[PVRCNC] PVRC/NC May 3rd Joint Meeting Minutes

[Keith Zeringue]

PVRCNC-Joint Chapters May Meeting Notes
May 3, 2007, Golden Corral, Burlington, NC.

Good turnout at the May meeting, with all of the following 17 in attendance:
W4KAZ, Keith;   K4CZ, Barry;   NX9T, Jeff:   K4ZW, Ken:   WS4NC, Don: 
KB6MTH, Raj:    KE4GY, Frank:    K1ZW, Larry:    N0KTY, John:   KG4ECI, 
Dan:    W2DZO, Henry:    WB4MSG, Gene:    AG4RZ, Tim:    KC4WSK, Van: 
  K2AV, Guy:    W0UCE, Jack:    K4QPL, Jim:

!! Disclaimer- The scribe's brains were on vacation for the evening, so 
the following account is accordingly incomplete!!

The Golden Corral provided a high QRM environment for the combined NC 
Chapter meeting of May 3rd.  W2DZO and K4QPL shouted over the din to 
bring the meeting to order.   A big welcome was offered to our guest Ken 
K4ZW.  We all patted ourselves on the back for a job well done in 
helping make PVRC the WINNER in the Unlimited Club category for 2006 
Sweepstakes.

After exchanging high-fives over Sweeps, the meeting proceeded directly 
into member reports and the evening's program on the V26H DXpedition. 
The member reports indicated a general common thread, i.e. a lot of 
problems with wires being croaked by the sustained high winds brought by 
the previous month's storm system

Around the Table:

W4KAZ, Keith:    Kaz is working on a minor shack revamp after finally 
completing an antenna switch homebrew. He was the first of the evening 
to bemoan the loss of an antenna, as a falling branch took out his 80 
meter folded dipole.

K4CZ, Barry:    Barry has been on the road, so his past month's 
operating was to get into the Florida QSO party as low power, CW.   He 
also was happy to have bagged the Scarborough Reef dxpedition.

NX9T, Jeff:    Jeff also bagged BS7H.

K4ZW, Ken:   Ken extended his thanks as a PVRC officer for everyone's 
efforts in the 2006 Sweeps victory.  He joined us for the evening in an 
unofficial capacity, to enjoy the meeting.

WS4NC, Don:   Don has been working on getting a hole ready for putting a 
few idle tower sections to good use.

KB6MTH, Raj:   Raj reported that Sweepstake has been the last time he 
has been able to operate a contest from his home QTH.

KE4GY, Frank:   Frank announced he had been ale to get his 10 and 15 
meter antennas mounted with the help of N4CW, Bert, K4HA, Bob, and N4TL, 
Tom. He's now going to look towards getting his larger tower set up.

K1ZW, Larry:   Larry pronounced working BS7H to be "tough".  He was also 
able to get a new antenna up for 80 meters, but still needs to do some 
work to get his vertical ready.

N0KTY, John:   Worked Henry at V26H.   John was also disappointed that 
his planned pilgrimage to the Dayton Hamvention had to be canceled.

KG4ECI, Dan: Dan last operated in Sweeps to help out the club score.

W2DZO, Henry: Henry has had a busy month.   He worked the Florida Qso 
party.  He's also working on scoring logs for the NC QSO Party, 
expecting to be able to make awards to winners at teh Dayton Hmvention. 
    Henry also had wind related incidents during the storm, with a tree 
in the middle of his back yard getting croaked. Making lemonage out of 
lemons, he's planning to use the hole vacated by the falling tree to 
plant towers in its place.

WB4MSG, Gene: Gene's good news for the evening was a satisfying 
performance in WPX, getting to almost 3M points.   He also suffered 
during the recent high winds, losing his 80 meter tower.

AG4RZ, Tim:   Tim's trying to decide if setting up the rig in the baby's 
room will allow for more operating time on the 'sleepless nights'.  He's 
expecting to try operate WPX CW in the QRP category.

KC4WSK, Van:   Van is another victim of the wind storm, in which he lost 
his G5RV.

K2AV, Guy:    Guy didn't have any new activity to report but thinks the 
score from the ARRL DX operation at NY4A may hold up to be a winning 
score for the Multi 2 category.

W0UCE, Jack:    Jack was rubbing salt into Guy's wound, as he has 
discovered that he beat NY4A in a pile up using the antenna built by 
Guy, while Guy was the operator at NY4A.  Jack also reported that the 
Great American Kennel Club QRP event was a success, scoring of logs is 
in progress.  He also announced that he had bought a townhouse, and was 
beginning a process of downsizing. He announced he had obtained the 
special event callsign N4C for a 40 meter single band Field Day 
operation, and invited anyone interested to contact him for more 
information.

K4QPL, Jim:   Jim also happy about their ARRL DX score at NY4A.  He's 
been keeping in practice by operating some of the QRP and stat QSO 
parties(FL, GA, PA, MI). Jim's looking forward to the upcoming WPX CW. 
  He plans to operate at the C.A.R.S. Field Day event againg this 
year.(ed.- Is that SO1.5R again?)

Reports via e-mail:

N4YDU, Nate:  Nate reported a bit of rather large non-radio news. He's 
asked a YL for her hand in marriage, and she has accepted.  He indicated 
that PVRC is not to worry because he verified the she is "contest 
friendly". He's expecting to have a tough time working WPX CW because of 
a bit of serious dental surgery scheduled for the day before.(ed.- Hey! 
Its a CW contest, not SSB!!!!)

NT4D, Jay:  Jay has been recuperating from a hospital stay, and still 
has only limited use of his hand.  On the positive side, he's received a 
package containg a long desired Vibroplex bug, and figures it can be 
used for "physical therapy".

Paper Contest and Program:

The ever challenging W0UCE paper contest resulted in a photo finish 
which was decided by the contest committee on multipliers. W4KAZ came up 
with the grand prize, beating out a tie on 'QSOs' with NX9T by virtue of 
a single multiplier.

Announcements

Program Henry, W2DZO, gave an excellant overview of his trip with 
Robert, KG4NEP to Antigua, operating as V26H for the ARRL DX SSB 
contest. He recounted debugging the station wiring, and hurriedly making 
'expedient' repairs to all of the antenna control cables inside the 
shack. A squad of industrious rodents had in one weeks time made short 
work of chewing through all of the control cables. With the shack 
repaired, they went on to log 6141 QSO's for a claimed score of 
5,103,171. They are keeping their fingers crossed, as this is currently 
the high claimed score for multi/single outside the US. For those of you 
missing the meeting, when you next bump into Henry be sure to ask him 
about the trip, as his enthusiasm is contagious.

For those interested there was also a bit of favorable press on the V26H 
operation.  (See http:\\pvrcnc.org)

73, Keith W4KAZ(as always, /lid)

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