The Jug

Newsletter of the Northern California Contest Club

January 1998

Dec 97-- JUG Index -- Feb 98

George Daughters, K6GT, Editor

(N6NZ and FrontPage take the blame in equal measure for any formatting weirdness caused by conversion from George's original copy.)

In This Issue:

• Next Meeting
• Muns' Monetary Message
• Andy's Dandies
• First Sweeps at "Contest Station from the Government"
• Elections Loom
• Y2K
• TV Guide (SS Score Summary!)
• Contester Runs Out of Gas During CQP!
• A Short CQP Picture Story
• 1997 CQP High Claimed Scores

NEXT NCCC MEETINGS DATE: Monday, JANUARY 12

SOUTH BAY YACHT CLUB

DIRECTIONS BELOW!

The program for the January 12 meeting will be a multimedia presentation by Kenny, K2KW, and other members of the championship effort at 6Y4A in 1997 CQ WW CW, featuring photos, audio presentations of pileup management, and video. Dinner will be catered in and will be your choice of fish or pork for $10 including beverages (full bar available separately). This is the location where we held a meeting a few months ago that earned rave reviews for ambiance, location, food and ease of access and parking.

Directions to South Beach Yacht Club:

From the SOUTH: Take 280 north, and in SF stay to the left until 280 becomes King Street. (Don’t take any exit to the right!) Follow King Street for a few blocks until it merges onto The Embarcadero. Turn right into the Pier 40 parking lot -- if the parking spaces are filled, drive into the building on the pier for more spaces. The SBYC is the first building next to the yacht harbor, right off the parking lot and adjacent to the pier building just noted for additional parking.

From the NORTH: Get on The Embarcadero and Pier 40 is just South of the Bay Bridge.

From the EAST: Cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco and get on The Embarcadero to Pier 40 just South of the bridge.

Tentative plans for February’s meeting will feature a special joint meeting of NCCC and NCDXC held on FRIDAY, February 13, (Note the change in the day of the week -- this is NCDXC's normal date and place.) A two part program of interest to all hams will be presented: (a) "Web surfing your way through ham radio," a guided tour of all the best ham radio sites featuring information on contesting, DXing, vintage gear, callbook lookup and much more, and (b) "How to cope with the RF exposure rules and not get burned," a special presentation by Jim Maxwell, W6CF (with backup by Brad Wyatt, K6WR) on the new FCC rules that affect all amateurs regarding compliance with RF exposure limitations. This is a must - see presentation!

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NCCC OFFICERS

President .... Andy Faber, AE6Y ............... ae6y@aol.com
Vice President/CC ....... Bob Wilson, N6TV ......... n6tv@vnet.ibm.com
Secretary/Treasurer ... Ed Muns, W0YK ............... w0yk@msn.com

Directors ....
Carl Cook, AI6V ... ai6v@aol.com
Bruce Sawyer, N6NT ... n6nt@worldnet.att.net
Ken Silverman, K2KW ... ken.silverman@airtouch.com
Jim Hollenback, WA6SDM ... jholly@cup.hp.com

JUG Editor .... George Daughters, K6GT ... gdaught6@leland.stanford.edu

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SPECIAL ISSUE:

NCCC ROSTER

PLUS

CQP AND SS

CLAIMED SCORES!

MUNS’ MONETARY MESSAGE

We are half way through our 97-98 fiscal year, so let's take a look at the treasury. We've collected most of our income for the year, but we have significant expenses ahead, primarily awards for CQP (T-shirts, plaques, certificates, mailing, etc.) and NCCC members (letter openers, mouse pads, plaques, etc.) What follows is a summary of the budget to date, so factor in the upcoming expenses in your review. If you have any questions, please contact me.

Notes:

1. An additional $84 was collected for Dues beyond the 97-98 fiscal year.
2. An additional $56 was collected for the Repeater Fund which is kept separate from the NCCC books.
3. Actual bank balance is $8,977 which includes the carry-over from last year.
4. The Repeater Fund stands at $1,391.
Ed, W0YK

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ANDY’S DANDIES

December banquet

The holiday dinner was slightly out of the ordinary, being at a Chinese restaurant in Mountain View instead of our usual haunt, the Pleasanton Hotel (but Ed, W0YK, assures me that we already have a reservation at the hotel for December 1998, so we'll be back to traditional fare once again).

There were 36 attendees, which is a good group, though in one sense it's a disappointing turnout - the good news is that many spouses showed up and added diversity and interest to the conversation, the bad news was that meant that there were fewer members attending than should have been there. I know people have conflicts in December, but, hey, if you don't support your club by attending its functions, who will?

