an N3A op for those sprints:
FISTS 3,4,8
NAQCC 2
If you reside in those areas and would like to operate N3A in the sprints, all you need do is send us an email expressing your interest, and we'll immediately sign you up. It's first come, first served, so hurry. Just email

. See the special N3A section below for more details.

- In conjunction with the above item, the NAQCC is offering two beautiful certificates to FISTS club members. One to the member who makes the most QSO's with our N3A stations in the FISTS sprint and one to the member who makes the most QSO's with our N3A stations during the entire rest of October. This to show our appreciation to FISTS for the wonderful co-operation they've given us ever since the NAQCC was founded. I've always had free rein to write anything I wanted about the NAQCC in my FISTS Keynote QRP column. Also our two clubs have NEVER had any conflicts with each other in any way.

- Even as I was typing the newsletter I received a phone call from club President Tom WY3H. He was given a RockMite transceiver a few days ago by Bob WC3O of the SkyView Amateur Radio Society. He asked if we had enough money in the club treasury to purchase a kit for the club and give it as a prize in our January milliwatt challenge. We do, because of your generous donations to the club, and we will purchase and give the kit to the one making the most points in our January challenge. He also said he knows of an addition to the kit that includes all the connectors, etc. to make it into a complete rig. We'll include that as well. Here's a picture of Tom's RockMite.

More details will be forthcoming as January draws nearer. My, aren't Tom's hands becoming famous! On the cover of WorldRadio magazine and now this!

- We mentioned the treasury in the previous item. We do not beg for money in any way at the NAQCC. However now and then we do remind you that the only way we can do things like the RockMite giveaway is if we have the money in our club treasury. The only income to that treasury is from the minimal profit we make from our awards certificates and the generous donations from our members. As you see from the Awards section of the newsletter, our awards income has dwindled quite a bit of late. If the treasury dwindles too much more, we may have to cut back on some things like mailing out certificates free of charge for our Sprints and Challenges among other little things. For our 4th anniversary, I'm personally making a donation of $8.00 to the club - $2.00 for each year of our existence. I wish it could be more. Won't you consider doing likewise? Perhaps you can afford even more than I can. See the lower part of the main page of the club web site for details on making a donation.

- Don't forget, this is a busy time for the club, and we don't have time or space to discuss them all here, but there are many exciting things coming up in addition to the RockMite prize mentioned above. Mike KC2EGL and I will be starting on our K1 kit-building project. Ron K5DUZ and Karl N3IJR will be debuting the NAQCC Elmer project. We have a couple new awards to introduce. Oh, just a lot of things as the NAQCC continues to grow as one of the premiere CW/QRP clubs in the World. Also I hope to write up a history of the club along with Tom that we can present in our October newsletters.

5a. N3A OPERATION FOR OCTOBER 2008:

- Of course we now have ops from all 10 call areas for the month of October, but you can still sign up and take what times are still available in your area.

Specifically we still need ops from the following call areas for the following sprints. Our ops already signed up from those areas have other commitments at the sprint times.

Still open are these positions:

FISTS sprint - 4th and 8th call areas are open. K3WWP will do the 3rd area IF no one else wants to do it. W5TM is pretty sure he can do the 5th call area, but there's a slight possibility he can't.

NAQCC sprint - 2nd call area.

Here's your chance to help the club in a very important way and to have fun doing it. Remember both the FISTS and NAQCC sprints are friendly to newcomers to CW. You don't have to be a CW 'hot-shot' to participate by any means. That is why these two sprints are so popular. So come on and help us out. We have promised FISTS to have all 10 N3A stations active in their sprint and of course we want all 10 active in our own sprint.

The FISTS sprint is on the 11th from 1700-2100Z and our NAQCC sprint is on the 15th from 0030-0230Z.

Thanks in advance to you for your help. Just email

to sign up

See the N3A Operation page in the Home section of the club web site for complete info on N3A, and ask questions if it isn't as complete as I think.

6. MEMBER NEWS: We all want to hear about your exploits using CW and QRP, and this is the place to post that info. So send the info to our news editor Paul KD2MX at

so he can convert it into a news item like those here.

From John K3WWP #0002 - I'm really looking forward to our N3A operation. I'm especially looking forward to the PA QSO Party the weekend of the 11th and 12th. Of course I'll be operating N3A/3, but I'm also delighted that 4 of my good ham friends Geoff W1OH, George N2JNZ, Bruce WY7N, and Clyde K9JWI have agreed to put their N3A stations in the PAQP as well. If you're from the 5, 6, 8, or 0 call areas, consider this a personal invitation to operate N3A from your call area also. I've got many good friends in those areas also and I'd appreciate it very much if one of you would step forward and sign up. On top of my personal request it would be great publicity for the club as well since the PA QSO Party is one of the biggest state QSO parties in the country. So whether or not you are already signed up as a N3A op, let me know if you can do the PAQP as N3A/#. Thanks.

From Randy KB4QQJ #2056 - In addition to the times posted by John I will be on the K3UK FISTS Sked page. I will be there during all my operating times. Here is the link: FISTS Sked Page.

At the top of the Sked page just click on FISTS and click on "logged in" at the bottom of the page. Fill in the info as instructed. You will then be able to make real time skeds with me or any other operator there. Thanks and hope to see you in October N3A!!

The publication of our next newsletter will be announced via email to all members for whom we have a valid email address unless you specifically have unsubscribed from the email.

Past on-line newsletters beginning with issue #042 are now archived on the site. So if you missed seeing any past issues, you can check them out in the archives.

Unless otherwise credited, all items are written by K3WWP.

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