[Boatanchors] AWA 1929 QSO Party

[whitebear1122 at comcast.net]

The AWA Board of Directors has approved a petition to open the AWA contests and QSO Parties to all hams, members and non-members.   I and others have been asking for the 29 QSO Party to be opened up for a few years.  This year Tim W1GIG was able to convince the board.   Since I've become the administrator of the 29 QSO Party, I've been scoring and publishing ALL hams participating, both members and non-members.  No one was turned away.  Now I can do it and not get officially yelled at. 



The rules and a logsheet pdf are located on the AWA website.  Just follow the front page hot link to the 29 QSO party rules and full page logsheet.  http://www.antiquewireless.org/ 



I have been operating this QSO Party for maybe 4 or 5 years now.  I joined the AWA just to operate this QSO Party, and discovered that the AWA is alot more about ham radio than I thought.  N9OO had been trying to get me to join for years but I didn't want to join some ole tv and broadcast radio club.  Turns out that the founders of the AWA were hams, and the early days of the AWA was all about spark, wireless radio, and early ham radio.  Since then it's expanded its wireless theme to cover TV, FM, AM.  They publish a quarterly journal appropriately called AWA Journal.. hi hi  Franky I find every issue to a great read, yes even including the early tv and radio discussions are facinating, particularly the first hand accounts and stories of famous people like Atwater Kent, Edwin Armstrong, Philo Farnsworth, etc..   



I'll be in the QSO Party running a MOPA on 80 meters and a Colpitts oscillator on 40 meters.  The MOPA is a Hartley oscillator using a type 27 tube driving a pair of 27's in parallel.  I can squeeze about 9 watts out with some chirp.  If I back off the loading just a tad, the signal clears up and takes on an odd hollow sound.  The Colpitts is a push-pull pair of type 10's for 40 meters.  The signal quality is pretty darn good.  



I would be great if you could build a tx and operate the QSO Party.  It maybe unlike any event you've ever operated!  If you can't operate, then you might listen in and hear all the peanut whistle transmitters chirping, whooping, buzzing, howling.  It is what the bands sounded like in 1929.  



73, Scott WA9WFA
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/boatanchors/attachments/20081104/16d36756/attachment.htm