[PVRCNC] NC East Chapter - December Meeting Notes

[Keith Zeringue]

PVRCNC-East Chapter - December Meeting Notes
December 6th, 2007, Manchester's, Raleigh, NC, USA.

The December meeting brought together an even dozen members from the 
NC/East chapter. The normal pre meeting chaos, QRM, and Tall Tales 
Tumultuosly Told ensued. Finally K4QPL used the infamous 
spoon-on-water-glass CW sounder to send a barely audible CQ into the 
pileup, stopping all S&P contesters and DX'rs in their tracks. K4QPL 
used the lull to call the meeting into order. First order of business 
was in harrassing the scribe as to the inaccuracy of the events being 
recorded. The scribe remains unabashed about his abysmal accuracy rate, 
as he's having more fun making up stories that are only loosely based 
upon what may or may not have happened. At this point K4QPL's meal 
arrived, so he deftly turned the session over to member reports.
(Note: Well, it was something like that....ed. W4KAZ :)

Around the Table:

K4WES, Wes:   Wes logged about 250 Q's in SSB Sweeps.

W4MY, Marty:  Marty operated Sweeps phone from his QTH as a Multi with 
Daniel, KI4QXS. Marty says Daniel did a fine job and seems to have 
enjoyed operating Sweeps. Marty is working up plans for verticals for 
the low bands, hoping to improve the station there. He also was the only 
member two have the "twofer" by making both the NC East chapter meeting 
and the PVRC Central Christmas meeting in Fairfax. Marty had a great 
time, and encouraged everyone to try to fit this road trip in, as he 
thinks it was worth the trip. He had a chance to spend some 'quality 
time' with several of the guys from the NC West chapter, who had a 
better turnout than we did from the East chapter. Marty also enjoyed 
hearing the guest speaker, Riley Hollingsworth.

N4TL, Tom:  Tom put in efforts for Sweeps SSB and CW, as well as CQWW 
and ARRL 160. Tom also relayed a story relating to refurbishing 
'boatanchors'. In a recent receiver project he found out the hard way 
that the dial markings painted onto glass eons ago is 'very easily 
removed'. He was glad to note that reproductions for his project 
receiver are available, but cautions others working on a restoration to 
be careful with painted on bandspread dials.

N4GU, Mike:  Mike operated Sweeps, as well as CQWW DX on 80 with an 80m 
vertical. Beyond that, he's been having fun on 160 and is chasing 
Pacific DX.

K1ZW, Larry:  Larry played a bit in some of the contests. He has also 
been working on a mobile installation, and launced a few 'tennis balls' 
over at KE4GY's to put lines up and help decorate Frank's trees with 
antennas. He also wanted to make sure the group had heard the Peter Dahl 
specialty transformer business was closed.

KE4GY, Frank:  Frank now has 80 meters thanks to "Larry's Line 
Launching". He found it interesting to be able to have more 80m Q's that 
15m Q's. He worked a lot of 40m for Sweeps CW. He's also got 20 feet of 
his planned 40m/20m tower up, with the mast already safely nestled inside.

NX9T, Jeff:  Jeff operated both Sweeps, and operated Phone Sweeps as 
QRP. He expects to play around for ARRL 10m if the band opens.

KZ1X, Steve:  Steve was attending his first meeting. He reports that he 
live N1LN/N1YXU and KA1ARB. He's got 80 feet of Rohn 55, with a 16 foot 
mast loaded for bear, a K2 and a TenTec Centurion afterburner. He's 
interested in doing more contesting, and had fun in the ARRL 160m 
contest. (Note: KZ1X is also the founding member of the Orange County 
Radio Amateurs Club(OCRA), ed. W4KAZ)

W4KAZ, el Escribano Inexacto:  Keith operated both Cw and SSB Sweeps, 
improving upon past scores, and very nearly meeting his goal of 600 
QSO's in the SSB half of Sweeps. Also operated ARRL 160m for fun. Helped 
hold the flashlight for NT4D who installed roofing filter and key click 
mods into NT4Q's 1000MP.

W4TMO, Jim:  Jim used a few wires in the trees and verticals to have fun 
in ARRL 160m, and was able to nab a few of the DX there. He's also been 
operating some on 30m.

K4CIA, Bill:  Bill has been busy with a big home maintenance job(House 
painting-Y'all come!). With brush set aside, Bill operated ARRL 160m as 
QRP, and thinks he may have been able to eke out the #3 QRP score, based 
on 3830 rumors.

N4CW, Bert:  Bert operated Sweeps CW from Maine, and Sweeps SSB from 
home in Raleigh, loging ~600 SSB Q's. He operated CQWW as part of the 
NY4A multi/2 down at N4AF. Bert's ARRL 160m effort paid off with 1100 
Q's logged, and he reports his first night was very good, as he hit the 
sack with 800Q's in the bag. The second was a bit more of a struggle. 
He's anticipating sitting out ARRL 10m.

