News from the Sterling Park Amateur Radio Club (SPARC)

Hi,

Another month has gone by extremely fast. It is time for the February meeting - Wednesday, 3 Feb at 7:00 PM.

I worked only one contest this past month. The North American CW contest with 125 QSOs for 5000 pts. Then in the storms that followed, both my antennas came down. Have not fixed them yet.

Bud, W4KSN, has arranged for Mike Gray from the VA Department of Emergency Management to come and talk to us about emergency communications.

Bud and I are planning on meeting him at 6:00 PM at Joe's Pizza & Subs, 22360 S. Sterling Blvd., #103, Sterling, VA 20164 (703-444-9500) for dinner. Please come out and join us. I know from visiting other clubs that meeting the folks makes the trip worth while.

In addition, we encourage you to come to the meeting. Mike Gray will have come a long distance and we want to ensure that he is welcome.

After the presentation, we will continue with the club business including continuing with coordination for the Virginia QSO Party.

Refreshments will be provided by Red, N3TG.

See ;you at the meeting!

73, Gordon, NQ4K

We held our first meeting of the new year on Jan 6th at the Claude Moore community center. There were 18 members present at the meeting.

Along with introductions of the members, Bill WF1L gave a report on the special event station held in the W&OD caboose next to the Herndon train depot. This was a fun event as we got to set up a station inside the caboose on December 12th and 13th. For this event we operated a VHF station on 2m hitting many of the local repeaters and filling out our time on simplex. One of our great technical achievements has to be the routing of the antenna cable.......just ask Henry, K2BFY, for the details or see the photos. The event was held in conjunction with an operating model train display at Herndon's ArtSpace. Although cold and rainy weather kept attendance down on Sunday, a number of families stopped by our station after visiting the model railroads on Saturday. Thanks to Bill for organizing another great event and all the members that stopped by to help.

Reports were provided by the treasurer and secretary. Dick, W2YE, provided a report on the QSL Bureau and stated that we processed 135,000 cards in 2009!! He still has a few opportunities for volunteers and would be glad to have your help as a letter manager.

Duane, K4UW, reported sad news on the passing of Gary Poorman, K4VT. Gary was one of the original founders of SPARC. His previous calls were W3CPN, when he moved to Sterling, and later W4UPJ when he received is 4th district callsign. He became K4VT IN 1976. He moved to Atlanta in the mid 1980's. According to Duane, the three founders of the club were Gary, K4VT; Dana Huhn, W4DFK; and Pete Raymond, N4KW (then K4EKJ).

After a short break for refreshments, we held our annual holiday gift exchange. Gifts ranged from the bizarre to the latest ham gadgets. As the saying goes, a good time was had by all.

The next SPARC meeting will be Feb 3rd, 7:00 PM, at the Claude Moore Community Center.

73,
--MARK KI4OBT

Dear Radioamateur OM,

on behalf of the contest committe of HA-DX contest I would like to remind you that the next HA-DX contest is going to be organized between 16th January 1200 GMT and 17th January 2010 1159 GMT.

We ask you to take part in the contest and propagate and popularize the contest among your radioamateur friends.

The most important issues regarding the contest:
Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20,15 and 10 m.
Mode: CW and SSB.
Contest exchanges for non HA stations: RST + serial number from 001.
HA stations send their county abbreviations.

Cabrillo logs can be sent to as attachment
or can be submitted on the contest home page: http://www.ha-dx.com

The e-mail address above is only for submission of Cabrillo logs, if you have any questions or remarks please send it to contestmanager@mrasz.axelero.net

If someone cannot create a Cabrillo log he/she also can type the QSOs into a handy form on the home page.

Please publish and popularize this information among your radioamateur friends.

On behalf of the contest committee:
HA1AH,
Tibor Finta

Hi dear Operator ,

With this message we would like to remind you that the LZ Open Contest will take place next Saturday: January 16 2010 from 00:00UTC untill 06:00UTC

We invite you to take part in the contest - your participation will be highly appreciated.

We are sending invitations to more then 2000 contesters all over the world and we hope that this year the LZOPEN will be one of the most interesting and dynamic contests.

For more information and results please visit http://www.lzopen.com

73, LZ1GL Krasimir Latinov
http://www.lzopen.com

Hi,

I worked the NAQP CW Contest this evening. Had a very good time considering that I do not know code. Once again CWDecoderXP came to the rescue. It is not over yet, but it is getting late and the activity on 40M has died down, so it is over for me.
125 QSOs, 38 sections, 5000 points, all on 40M.

Heard Don, K7CS, a couple of times. Sometimes he was running sometimes search and pounce. I was following him through the band for 10-15 minutes one time. I would hear him making contact, then I would make contact with that station, and then follow him to the next station.

Anyone else work the contest?

73, Gordon, NQ4K

Hi,

I worked the ARRL RTTY contest this weekend. Had fun. 175 QSOs, 42 multipliers, 7,350 pts. I stopped when several people told me that I had a severe buzz on my signal. I will have to track that down. I did make contact with Dick, W2YE. I see that Don, K7CS, also submitted a log. Anybody else?

I want to remind people that the meeting on Wednesday is also a gift exchange. Something small, preferably ham related, but anything will do.

We all received an email from Henry, K2BFY, about the 6M roundtable. Please think about this and come prepared to discuss.

See you at the meeting.

73, Gordon, NQ4K