Spokane DX Association

The results of the Western Washington based Salmon Run contest (held on September 17-18, 2016) are in. Let’s see how our SDXA members did and who won the SDXA-sponsored plaque.

• HIGH SCORE – SPOKANE COUNTY: Gary K7GS 94,244 points
• HIGH SCORE – LINCOLN COUNTY: Gary AD7XG 12,540 points
• HIGH SCORE – OKANOGAN COUNTY: Chuck KI7DG 207,488 points
• HIGH SCORE – YAKIMA COUNTY: Mark KB7HDX 68,204 points (Honorary member, our ARRL SM)
• CLUB SCORES: SDXA 3 entries, 314,272 points (third place)

There was a very close race for the SDXA-sponsored plaque between the usual winner (mostly) Gene W7WMO in Grant County and SDXA member Gary
K7GS in Spokane County. Gene won again, for the 7th time besting Gary by only 3,186 points. This is Gene’s 7th win of the SDXA plaque. Here is the tally:

• Gene W7WMO 97,430 points 372 contacts, 90 multipliers (333 CW, 39 SSB)
• Gary K7GS 94,244 points 505 contacts, 72 multipliers (296 CW, 212 SSB

Gene Bye W7WMO
LINK to Gene W7WMO’s wall of SDXA=sponsored plaques
LINK to review of previous Salmon Run SDXA-plaque winners
LINK to Western Washington DX Club Salmon Run complete totals

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January —- the program was Lynn N2HS showing what all it took to get his tower and antenna going.
designed and up.

February —- the program was Bob AC7GP and his wow trip to Z2 land (Zimbabwe).

March —- the program was by Dan N5AR who brought his hi‐pot tester for checking tubes, vacuum variables and vacuum relays. Kirk K7EKM also brought a service monitor to
check out member’s handhelds.

April —- Program: Lance Stafford of Leaf Communications headed an interesting discussion on towers and grounding techniques. Leaf Communications has shops in 4 west coast locations including Spokane. They specialize in the permitting and installation of communication towers and antennae including cellular. Often they have long runs of used hard‐line that they have been salvaging. It was suggested that it could be donated to the club who could hold an auction among its members. Mr. Stafford provided a positive reaction to the suggestion.

May —- Wilse WX7P gave an interesting presentation complete with photo’s of his recent trip to PJ2T. He joined a team of others to compete in the CQ WW WPX Phone contest.
Propagation was excellent. 10 M was open all night. Wilse brought home many fond memories along with a hot weather cold.

June —- TF4M Iceland video by SM7WT, presented by Lamar WA7LT.

July —- The program was by a guest speaker, K6OIK, Stephen Stearns, who was in town. Steve is a Technical Fellow of Northrop Grumman, and was here for an IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation. Steve came and spoke to us on HF Propagation and Predication.

August —- tonight was our 2nd special night in 2 months, with a guest speaker, K6EI, Jim Peterson, who was in town. The theme of the presentation was on how to get on the air and have fun on 160 meters and how to disregard many of the myths out there about Top Band. He also covered Top Band propagation and antennas. Jim typically runs QRP and works several of SDXA members each December during the ARRL 160 contest.

September —- The program was a video on the E4X Palestine DXpedition.

October —- The program was a video on the FT5GA DXpedition to Glorioso Island (in French).

November —- Mark KB7GF of the Wideband Loop Company gave his presentation on the Shared Apex Loop Antenna: “Introducing a New Compact Wideband Directional Receiving Antenna for HF.” Interference, both local & distant, continue to be a challenge on the HF bands. In this seminar, he introduced the “Shared Apex Loop”, a new type of compact receiving antenna. The antenna is a true time delay array that utilizes a pair of symmetrical right-triangle-shaped loops that are separated by only a few inches. The antenna provides good front-to-side & front-to-back rejection & wideband operation without adjustment. He described the theory & construction of the antenna, and showed this summer’s testing results using a 10 foot tall x 10 foot radius array on frequencies ranging from 500 KHz to 22 MHz. See http://www.widebandloop.com for more information.

December —- Annual Awards Banquet. The program was by Bob AC7GP and his updated program on his neat trip to Z2 land and his very tough
operating position.

November 2016 Minutes

Mark has a SteppIR antenna on top of a Rohn 45 tower. Future additions are 2 meter and 6 meter antennas for weak signal work. The installation consisted of Mark K7HPT, Gary AD7XG, and Steve K7AWB.

His tower, his house, and my orange-colored Inferno 1 Toyota (k7awb)

Gary AD7XG does the tower climbing on this project

Mark asking Gary to move the antenna slightly to the right

The SteppIR antenna wih a tree branch at no extra cost

Mike’s SteppIR antenna and Rohn 25 tower on the South Hill came down during the November, 2015 windstorm. Here is a before and after set of pictures.
Congratulations to Mike on getting back up and running again.

What the wind can do – converting vertical to horizontal

Back on the air

Craig KG7H discussed his 6-meter EME quad array using four M2 6M9KHW 9-element yagis and M2 positioners for both azimuth and elevation. He explained about using the popular digital mode JT65A software authored by Nobel Prize in Physics winner (1993) Joe H.Taylor K1JT. JT65A can decode EME signals below the noise floor. Here is the WSJT LINK to the WSJT home page of which JT65A is a part. He also mentioned that the leading EME expert in the world is Lance Collister W7GJ in Frenchtown, MT (this side of Missoula). Lance has a lot of information on EME on his home page at W7GJ LINK. Lance was one of the presenters at the SDXA-sponsored PNW DX Convention in Spokane Valley in 2013.

Here is Craig KG7H sitting in the middle discussing with Al W7AL standing on the left side at the October meeting.
Clark’s QTH is in Clark Fork, ID (DN18).