[PVRCNC] Meeting Minutes, January 4th NC-East Chapter

[Keith Zeringue]

The PVRCNC-East meeting had a great meeting in January, with a really 
large turn out to begin the new year heading into the contest filled 
months of January and February.  The Manchester's staff might just
need to knock out a wall to accommodate a larger gathering of NC area 
PVRC'rs.  Your new scribe's note taking skills were challenged by the 
arrival of a tasty meal with frosty beverage coinciding with member 
reports.  Ooooo -- the challenge!   Now those are good problems to have!

Those in attendance were: K4QPL, Jim; W0UCE, Jack; K4WES, Wes; K1GW, 
Glen; NT4D, Jay;  W4KAZ, Keith; K4CIA, Bill;  NX9T, Jeff;  K4CZ, Barry; 
  N4TL, Tom;  Burt, N4CW;  Kent, K9EZ;  N1YXU, Laurie;  N1LN, Bruce; 
KA1ARB, Rob;  KI4GMW, Joleen;  NT4Q, Jerry;  KE4GY, Frank;  and K2AV, Guy.

Our Learless Feader K4QPL, Jim, cut through the initial round of pre and 
early dinner QRM to start the night by welcoming our guest K1GW, Glen, 
attending his first meeting.  Jim also noticed that K9EZ had not been 
chased off by the QRM at the December meeting, so before he had a chance 
to have a change of heart and bolt, Kent was voted in as a member of 
PVRCNC-East.  Welcome to the area.

Also, K4QPL noted that PVRC at large had broken the 20 million point 
mark in the November Sweepstakes.  Currently, that puts us about four 
percent ahead of NCCC.  Everyone agreed it was better to be ahead going 
into the contest log checking rather than to be behind.

K4QPL then gave up the floor for Member Reports:

W0UCE- Jack:  "Rod" reported that he was enjoying the winter lull in 
thunderstorm activity, with no additional zaps to report.  He has been 
busy on Topband with a new receive antenna, the DXE 4-square.  Jack 
report the antenna has improved his weak signal ears, and that he was 
able to log 430 Q's and 115 grids in the Stew Perry contest.  Jack also 
replaced a coax switch with a DXE unit, and thinks this has helped 
reduce noise also.

K2AV- Guy:  Guy didn't have any news of his own, but gave us news from 
N4AF.  Howie has installed a Micro Ham USB keyer, and the initial 
thoughts are that the unit has reduced CPU usage on the logging computer 
significantly.

KE4GW- Frank:  New toys showed up at Frank's house.  He had a chance to 
play with a new 5 element beam for 10 meters in the 10 meter contest, 
and is looking forward to getting it up where it will play better.  He's 
also got a 5 element for 15 waiting to levitate.

NT4Q- Jerry:  No radio news, too busy with a holiday vacation.

KI4GMW- Joleen:  Reports that she is still looking to upgrade her license.

KA1ARB- Rob:  With his main rig off for repairs, Rob noted that he had 
blown the dust off his old Swan 350B, and was having fun with a bit of 
nostalgia.  He offered the 350B is up for sale if there is anyone in the 
market.  He's also looking for another KT34, as he'd like to enhance his 
ears with a phased pair.  Those single KT34's get so lonely on the tower!

N1LN- Bruce:   Bruce reports chasing down the VU7 on his 'toy tower'. 
He's still working on building the 'real' towers for his station.

N1YXU- Laurie:  Laurie has been helping ground crew for Bruce.

K9EZ- Kent:  Kent has been out QTH hunting, and found one that might 
have some potential.  He also wowed some of the group with photo's of 
his current project at the day job, a fifty KW portable transmitter. BIG 
SIGNAL!  He's agreed to present more information on the project as a 
short program for the entire group at a later meeting.  (ed.note:  Very 
cool...)

NT4D-Jay:  Jay put time in on the 160 and 10 meter contests, and managed 
to bag the VU7 after a lot of hard work and persistence.  He just never 
caught a good opening.  Planning to operate the ARRL RTTY.

W4KAZ, Keith:  Worked only about 30 minute of the Stew Perry.

N4TL-Tom:  Looking forward to a DXCC after some QSL checking.

