“The BarnStormers News”                                                                                                                                                    Volume 10 No.4, October 12 ,2005

 

2005-2006 Contest Season Less than Three Weeks Away!

 

I suppose I have been too quiet as the contest season approaches. To be honest, there has been too little time to do much but as usual there was a “wish list”.  Though we didn’t make any major improvements to the station this year we have had to keep a few things running and there has been weekends when one or more of you have come to lend a hand. Dave and I had to spend at least two weekends on the towers. Everything seems to be working OK so at least we start with the idea of operating and having fun and not just repairing. Though CQWW SSB is still a few weeks away, this weekend (1500 UTC Saturday 15 Oct– 1459 UTC Sunday 16 Oct) we will be operating in the Work All Germany (WAG) contest. This is a good contest to shake things down and get some practice. We will be using N1MM as our logger this year and this contest is supported by N1MM. So far Frank, Mark, and I will be putting in some operating time. Anyone else interested? This is a mixed mode contest so if you don’t do CW there will be SSB activity as well. Please let me know.

 

        Class of Competition in CQWW SSB

 

Due to the shortage of operators we will be competing in the M/2 class for at least the CQWW SSB weekend. Chris , N1XS, will not be coming so there just does not seem to be enough operators to man a M/M and we have not gotten the computer changeover completed so as to run a Windows-based N1MM Logger on all four stations. My main concern is operators and I just can’t see going through all the work for M/M and having empty seats. Maybe in CW we can go back to the M/M class where there is more interest in CW. We need to be careful with the QSY rule but we should be able to make 12 band changes with two stations running.

 

        Frank’s Latest Dream (nightmare?)

 

Frank and Tom have been busy putting together an 80M wire beam. Hopefully we will get the thing up to be tested during the WAG contest. The carrier rope is lower slung and the wire elements are installed. We need to pull up the rope and stretch out the elements.

 

        If you have time this weekend….

 

If there are enough operators around this weekend (we can only operate one radio at a time) then anyone else including me can work on some of the projects. I would love to start the next beverage, a short E-W beverage. This means digging holes for the posts. There are also a few other things we can plug away at.

 

        QSLs

 

Well, all the QSL labels printed out have been stuck on the cards. Thanks to K1MGM, K1PZS, N4XR, K1IN, and KE1LI. Unfortunately for me Vic picked up another stack of cards at the YCCC meeting! Also we got in about 3” of NZ1U cards.

 

Please let me know as soon as possible if you plan to operate here during the CQWW SSB 29-30 October. I need to begin the operating schedule spreadsheet.

 

Hope to see some of you this weekend.

 

73, Dick