Spokane DX Association

SPOKANE DX ASSOCIATION
Minutes of Nov. 03 2005 Meeting

The meeting was called to order at 7PM by President Randy Foltz at the Spokane Valley Library on East Upriver Drive at Argonne. There were 17 members present.

Comments
*K7EKM-A-Kirk worked the CQ WW SSB contest with Steve and Lamar at Lamar’s QTH last weekend. He said the bands were mediocre, but they did well with 1200+ QSO’S. He also worked the K7C Kure I. expedition recently. Kirk Has 26 ft. of his tower sitting in the hole, waiting for him to pour a yard of concrete.

*WU7X-F-Dale has been having fun with George back and forth on the phone tweaking up their RTTY operations.He’s gotten a lot of new countries on RTTY. Dale said he also got UAE and Crete on Phone lately. He now has about 250 Countries with 240 confirmed. He also worked ZF2AH this pm on QRP!!
Dales hoping to get a Vertical up this fall on 20,40,80, and 160.

*N7ER-F-Earl was able to spend a little time on th CQ contest last weekend and worked about 13 QSO’S including Cape Verde a couple of Europeans, and a KH7X. Earl recently celebrated his 89th Birthday. Congratulations Earl!!! Earl said he needs 9 more countries for the DXCC Honor Roll. Good show, Earl!!

*W7FCB-F-Rudy said he’s been very busy, but worked Europe over the pole last week and heard Svalbard Island, North of Norway, but didn’t work them. He’s been repairing ground radials lately.

*W3AS-F-Doug has been mostly traveling a lot lately, to Japan etc. on business. He did get his 80m and 160m dipole connections repaired. Doug got a battery pack for his 2m “handy-talkie”, so he’s been on 2m lately.

*K7EFB-F&H-Bill hasn’t been on the radio lately; just hangin’ in there (and lookin’ good).

*K7OX-F-Gary has been very busy laying many radials for his “4-square”. Gary worked the CQ SSB contest with 100 watts to see how well his new antenna layout was working. He worked 94 countries and did well in the pileups, so its working great. (Someone mentioned that Gary has himself been on 3 Kure Island Dxpeditions similar to the recent one last month.)

*K7HRT-F-Pat’s son is a newly licensed General Class. Ham and a Veterinarian, like Pat, and is on the air with a TS570 and a Comet Antenna, as KC7NNY. Congrats to him, Pat. Pat also took down his 220 and 440 repeaters and moved them to his home.

*AC7GP-A-Bob is able to work days, Mon. thru Fri. presently, so he’s been on the radio a lot lately. With George’s(W6AEA) urging, Bob has gotten his RTTY up and running. Bob also mentioned Bear(AC7HI) is in a nursing home recovering from a foot infection and then will have a leg removed at a VA Hospital. Our Prayers and Thoughts are with you, Bear.

*WA1PMA-F-Wayne worked 300+ QSO’S in the CQ WW SSB contest and heard a lot of the other SDXA guys also working QSO’S. He also mentioned that att.net will not accept e-mail from direcway.com so his contest scores have been bouncing back from Doug (W3AS).

*K7AWB-F-Steve had a lot of fun in the CQ contest at Lamar’s. He said though, that working 4 hours on and 2 hours off, it was hard to try to sleep in between. Steve said that with his Yagi off the tower, all he has is a 150 ft.wire for HF and he’s got an S-9 Noise Level, so he’s threatening to move again. Meanwhile, he’s working on the tower, getting ready to put up the Force 12 5BA and 6m antennas. He also mentioned he acquired a sequencer for his 6m ant. switching for use with a 6m amplifier.

*WA7LT-F-Lamar had a good time in the CQ WW contest at his station with Kirk and Steve. He said their primary antennas worked very well and they could work anybody they could hear. They scored quite well too, with 1200+ QSO’S, 133 countries and 38 Zones. 122 of the countries were on 20m. Congratulations Guys !!! Lamar said he had great difficulty trying to set up Write-Log for multi-station ops and concluded we should definitely not use write –Log for field day ops. Lamar said they used the 2m packet on Mt. Spokane for spotting for the contest and it worked perfect. Lamar said they had a lot of noise on 40m and found it was caused by a bad connection in a crimp connector on his RG-213 cable, so, no more crimp connectors!

*KC7QGV-A-Marybeth said “busy, but no radio this month”. She did win a radio at the Hamfest (which she also worked at), and She and Dave are setting it aside for a grand-daughter who was active in Field Day and they hope will get a Ham license in the future.

*AV7MV-A-Dave did get Marybeth’s 6m antenna up although he did’nt get on the radio this month except for 10m.

*KD7OCT-A-Loren had week-end company and missed the CQ WW. He did work a JA1KBK with an interesting accent and Trinidad and Montivideo.

*K7TQ-F-Randy worked the CQ WW last Sunday for 9 hours from 80m to 15m- all with QRP to test his antennas. He said about 3 o’clock he went to 40m and picked up some multipliers and also got them to QSY to 80m for some more. He also happened to talk to Ward Silver N0AX. All this was with 900 milliwatts, and he said he did score in the top 20. Outstanding, Randy! Randy said he also recently received a plaque for last year’s effort (2004) in the CQ WW SSB contest with Lamar, Kirk, and Steve operating multi-single and scored #1 in the 7th Area. Congratulations again, Guys!!!

*N5AR-F- Dan has been having difficulty sending and receiving e-mail recently and after a trip to the computer Doctor, and many phone calls found that some servers apparently decide not to accept e-mail from certain servers if the server doesn’t have what they consider “suitable” filters (whatever that means!).

TREASURER’S REPORT- Dan N5AR
Bank Account Nov 01, 2005 $ 118.19
Check Deposit Oct. 24 $ 48.50
Cash on Hand $ 63.15
Total $ 231.84

OLD BUSINESS
Return from Sept. 2005 Hamfest investment to SDXA should arrive soon.

NEW BUSINESS
SDXA Officers for the coming year were elected at this meeting and are as follows:

President: Steve Sala K7AWB
Vice President: Dale Avery WU7X
Secretary: Marybeth Snyder KC7QGV
Treasurer: C. Lamar Ray WA7LT

PROGRAM
Dan N5AR gave another one of his very enlightening technical presentations: this one on

“The Care and Feeding of Low Band Antennas” featuring the better ways of feeding Low Band Antennas on the 160, 80, and 40 meter bands. These bands are of greater interest to most of us now that we’re in the low area of the Sunspot cycle where the Low Bands are more frequently more productive than most of the higher frequency bands (with the exception of 20m) which were the “hot bands” 5 years ago near the peak of the sunspot cycle.

Dan volunteered that he has much information available (diagrams and charts) for anyone who might want to research the subject further.

Thank you Dan for an excellent and very educational presentation.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
The next meeting will be the CHRISTMAS PARTY, Dec 01, at The Harvester in Spangle with special guest speaker Ward Silver N0AX. Hope to see you all there!

For a very complete contest list go to: www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/

Please visit the Spokane DX Assoc. website at www.sdxa.org for lots of info and links.

In order for SDXA to get credit for contest scores : when submitting scores for ARRL contests you must specify Spokane DX Association(not SDXA). For CQ contests they must be submitted through Doug W3AS at [email protected]

73 and Happy DXing
Loren KD7OCT, Secretary
Spokane DX Association