Anyway, the food was terrific once the waiters overcame the initial chaos and once our dB level chased out the other diners who had the temerity to be seated in our private room. Tom, N6BT, and XYL (Bonnie the elf) did their usual superb job of handing out gifts to the attendees, after confounding us with another diabolical variant on the CQP counties theme, this time finding the county names in various nonsensical sentences. There was a nice contingent (both nice in manner and nicely-sized) from the Mother Lode group who showed up and even stayed overnight (after all the wine we drank, we probably all should have stayed overnight).

Upcoming Meetings

Don't fail to attend our next two meetings! January 12 will be a spectacular multimedia presentation by Kenny, K2KW and others kibitzing on the recent superb effort from 6Y4A. The location alone should make it enticing (no, not Jamaica, I mean the South Beach Yacht Club in SF, which was widely praised when we held our last meeting there.)

Then in February comes our joint meeting with the NCDXC to discuss two topics of interest to everyone: Net surfing with a ham twist, and then the new RF exposure rules that affect us all.

A BOD meeting is also scheduled for Jan 10 at 9 am at my house. It's open to all, but let me know in advance if you plan to attend and are not on the BOD, since I supply food.

ARRL DX Contest

Don't forget the ARRL DX Contests coming up in a few months. Conditions are improving, so we should be able to do better from the West Coast. Also, since dxpeditions now count for club scores, we're expecting more interesting trips than usual. If you're game, contact our travel agent, Kenny, K2KW, and get the latest info and find out about any vacancies that may exist. To get you in the mood for operating from home, I offer up a quote from a column I wrote for the April 1994 JUG, when I was vp/cc. It's about the one, albeit minor, advantage that we have in the contest:

"Last, while we may suffer from not having easy access to Europe as they do on the East Coast, at least everyone recognizes the state name "California" without repeats (at least if coupled to a "6" callsign), unlike the guys who have to give their state phonetically over and over. Here's a pome about that:

CALIFORNIANS' REVENGE

We say to DX, "California"
One time, so we know we ain't borin' ya.
No need to spell it.
We sit back and yell it
Just once: "59 California!"

Here's hoping everyone enjoyed Happy Holidays and will have a happy and prosperous 1998 filled with high scores and rare DX.

73, Andy

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FIRST SWEEPSTAKES AT THE

"CONTEST STATION FROM THE GOVERNMENT"

Phone SS was our first multi-station operation at the former Fort Ord MARS station. This site has real potential as a competitive multi-multi operation, including a first-class shack with 3 separate sound-proofed operating rooms, a Hy-Gain LP1017 14 element log periodic array for 40-10m @ 70', a 10-80m discone, numerous empty 70' power poles, and a 2 mi. downhill shot to JA, the Pacific and Oceania.

What makes the site especially nice is that it can accommodate visitors without disturbing the operators. It has a nice lounge area with several sofas apart from the operating rooms, and can accommodate several sleeping bags as well. There is also both a coffeemaker and a small but not minuscule microwave oven.

The site is now public property of the City of Marina Recreation Dept, due to the efforts of Pat, AA6EG. Pat is mainly a DX’er, and has been enjoying Field Day for 30 years straight but is now ready for regular doses of more potent stuff, like operating multi-multi in the BIG contests.

To meet our goal of maximum points contributed toward the NCCC club score, the plan was to operate two separate stations for SS, N6IJ as a multi-op with Tony, AE0M, Celia, N0BBS, and Pat, AA6EG using the discone and J.T., K7CO/6 single op using the LPA.

Because the vertically polarized discone is not the ideal antenna for SS, the plan also included a loaner C3S from Force-12 to be assembled by Tony and several others Saturday morning, mounted temporarily on one of the power poles by Pat, then raise 40m and 80m vees on two more power poles and only use the discone for long hop 40m and 80m thereafter.

Ah, but the plan could not deal with all the events of the morning. El Nino decided to present a storm bringing steady rain which did not let up until noon. Tony postponed arrival until 11 AM, and relied on the discone a few extra hours until dry weather arrived for assembly of the C3S. J.T. did his best to assemble the C3S indoors while it rained. Celia began promptly at 1 PM, while Tony completed assembly of the C3S.

