[AK-VHF] Happy New Year

[Edward R Cole]

At 09:00 AM 1/1/2013, Paul Kiesel wrote:
>Howdy, all you avid AVGers <smile>.
>
>I got the new year started with a failed elevation actuator for my 
>50 MHz EME antenna. Fortunately, we have a sunny day which allows 
>work on the tower. I'll just forego watching the bowl games on TV 
>this time. Beyond fixing the elevation mechanism, I have written a 
>list of things to do in the beginning couple of months of 2013 (I'm 
>not going to call them resolutions because I plan to get them all 
>done!). I have too much stuff piled up in the shack, so some of it 
>needs to get moved temporarily to the crawl space under the house. 
>It's actually not a crawl space, but an unfinished daylight basement 
>- another project destined for completion.
>
>Anyway, all these considerations brought to mind the upcoming VHF 
>contest, which is less than two weeks away. So, this being a 
>national holiday for most if not all of us, if you find yourself 
>thinking it might be better not to be such a couch potato, you might 
>consider getting your radios and antennas set up for the contest. 
>Find out who might be planning to do a rove in the contest or maybe 
>think about doing one yourself this time for a change. Now would be 
>a good opportunity to set up some skeds with distant stations for 
>some real weak signal attempts for contest points, multipliers and 
>grid squares for the AVG awards.
>
>Here is a link to the AVG Contests page:
>
>http://www.qsl.net/a/ak-vhf/Contests/
>
>73 and all the best in 2013!
>
>Paul, K7CW
>AVG Contest Guy
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Thanks, Paul.

Paul is our "outside" member of the board and our contest/awards 
manager.  We all know that in Alaska we refer to "outside" as 
anywhere other than Alaska.  Paul represents our members that reside 
outside Alaska.

A good reminder that the Jan. 2013 ARRL VHF Contest is only three 
weekends away.  I hope all you had a good New Year's day and maybe 
got out to work on some of those projects (or watched the bowl games 
afteral - I got to work 8-hours at Walmart).

A good development is I have arranged to work Saturdays starting at 
11am vs 10am so will be able to resume duty as Net 
Control.  Unfortunately, it will mean having only about 15-minutes at 
the start of the VHF contest before leaving for work.  I will ask for 
Saturday off when June contest comes around.  I will be only a few 
weeks from quitting work to resume retirement at the end of June.

Had some attacks by "murphy" this week.  I discovered one side of my 
6-elem 6m driven element is bent down 45 degrees (probably by 
snow/wind) so not sure how well it will operate.  Also developed a 
short in my 2m transmission line which I hope to resolve before this 
Saturday (hopefully is just water incursion and not moose stomped 
feedline).  The wx warm up here in southcentral AK this last week up 
to +40F may have the cable sitting in melt water.

I am working on putting up a secondary 11-element 2m yagi with 160w 
rated switched preamp when wx is good for climbing the tower.  This 
yagi will be tuned to 146-MHz to work FM simplex, repeater freqs. and 
maybe 144.200 USB.  It will be pointed toward Anchorage with no 
rotator.  Next spring I hope to add a second yagi to it and install 
it at 45-feet on tower#2.

This Saturday the net is on 144.200 USB, 9am-10am.  Hope to hear a 
few of the AK gang on!

73, Ed - KL7UW