April 2005

NEXT MEETING: Monday, 18 April 2005, 8:00 PM at the Sterling Community Center Annex. Contact Gordon (NQ4K) email: nq4k@arrl.net PRESENTATION: "Show and Tell" Bring in ham related item and talk about it. REFRESHMENTS: John, N3QT PRESIDENTS THOUGHTS: Hi, This past month I had the opportunity to participate in CQ WPX Phone contest on 15M as well as the EA RTTY contest on 80M. Both times, other matters keep me from working the contests for extended periods of time, but I enjoyed them never the less. Submitted my logs. Maybe I will pick up a new entity or two. The key club business for this month is the scoring of the approximately 40 paper logs that Dick, W2YE, has been receiving. I will bring some paper forms to record the paper log's metadata. Hope to have at least one if not two people to look at each log. We have 90+ emailed logs for a total of 132 logs so far. I am slowly entering the data into a spreadsheet. Probably will not get this done for another week or so. For a fun activity, we will have a "show and tell." All should bring a piece of ham equipment or other article and be prepared to discuss it for a few minutes.  I know that my experience is limited to a single radio and the few items that others bring to field day and Sterlingfest. I am especially interested in seeing other equipment. Or even parts. For example, I do not even know what a toroid looks like for stopping RF on an antenna wire. One final item, I get a few emails each week about various items. Last week, I linked the "news" on our SPARC home page to a Google Blogger page. (I have got to keep up with the technology.) I will be posting things there periodically. See you at the meeting. 73, Gordon, NQ4K

WEBSITES http://www.qsl.net/sterling/SparcGap/www.qcwa.org Quarter Century Wireless Association http://www.qsl.net/sterling/SparcGap/www.qsl.net\sterling SPARC Website http://www.qsl.net/sterling/SparcGap/www.amateurradio-far.org FAR Website http://www.qsl.net/sterling/SparcGap/www.groups.yahoo.com\group\k4nva http://www.qsl.net/sterling/SparcGap/www.arrl.org\divisions\roanoke\ ARRL Roanoke Division http://www.qsl.net/sterling/SparcGap/www.wage.com WAGE Radio, Leesburg, VA http://nist.time.gov%20/ NIST time site http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/index.html International Space Station tracking information HAMFESTS UPCOMING SPARC ACTIVITIES 16 May 2005    Club Meeting    Refreshments: Bill, KI4DHY        Nomination of Officers 5 June 2005     Manassas Hamfest: Presentation of Virginia QSO Party Plaques CONTESTS 25-26 June 2005     ARRL Field Day OTHER NOTES None.