“Storm Watch”
Newsletter of
NZ1U – The Barnstormers Contest Group
Volume 14 No.3.
Our Contesting to date….
Well, we have gone through the four major contests
for the 2008-2009 season. Two CQWW and two ARRL DX contests. Our efforts have
been very good even with the disadvantages we have with broken antennas and
towers not finished. We have stuck to the M/2 category and with the available
people this has been our best category to compete. The propagation gods have
not been good to us and the boys further south have had the advantage on 15M
and 10M. Our lack of a horizontal antenna on 40M has really hurt and we hope to
remedy that this year.
We added a few new operators with KB1NRB and W1WBB
coming on board. KB1NRB has been especially helpful with work and even tower
climbing. He has been quite an inspiration to the crew and really has been
quite a motivator. I believe his enthusiasm has rubbed off on some of us and
renewed efforts have been seen.
My other goal of getting the station on many of the
contests has been successful too. We have missed very few weekends and even
have been in a few RTTY contests.
We have plenty to do this year but we our renewed
spirit I am sure we will meet our goals.
Great work guys!!
Barnstormers Chatroom…
Jay has installed a “chatroom” on one of the
computers in the barn. You can find the link on the Webcam page of our website.
You will be logged in as “anonymous”. Next use the command “/nick <your callsign>
“ and you will be logged in as your callsign. So far a few of you have dropped
by occasionally and you can find W1UJ, KB1NRB, and KB1H there almost every
evening.
New 10M Beacon:
You can find KB1NRB/B on 28.251.5 Mhz. Allan is
running 10W with a vertical strung up in the trees. Location is Dayville, CT.
Beacon transmits every 2 minutes.
Official Barnstormer Apparel
W1UJ has arranged with B&B Embroidery (also
known as Hamthreads) to make available hats, shirts, jackets, etc. Jay has set
up the digitized logo and you can go online at www.hamthreads.com and order anything you
want. Here are pictures of the hat that was sent as a sample and also the tee
shirt. Some of us are ordering denim shirts for
Again,
any product can be ordered with our logo and your name/callsign. Take a look at
the website.
20 Meter Antenna Repairs
Recent
problems with both the upper and middle 20M antennas meant multiple climbs by
AA1CE, KB1NRB, and KE1LI. One of these climbs by AA1CE was in the dark! The
others were made mostly in sub-freezing weather. A big thanks has to go out to
these guys!
New Rohn 45 Tower Progress
Well,
with a break in the weather we have been able to start on this project again.
Last weekend JP, NB1U, and AA1CE cleared the path for one of the guy anchors.
It was determined that one or more large trees will have to be taken down to
clear for the upper guys. Please be ready to help out. Also the brush pile to
be chipped is growing and we will get a chipper which attaches to my tractor
soon so again we will need help. A horizontal 40M antenna at 150’ will make us
competitive on this band soon!
VHF/UHF News
On
these bands Kim has been making some progress. He is well along on building a
new power supply which will be used on 6M. This means no more sharing the power
supply with 220 Mhz or 432. A nice transformer has been ordered from Harbach
Electronics which took over the Peter Dahl line of equipment. Big power on all
bands! Also the repaired 432 preamp is back and waiting to be reinstalled on
the tower.
CQWW
WPX SSB – 28-29 March
There
have not been many replies to my asking about operation during this upcoming
contest. Remember, NZ1U is one of only 26 available multipliers for this
prefix. The callsign will be sort after. My plans are now to set up for a
Multi/Single effort and if someone is here the station will be on the air. As
suggested, this also might be a good time to work on outdoor projects for those
not operating at the time. I am hoping
to put in a very serious effort for the CW portion of this contest in May.
Dayton 2009
Plans
have been made for another
I
am sure I have much more to report but I want to get this issue out. I hope
another will be sent out soon. Don’t forget the ECARA Flea market this Saturday
and also the YCCC Area meeting here
73
… Dick