[JMS] 2008 AWA AM QSO Party - N9OO Review

[Don Buska]

Well another AWA AM QSO party has passed us by.  I actually got two more 
points over last year with a whopping ten stations worked!  I used my 
little Millen setup throughout the event with no more than 30 watts 
output at any given time.  Tried 20M, 40M and 80M, but only made 
contacts on 40 and 80.

Here are the JMS members I heard:

W0YVA Bob (Talking to W2AN)
K1BF Bill (In QSO)
W0HRO Ken (Talking to W2AN)
W1HRX (WA9WFA Scott at the mic) - Worked
W2AN (K2MP Ed at the mic) - Worked

I listened to Bill K1BF and a 2-land station having a nice long QSO on 
80 meters during the early evening hours Saturday.  Talking about their 
IBM days.  It was a really an interesting listen!  I tried to break in 
several times, but my little pip-squeek power wasn't up to the job.  I 
think Bill mentioned he was using the 90881 Millen amp in his setup.

The longest QSO I had was after midnight when I got into a round table 
with W1IA (NH), KG4RJF (VA), N1YXE (NH) and N3JUH (PA).  I was at times 
well over S9 into VA and NH during that hour long round-table.  N3JUH 
has a Millen setup with the 90881 amp as well.  It's reported to be 
working!  He's not a JMS member BTW!!  Near the end of my time in the 
round-table a Georgia station broke in using  an old Stancor 69 
transmitter (hey I have one of those too).  I was copying him pretty 
well, but I was tired and didn't try to establish if he could hear me.

For my third straight year I was able to work both Flagship stations, 
including our own W1HRX.  What a way to pad my final tally, hi.

------  MY PLEA ------

The success of these AM events does depend on participation folks.  To 
me the AWA QSO Party seems to have more activities than all the other AM 
events combined.  Most assuredly due to the two Flagship Stations 
-Excellent idea Gary!  However, past reports are that very few send in 
their Summary Sheets.  If your a JMS member I beg of you to write up a 
summary sheet as offered on the AWA website (See Below) or you can email 
me and I will email back a MS Word version of the summary sheet you can 
fill in.  This event was made easy in terms of rules (also on the AWA 
website) and reporting.  No logs need be sent just a simple tally of the 
numbers.  The premise of this whole AM QSO Party was to have fun.  The 
final summary sheets help to show who was active in the event.  When 
people decide if they want to bother getting involved often it is a 
result of reviewing last years activity reports in the differing 
publications.  The AWA AM QSO Party is the only operating event that is 
open to hams outside the ranks of that organizations membership.  The 
finally summary also gets published in non-AWA periodicals.

So take a few minutes, literally, to fill out a Summary Sheet and email 
it off to Gary WA4IAM (A JMS Member BTW) at gcarter01 at triad.rr.com

AWA Website:  http://www.antiquewireless.org/amqsoparty.htm

73

Don N9OO