N4CW-Burt:  Burt worked the CQWW at Howie's, and the ARRL 16 at W0UCE, 
and the ARRL 10 meter from home.  Planning to work the RTTY.

K4QPL-Jim:  Jim was without his new baby over the holidays, but it was a 
minor repair.  He also noted that his old TS-850 had drawn a flurry of 
interest on e-bay, and was looking forward to the last minute run-up. 
He also noted that the January NAQP's were almost on us, and that 
although they are not PVRC 5M contests, they are always a great deal of fun.

K4WES-Wes:  Been DX'ing more than contesting, but planning to operate in 
the coming months.  Received some  wallpaper from a 2004 CQ SBB contest.

K4CIA- Bill:  Played in the 10 meter contest as a QRP station, plus the 
normal DX chasing of the VU7 and the Knight of Malta.

NX9T-Jeff:   Hunted the VU7 also, but didn't catch them on CW.  Like 
K4QPL, Jeff enjoys the NAQP's and is looking forward to the January runs.

K4CZ-Barry:  Proud to announce that the tower is UP(schWING!) with a 
nice F12-C4 and a 40 meter dipole above the 50 of rohn 25.  The new set 
up is already paying back with results as Barry was able to bag a 
station in Singapore, and he's looking forward to giving the new beam a 
real spin in the RTTY roundup. Barry has also been putting in time with 
Morse Runner, which he thinks is really showing results.

K1GW-Glen:  Just moved into the area recently, Glen made his first visit 
to PVRC.  He reports that he's been licensed for 50 years, and has been 
interested in contesting for 40 of that.  He's been a guest op at K1RX 
and NI7T.  Since he's in a restricted area, he's also hoping to find a 
guest op situation here.

Additional Business:
W0UCE, Jack and N1LN, Bruce gave a report update on the upcoming North 
Carolina Road Kill Round Up.   Jack has set up the web site home for the 
roundup  (  http://www.ncroadkillroundup.homestead.com/ ), and was able 
to recruit a few more "critters" from the meeting attendees.

NT4D discussed briefly an idea for changing member contact information 
on the web site to point to QRZ.com as a means of improving the 
reliability of the contact data.  (ed.note, de W4KAZ:  you'll hear more 
on that when the new secretary gets around to changing back into his 
webmaster jammies)

K4QPL then turned the floor over to NT4D, Jay, who gave a run down of 
possible subjects for programs.

Possible coming program subjects:
**A membership experience and hardware inventory.  The purpose would 
be 	to give everybody a general idea of what experience is available in 
the immediate local area, and hopefully prompt some ideas for future 
discussions, as well as serve as a reference for finding answers from 
our own pool of experts.

**Contest College-  Possibly view some of the sessions room the PVRC 
contest college DVD set, after getting input from members on which might 
be of widest general appeal.

**Qsl'ing  -  General discussion on the subject

** Logging software-Pros/cons and religious dedication to various 
packages, etc...

**Solicitations for additional program ideas from the membership

**Field Day-  Jay proposed that we entertain the idea of  a PVRCNC-East 
Field Day.

The Field Day subject opened up into a much wider discussion than simply 
"are we interested in the idea".  There was much discussion  about the 
nature of Field Day, and how an NC-East chapter sponsored event might 
best be organized.  As might be expected, the ensuing hockey match 
pointed out that a group as varied as the NC-East chapter has just as 
many varied opinions.

(ed.note, de W4KAZ- regardless of where your opinion might fall on the 
topic, we have at the very least established that as a group we are all 
passionate about the subject of Field Day.  That passion is a GOOD thing.)

The opinions voiced basically broke down into two schools of thought: 
Field day as a competitive CW contest event -or- Field Day as a more 
casual open event.  The ideas expressed crossed the entire spectrum. 
This will remain an open question.

The always challenging W0UCE "paper contest" was deferred due to time 
constraints.

The next PVRCNC-East chapter meeting will be on Thursday February 1st.

Don't miss K9EZ's slides of his 1-point-2-1 Jig-O-watt portable Topband 
transmitter(Don't we WISH!), aka the "Gaita Mak-a".  "Flux Capacitors", 
anyone?
(Translation: the above phrase would translate as "Gator Maker", for 
those who are ardent King's English purists.... :o )

73
flippantly submitted
de W4KAZ