AA4NC, Will:  Will had poor luck with SS CW, as he was plagued by many 
station problems. He chose to enter Sweeps SSB in the 'fresh meat' 
category, and operated the last four hours, racking up 600+ Qso's. All 
of that was on 80m, and he says he really enjoyed the run.

W0UCE, Jack(reported via K4QPL):  Jack was one of the NY4A operators for 
CQWW Multi/2 down at Howies.

K4QPL, Jim:  Jim operated Sweeps CW from home, having fun on 80m, and 
ended up with about 800 Q's. He joined up with Brad, AL4T to put NY4A on 
the air, and confirms that he did in fact bring his own MyCrowPhone, as 
well as the Orion and other accessories. They pulled out about 100 Q's 
for their efforts. Jim was also part of the NY4A CQWW Multi/2 effort.
Reports via e-mail:

N4XD, Ron:  Ron was away on business, but reports "Recent activities 
have been in the CQWW CW (just a few contacts) and the ARRL 160 with a 
full effort. Something over 1100Qs and 262k points. Bob, K4HA had talked 
about coming out but he decided the wilds of Pittsboro were just too 
much out of the main stream so he stayed home in Raleigh and dealt with 
his local line noise!"

K4TMC, Henry:  Henry reports ".... I have an Elecraft K3 that is built, 
but not fully working, due to a small, but critical, component that was 
missing from my kit. The part may arrive tomorrow, and I may be on 
briefly for the 10M contest this weekend. If I can make the January 
meeting, I will bring the K3 for show & tell."

KA4ARB, Rob:  Rob reports: "Please thank everybody their QSO's during 
Phone Sweepstakes.  With great support from many in PVRC, and thanks to 
a very timely visit by Bruce, N1LN, I got my antenna bolted onto my 
tower two hours before SS began. More than 1400 Q's later, I decided 
that I like my tower.  I think I'll keep it.  (We've actually had the 
same results for the past several years,  but for the bottom of the 
cycle, I'm very happy!) Some might call it luck, but I think it was the 
tower that attracted NWT, PAC, AK, ND, and SD in the first two hours! 
Also got on for a little creaky CW in CQWW CW, and I'll be on a bit for 
10 meter contest this weekend."

N1LN and N1YXU, Bruce & Laurie:  Work continues with the station build. 
Last weekend Laurie (ground crew) and I got Tower 3 (15 meter tower) all 
wired (rotors, stackmatch, coax).   The the two current yagis are now on 
the air. ( 4 ele @ 62' on a swing gate / 3 ele @ 32' fixed on SA ) 
Additionally, the third 204BA (4 ele 20) is almost finished and will 
soon be mounted fixed on SA @ 36' joining the 204BA @ 104' and the 204BA 
@ 68' (this one is on a Tic Ring) on Tower 4.   This weekend we will be 
putting up a temporary 160 mtr inverted-V at about 104' on Tower 2, 
and.... yup - - putting up the Christmas decorations.   How did that get 
in there?  Please wish everyone a safe and happy Holiday Season for us.

Paper Contest
W0UCE, although not in corpus, was there in spirit, as he provided a 
paper contest for the evening, moderated by K4QPL. The evening's winner 
was N4GU, Mike, who became the proud owner of the specially wrapped 
gift, a nice set of left-handed metric screwdrivers. Thanks to Jack for 
making the Paper Contest possible.

New Bizzness- Chapter Officers
The evening concluded with the machinations of railroad engineer K4QPL. 
Eager to hand over the keys to the train and barely concealing his glee 
at having found a new victim chairman candidate, 'QPL announced that 
Will, in a weak moment, had agreed that he would indeed serve as NC East 
chapter chairman for the 2008 year. The membership endorsed this change 
of leadership.

As his first official act, AA4NC decreed that W4KAZ be appointed 'Scribe 
For Life'. This pronouncement met no protest. That means that you, the 
membership, will be subjected to the scribes' daft ravings for all 
eternity.....or at least until said scribe gets really really sick of 
it, he moves out of the circle, scribe becomes terminally ill and 
croaks, or scribe finds a better way to practice his creative writing, 
or somebody else asks to do it, or the membership tosses him out on his 
ear. (No betting on which condition arrives first....)

Next meeting of the NC-East chapter is January, 3rd.

73, Keith W4KAZ

Scribe's DISCLAIMER!  The accuracy of these notations is suspect, and 
creative license has been applied where the scribe's notes are 
incomplete, his memory is fragmented, or when reality was just less 
interesting. Perception IS Reality. Corrections to the permanent record 
will be made upon request.

Updated 12/17/2007, W4KAZ