Unfortunately, the discone had developed a problem, (high SWR everywhere) so Celia found the going tough. She could hear 4 or 5 times as many loud stations as she could work. A few days after the contest, she learned, as she suspected, there had been a short in the connection to the discone. Pat, being delayed by the Rolling Stones Concert in Oakland the previous evening, and other helpers by tricks of map reading, did not get the C3S up until 6 PM, and due to advancing darkness only at 20'. The Field Day dipoles were pressed into service as inverted vees suspended from two of the 70' power poles to complete the array as darkness fell.

This made our 500W very loud into Montana, Utah, and Arizona, but these are not the places where hundreds of QSO’s can be found. Not easily discouraged, Celia, Tony and Pat continued until 1 AM, then broke for dinner and conversation. (Pat knows some great stories about Tuva and Physicists.) Sleep began at 3 AM. Note: the only restaurant open at 1 a.m. is Denny's and it largely serves sandwiches at this hour. Don't plan on filet mignon. It's probably better to get dinner some time before 10 p.m. The hot tea and sandwiches were nice, as the one disadvantage of the site is, it is without heating until the momentum builds up a bit. We wore jackets throughout most of the contest and with the amplifier running and the bunker - style cinderblock construction we were just fine.

The wee hours festivities led to a late start Sunday morning about 8:30 AM and rates were disappointing on 20m as we let J.T. choose the best band with the LP. By 2 PM we only had 300 Qs on the second station.

Finally, the C3S @ 20' began to gain the upper hand on 15m. At 3:15 Pat took the mike. With a bit of coaching he mastered TRLog and was merrily running 'em within a few minutes. We think he is now hooked. (note: Pat, AA6EG, is now a full NCCC member!...ed.)

At 4:30 J.T. had completed his 24 hour maximum and Tony took the LP for a workout on 40m where we were still fresh meat. Our 10 min. rate peaked at 114 and we finished with a respectible 570/76 despite less than 17 hours of operating. This was FUN and made the disappointments seem FUNNY!

In order to attract more participation at the site, Pat is planning to mount the rebuilt KT34XA and a Tail Twister on the 70' pole at the top of the hill. The numerous monobanders will wait until the club has built up a larger cadre of active members.

Those NCCC members who pine for a guest operating chair free of antenna restrictions etc. should take advantage of this opportunity. Everything necessary to be competitive is on site except for a few more rotators, and a sustained series of Saturdays spent in antenna assembly and erection. You will be hearing more on this subject in the near future.

73, Tony, AE0M and Celia, N0BBS

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ELECTIONS LOOM

Have you ever thought about serving as a club officer? It is a great way to contribute to the success of our organization. New blood is critical to keeping the club activities fresh with innovative ideas and enthusiasm.

There are over 160 of us who are local members and could help lead the club next year. (The club's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.)

The officers form the Board of Directors and include the President, Vice President/Contest Chair, Secretary/Treasurer, plus 4 directors consisting of the previous year's President and 3 "at large" directors.

An officer can serve in the same position for only a one-year term. The rationale behind this is the desire to encourage new ideas and to spread the work around a bit. The officers are elected at the April meeting each year. The election is really more of a "confirmation" of the slate of names submitted by the board. Typically, there is only one nominee for each of the 6 positions.

The 7th board member, the Past President, doesn't have a choice. I guess we could impeach the person for sufficiently bad behavior, though!

The current board is now soliciting volunteers for the next term. We would greatly appreciate people coming forward and expressing an interest in one or more of the positions so we don't have to get into our begging routine. I, personally, have found my time on the board to be satisfying and fun. It has been an excellent way for me to repay the enjoyment I receive from the NCCC.

For the Secretary/Treasurer position which I've done this year, it helps if you are a bit computer literate. Thanks to some initial work done by N6NT, our roster is in MS Access with all membership information. It automatically prints labels for the JUG, the annual NCCC Roster, the annual NCCC qualified members list for ARRL contests, e-mail address lists of various sorts, etc. I have been able to send meeting announcements and other club information via email to about 80% of club members--those who have supplied e-mail addresses--in addition to the monthly JUG mailing. The financial books are kept on MS Excel which was set up by K6KR and has worked great to keep the checkbook "in sync" and tracking with our annual budget. I have converted both to the MS Office Professional 97 versions and they have served us well this year. Now, it probably takes a couple hours a month to keep up and then maybe another hour or so for the ongoing communication with the NCCC board, typically via e-mail, but occasionally a Saturday morning meeting.

Why not contact any of us on the present board and find out what the position(s) entail? The current list of officers is on the first page of the JUG. You may be surprised how easy it is to jump in and help out.

