The W4HOD VE team held a special testing session for the Auburn University High Altitude Balloon club on the AU campus. The session was a great success with 11 of 13 applicants passing their test. There were 10 Technicians and 1 General who passed. Congrats to all of them. Considering the study load they have at Auburn, all of them deserve it.
W4HOD received our Certificate of Affiliation from the ARRL last week. This is a very important document to us, as it shows how far this club has come in 2 years. We have pulled together as a team and achieved all we set out to do. The future does look bright!
Several members stand out for their contributions. I won’t name them here, but you know who you are. Thanks for everything you do.
KA4PKB, KA4NDY and I had breakfast as Hardees on Wire Road in Auburn this morning. We had a good breakfast and then discussed the world’s problems and solved a good many of them.
Afterwards we went to the clubhouse and started working on the 80 meter dipole that KI4KUT loaned us for the Alabma QSO Party next Saturday. W4HOD is pleased to have our newest member Darrell, K9MUG helping operate our CW station for the QSO Party.
Darrell donated an Icom-746 PRO to our club last month. We presented him with a lifetime membership in W4HOD and purchased a brick on the ARRL Terrace in Newington in his name.
The April meeting is on the 14th. The meal begins around 6:15 PM and the meeting begins at 7:00 PM. The menu this month begins the grilling season for 2009. We will have burgers, dogs, and the fixins. Tea, soft drinks, and dessert too.
Join us if you can. Meal is $5.00 per person. Please give us a heads up if you plan on attending.
Trees are down and light to moderate damage to some buildings from the storms that passed through Lee County on Friday evening. The clubhouse survived nicely, which is good. The covered bandstand/shelter was destroyed though.
Some of the club members will be helping clean up today.
W4HOD had a special guest at our March meeting. After dining on spaghetti, manicotti, lasagna, salad and dessert, we were treated to an antenna program by Darrell Penrod, K9MUG. Darrell presented several different wire antennas that will perform well and are easy to build.
I discovered a very good web site created by AD1C. of Colorado. The main page URL is http://ad1c.us/ . It is a combination personal page, ham radio page, and a great page on RTTY. He has written some very good, useful software programs and there is a link to them as well. One program I plan on trying for our club is the ADIF to CSV program. It converts ADIF files to comma separated values for exporting to Excel.
Thanks to a benevolent club member, W4HOD is the proud recipient of two WAS certificates. Both certificates were done 100% LOTW.
Mixed number 53,519 Date 09 March 2009
Digital (RTTY) number 734 Date 09 March 2009
I operated the BARTG RTTY Contest this past weekend. I used the club callsign W4HOD. Usually I have the pleasure of the company of members KF4OPX and KA4PKB, but they were not able to make this one. I had fun and made a few points.
Call: W4HOD
Operator(s): AA4YL
Station: W4HOD
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Loachapoka, AL
Operating Time (hrs): 14
Summary:
Band QSOs Countries Call Areas
-----------------------------------
80: 0 0 0
40: 58 7 14
20: 84 12 14
15: 10 3 4
10: 0 0 0
-----------------------------------
Total: 152 22 32 Continents = 5 Total Score = 41,040
Club: Alabama Contest Group
Comments:
Great contest. My first one flying solo, but great fun. Thanks for all the
contacts. Thanks especially for those stations who followed the message layouts
from rttycontesting.com, it makes things much more organized.
W4HOD will operate the club station in the CQ RTTY contest this weekend. KA4PKB, KF4OPX and AA4YL will be operating. Our goal is to be on the air most of the weekend and work as many stations as possible. As usual, our operation will be part of the Alabama Contest Group.
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UPDATE 2/16/2009
The WPX contest was great fun and our score was pretty good too. Thanks to club member KI4KUT for the loan of the 80 meter dipole, it did a great job. Thanks also to Gene, KI4EEY for dropping by and operating. It was great to have you with us Gene.
Totals:
QSOs 386
Points 909
Prefixes 203
Total Score 184,527
Operators: KF4OPX, KA4PKB, AA4YL and KI4EEY
Posted by AA4YL
KI4KUT, KF4OPX, KA4PKB and AA4YL are operating the XE RTTY contest this weekend. So far we have had a lot of fun and I am headed back to the clubhouse to join KA4PKB in an hour to finish up the contest. A super thank you to member John, KI4KUT for the use of the 80 meter dipole for the XE contest and for the CQ WW contest next weekend. More added about the contest later today.
Update:
I am back home, I’ve had a nap and here is some data from the contest for W4HOD in the XE RTTY contest.
174 QSOS
459 Points
38 DX
16 XE States
Total multipliers: 54
Score: 24786
Posted by AA4YL
Thursday usually means a gathering of the Loachapoka Think Tank (or Loachapoka Rat Pack, whichever you think is more fitting) at a local eating establishment in the Auburn-Opelika area. On Thursday, Feb 5, the lucky establishment was the cafeteria at the East Alabama Medical Center. The food was not bad, but the conversation is what made it great. We solved most of the worlds problems, but no one will listen to our solutions.
Yours truly was the only YL present, so I guess you could say I am the Angie Dickinson of the Loachapoka Rat Pack, but unfortunately, I sure as heck don’t look like her.
Present today were KA4NDY, KA4PKB, W4KDS, KG4NYW, KI4TWB, WB4LNM and yours truly, AA4YL. Look out Lee County restaurants, we could be at your place next week.
I just returned from the hamfest at Greenville, Alabama. Members of HODARS made the journey and had three tables. We promoted the club and sold some syrup. We always have warm home baked biscuits and warm syrup for folks to sample.
Greenville is a small fest, but lots of friendly people looking and buying. Our syrup sales were very good and HODARS is grateful to everyone who dropped by to visit and sample our syrup. The money raised with syrup sales goes to help our club and we appreciate the support.
Cheryl. AA4YL & Kim, KG4CQZ
Photo from the ATNM – http://atnm.mcars.us/#an5
The Butler County RACES group were very courteous and we appreciate the free tables at the hamfest. We will be back next year.
My thanks to KA4PKB, KG4CQZ, and KA4NDY for making the trip for the club.
Posted by AA4YL
