[AK-VHF] Happy New Year

[Paul Kiesel]

Well, I guess I represent members outside of Alaska, but the way I view it is that I am a promoter of weak signal VHFing in Alaska, despite the fact that I don't live in Alaska.  As AVG members know, I also have an Alaskan callsign, KL7FF, which is my "club call". My desire is to use it more often than I have. When I'm not in Alaska, the call is used daily on a D-Star repeater in Ketchikan.


In my message, I said that the contest was less than two weeks away. I meant to say three weeks, but I lost track of what my fingers were doing at the keyboard. HI HI.

73, Paul K7CW / VE7IB / KL7FF Trustee





________________________________
 From: Edward R Cole <kl7uw at acsalaska.net>
To: Paul Kiesel <k7cw at yahoo.com>; "ak-vhf at mailman.qth.net" <ak-vhf at mailman.qth.net> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2013 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: [AK-VHF] Happy New Year
 
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