73, W0YK

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Y2K

If you think Y2K is a German contest callsign, then you may be wishing otherwise very soon. It means "Year2000," and reads like a plot from one of Kafka’s novels, when most of the world’s computers run into a programming time bomb created by COBOL mainframe programmers in a distant era when dates were abbreviated as (19)xx. In the PC world, time literally began in 1980 and, in both cases, we learn that the world seems to end in (19)99. Our contest PC’s have an interesting hardware twist in that they use three different clocks: a DOS clock, a BIOS clock, and a RTC (Real Time Clock). If all three are not Year2000 compliant, then you may be thinking of something more serious than your contest logging software rate meter when January 2000 arrives.

The ARRL RTTY Roundup in Jan. 2000 will have the distinction of being the first contest to feel the full wrath of this bug. I have a P38 board in my P5 computer, and know that neither the BIOS nor the RTC are Y2K compliant. But I know, at least, that my computer will not lock up. At the worst, I’ll have to correct the log manually and change the year from /80 to /00. This would be the only time in my life that my low score could serve any advantage!

When March 2000 rolls around, a new crisis will hit us, in one form or another, as we find out much of our software is not Y2K compliant. The year 2000 is a leap year, but most software that was never written to consider what happens after 1999 would also never correct for the fact that the year 2000 is also a leap year. We might notice this on that first contest weekend with ARRL DX Phone. If this is an important one on your contest schedule, you might want to prepare for manual logging - as a backup plan. I’ll be using my laptop that weekend, which is Y2K compliant. Even though I have at least 3 different logging programs on it, I’m thinking that setting up an Excel spreadsheet macro might be a good backup alternative.

The first useful step for getting that computer ready is found at

www.mitre.org/research/y2k

where we can down load the DOSCHK software to test the three clocks. Beyond that, the options are yours.

73, N2ALE/6

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TV GUIDE

OK, troops, here's what you've all been waiting for!

It's the scores from …

1997 Sweepstakes CW

Call (Ops) QSO's Mults Score Class

N7TR 1397 79 220726 SO HP
W6NL 1293 79 204294 SO HP
N6RO 1260 78 196560 SO HP
K6AW 1224 79 193392 SO HP
WC6H 1237 78 192504 SO HP
K6KM (K2KW) 1204 79 190232 SO HP
N6TV 1219 78 190164 SO HP
N6NT 1189 79 187862 SO HP
AE6Y 1153 77 177562 SO HP
NI6T 978 79 154524 SO HP
N6DA 1012 76 153824 SO HP
W6BIP(+W6CT, AE0M) 953 79 150574 M/S
K6A(K6PU) 906 79 143148 SO LP
WA6CTA 903 79 142674 SO HP
W6BSY 900 78 140400 SO HP
W0YK 874 78 136344 SO HP
K6ANP(+K6LRN, N6AD) 808 79 127664 M/S
K6XX 773 79 122134 SO LP
W6EU 763 79 120554 SO HP
K6RB 759 77 116886
AD6E 105028
K6GT 650 78 101400 SO HP
KT6RA(+KD6KKP) 596 79 94168 M/S
N6KD 569 78 88764
W7DR 561 73 81906 SO LP
N7TN 515 74 76220 SO HP
AJ6V 500 75 75000 SO HP
W6OAT(+Pkt) 485 76 73720 M/S
KA6W 471 76 71592 SO HP
W6RGG 442 74 65416 SO LP
N6PN 400 77 61600 SO LP
K6ZM(K6WG) 404 75 60600
K6BPB 365 73 53290 SO LP
W6ISQ(+Pkt) 309 79 48822 M/S
K6UM 290 77 44660 SO LP
W6PLJ 303 72 43632 SO LP
K6PUD 285 68 38760
AD6AY 272 71 38624 SO LP
AK6L (+Pkt) 246 76 37392 M/S
KD6NOS (+Pkt) 241 74 35668 M/S
W6ISO 205 68 27880 SO LP
N6NZ 179 62 22196 SO LP
AA6W 143 59 16874
W6G(WB6DSV) 160 50 16000 SO LP
KM6F 119 51 12138 SO HP
N6EE 106 50 10600 SO LP
K7CO 64 39 4992
N6BT 16 14 448
CW Total: 4,669,412 (48 entries)

