“Storm Watch”
Newsletter of
NZ1U – The Barnstormers Contest Group
Volume 14 No.1.
Barnstormers Annual Christmas Party – January 31st
It’s that time again where we celebrate the season and mark the halfway
point of our contest season. This year it is to be held on
I have a few awards to pass out including a winner this year of the
“K1GX Award”.
So far the menu I know of are chicken wings, chili, snacks, and of course
Vic’s scrumptious cheesecake.
The usual start time of about
Let’s Face Reality….
In the last month or so the realization has set in that because we have
not put much effort into station maintenance things have deteriorated!
We lost one of the 80M verticals because we failed to fix a broken guy
rope. The radials on the 80M 4SQ are in disrepair. The 20M rotor is not
turning. The new 40M/6M tower is stuck at 35 feet. Finally during last
weekend’s January VHF SS we suffered failures that we knew hounded us in
September.
I take much of the blame for all this backlog of repairs.
It has always been my responsibility to get the crew together and
accomplish our goals. It has been a tough year to do this but I still should
have kept us moving forward. For many
reasons it has been hard to get everyone together and working this past year.
Some mine, some yours.
Somehow we have been able to have enough equipment and antennas working
to compete is many contests this season but let’s face it, it is no fun when
handicapped like we have been.
I have to ask myself and please ask yourself is this what we want? Operating
is fun but in the past we have worked hard to be competitive so when the
operating time came we enjoyed busting pileups, working far away multipliers,
or placing well in contests including the VHF/UHF categories. With the effort
we put into maintenance and improvements the past year our level of competition
will not be where we would like it to be in the future.
I do not want to turn the Christmas Party into a bitch session so I
won’t dwell on all this during the party. I will though either talk to you as a
group or individually as to what your feelings are.
I know I will continue to push everyone. I think for one thing I have to
attack each of the problems and projects a different way. Split the team into
groups to get each little or big goal finished. We have many different talents
in our group so I am sure we can do anything we attempt. Yes, some of you may have to multitask but
others can concentrate on a project.
Again we can discuss this at the Christmas Party in a short business
meeting or we can schedule another night or day to go over this. We all have our ideas and projects we want to
get done. We all have to get involved and also realize that you might be asked
to help on projects that you don’t think interest you. Hey, you might learn
something!
A project like the new tower will help you understand where to put guys,
why do we use phillystrand, how you tram up antennas. Want to learn how to
build a power supply for the 6M amp? This is another project. Sequencing for safe operating of preamps. We
have a full plate of things to do. New stuff to add, old stuff to fix.
In other words, we can no longer just show up and operate. Some effort
will have to be put into maintenance and improvements. If we can not get the
effort on a certain project or repair then we will have to face the reality
that it may have to be dropped or no longer available during contests.
We have been hoping to find new individuals for our group and it is
pretty difficult when so much of our advantage is not working. To offer the
opportunity for someone to come and operate from a decent station is the draw.
Let’s remember that when all was working we placed very high in even the tough
M/M category.
I guess this is enough of my “soapbox” ranting but you can see and I
hope you realize we are at a point where the “Superstation” stays super or
becomes the “Stuperstation”
I am looking forward to next weekend.
73, Dick