1997 Sweepstakes SSB

N7TR 2301 79 363558 SO HP
WC6H 1866 79 294828 SO HP
N6RO(+K3EST) 1550 79 244900 M/S
W6NL 1525 79 240950 SO HP
N6NT 1455 79 229890 SO HP
K6AW(+KX7M) 1351 79 213458 M/S
K6KM(NU6S) 1274 79 201292 SO HP
K6HNZ 1254 79 198132 SO HP
AE6Y 1206 79 190548 SO HP
W0YK 1183 79 186914 SO HP
K6ZM(WB6MZQ, KD6RMN, AF7Y, K6WG) 1134 78 176904 M/S
KI6CG 1071 78 167076 SO HP
W6BSY 1034 79 163372 SO HP
K6BZ 1013 79 160054 SO HP
K6PU 1012 79 159896 SO HP
NH7A/W6 984 79 155472 SO HP
W6BIP (+W6CT, AE0M) 953 79 150574 M/S
WX6V 944 79 149152 SO LP
NI6T 934 79 147572 SO HP
W6RGG (+Pkt) 921 79 145518 M/S
K6RB 790 77 121660 SO HP
W6ISO 690 77 106260 SO HP
N6TNW (+N6TNX) 686 77 105644 M/S
K6GT 653 79 103174 SO HP
K6UM 641 79 101278 SO LP
AC6DQ 638 79 100804 SO HP
N6IJ(AE0M, N0BBS, AA6EG) 570 76 86640 M/S
AD6E 78280
N6TV 538 72 77472 SO HP
K7CO 462 78 72072 SO HP
AK6L(+KD6NOS, +Pkt) 427 78 66612 M/S
N6UUG 424 72 61056 SO HP
W6IXP 334 70 46760 SO HP
K6EP 328 70 45920 SO HP
N6BT 326 69 44988 SO HP
W6ISQ(+Pkt) 272 78 42432 M/S
WX6M 326 63 41076 SO HP
W7DR/M 263 78 41028 SO LP
N6JT 288 71 40896 SO HP
N6EE 239 77 36806 SO LP
K6BPB 248 68 33728 SO LP
K6XX 233 66 30756 SO HP
WA6CTA 220 62 27280 SO HP
AJ6V 169 58 19604 SO HP
AF7Y 127 55 13970 SO LP
WA0YQM 121 49 11858 SO LP
W6OAT(+Pkt) 112 49 10976 M/S
W6DPD 116 46 10672 SO LP
N6NZ 124 43 10664 SO LP
AD6AY 105 49 10290 SO LP
N7TN 101 37 7474 SO HP
KM6F 86 42 7224 SO LP
KD6WW 68 33 4488 SO LP
N2ALE 75 29 4350 SO LP
K6ST 46 30 2760 SO LP

Phone Total: 5,567,012 (55 entries)

NCCC Grand Total: 10,236,424 (103 entries)

These numbers are unofficial, but should be very close to correct! Thanks to everyone who entered. Now the anxious waiting begins.

73, N6TV

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Contester Runs Out of Gas During CQP!

No, I didn't have gas. But in CQP I ran out of it. No, I didn't run out of energy or lose my concentration. I ran out of helium and lost my 160 meter balloon vertical.

I put up the balloon late Friday afternoon, because CQP starts at 9AM local time. When I got home Friday night, I noticed the balloon didn't seem to have full lift, and the antenna seemed to be drooping. I pulled the balloon down, secured it to the balcony "launch pad," and figured I'd take a break and fill it up Saturday night, right before I moved to 160 meters. I'd only need it up for an hour or two.

So, Saturday night I take a break, run up to the balcony, and start filling the balloon. I got lucky and actually felt some gas coming out through a very small, pinprick-sized leak. I asked my son to hold the balloon, and I was just about to apply a patch when the balloon popped! I got a replacement balloon, but after it was about 1/5 inflated, I ran out of helium!

73, k6la

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A SHORT CQP PICTURE STORY

	You may remember J.T. (K7CO) telling about the Napa county expedition for CQP. Here are a few photos documenting their experience. First, we see J.T.’s dad, Dennis (AF7Y) with the proprietor of the "Silverado Motel," who was keeping fairly close tabs on the construction on his property!
And next we see the final antenna farm with the motel none-the-worse-for wear!
	And here is a "Junior op" on the expedition! I don’t know who she is, but she surely does lend some beauty to the operating site!
Finally! J.T. starts to hand out Napa county to the hungry hordes.

If any club member has photos which might be of interest to JUG readers, let your ol’ JUGhead know!

Thanks to Dennis and J.T. for the photos! … ed

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1997 CQP High Claimed Scores

High Claimed Scores, CA S/O

High scores from CA M/S

High scores from CA M/M

High scores from outside CA S/O

High scores from outside CA S/O

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