OSPOTA 2014

Each year, on the Saturday after Labor Day, I go camping in one of the Ohio State Parks. Purpose being to participate in the Ohio State Parks On The Air contest. It's a great way to combine Ham radio, and camping/hiking. 

This year’s park of choice is A. W. Marion State Park, near Circleville. I’m set up at site #53. Antenna is the G5RV. I brought the FT-950 this year. Here’s the info:

Grid square: EM89np

Latitude: 39º 37.98

Longitude: -82 º 52.59

Altitude: 935’ ASL

Temperature last night was in the mid 80s until around 11PM. Following is the picture I posted to Facebook, "supposedly" of my tent. Surprisingly, some folks took me seriously! It's actually something I found elsewhere on the internet.

Below is a picture of my real campsite:

The rig this year is the Yaesu FT-950, feeding a G5RV set up about 12 feet off of the ground, to take advantage of NVIS.
I'll be logging using N1MM.

I was watching the radar all afternoon, and  around 6:30, it began sprinkling. That was my cue to shut down, and put the equipment away. Granted, it was only a sprinkle, but I wasn't about to take chances with my equipment. Next year, I should consider bringing a second tent to operate from.

I opened up N1MM this morning, and reviewed my score. I surpassed(barely) my score from 2013. I'd have liked to do better, but my BIC (Butt In Chair) time was lower than it should have been.

I wound up with around 150 QSOs, and 54 parks activated. I'll take that, but hopefully my score will improve next year.

The bottom line is that I had a ball getting out of the shack, and operating from the great outdoors. If you get a chance to do the same, TAKE IT! You won't be sorry.

73, de John, KD8MQ

Monday Morning Memo

I was just reading the latest issue of the Monday Morning Memo. John, WA8KIW has a unique concept on newsletters; one that I've copied, by the way. John is with the Highland ARA, in Hillsboro ARA, down in SW Ohio. 
Each Monday, he puts out the Monday Morning Memo, which does a good job of keeping the Hams in SW Ohio informed of the local goings on. It's usually like pulling hens teeth just to get someone to volunteer to edit a monthly newsletter; and here we have a club that puts one out weekly.
I see a lot of advantages to this format. So many that I copied the format, and now do something similar up here in the NE section of the state.
Here's some highlights from the latest issue:
Bob, K8TQK will be presenting his weak UHF/VHF signal program at the next Scioto Valley ARC meeting on the 17th.

Do you know someone who had a ham license prior to March 21, 1987 but let it expire?  If so, they can get it back by taking an Element 2 (Technician) exam.  Even if they had a Extra, they need only take Element 2 to get the full Extra credit back.

It looks like the Clinton County ARA will be assisting the Clinton County Health department, by providing communications for a Health Fair on August 8th & 9th. 

John mentions again that time is getting short. The Ohio State Parks On The Air contest is on September 6th. Any operating event can be a great club activity. it should be noted that I am on the board for OSPOTA; so sorry if I tend to be a bit biased.
 

Hi everyone,

I hope you all had a great Independence Day. While checking out a new antenna, I took time out to play radio this morning. The 13 Colonies stations continue to be popular. I was happy to find ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN calling CQ. W1AW/9 is now also in my 20 Meter Log.

I thought I'd take a moment to post a couple of thoughts.

Another issue of the Wave Bender arrived recently. This is the newsletter of the Western Reserve ARC. They recently had a field trip to the K3LR contest superstation, and are scheduling license classes starting September 10th.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to make it to the Section Conference this year, due to work responsibilities. I will be at the Portage Hamfair, on the 27th. I hope you'll stop by the league table, and say hi!

There's nothing more to add right now, except to remind you to add me to your mailing list for your newsletters, and club news.

73,

John, KD8MQ

Here's our Amateur Radio Club Newsletter

I just posted the latest copy of the Alliance Amateur Radio Club newsletter to the website. Enjoy!

http://www.w8lky.org/newsltrs/current.pdf

Changes to KD8MQ.info

I just posted the changes to my Pa QSO Party site. You can check it out at www.kd8mq.info. The data now includes the results from the 2010 contest.

I will be tweaking the pages again over the summer of 2011. The changes I want to make include:

• Re-ordering the information, so that the newest data is at the top.
• Someone suggested including number of QSOs per county, and breaking them down by mode. I'm still thinking about this idea. It definitely is a good idea; I'm just figuring out how I want to do it.

Perhaps this summer, I may also finish my homepage. It is nowhere near finished, but I've been putting this off for too long.

73,

John, KD8MQ

The June issue of the Zero Beat is ready!

Hi,

I edit the newsletter for the Alliance(OH) Amateur Radio Club. Our website is at http://www.w8lky.org . I just posted the June issue of the Zero Beat to the website this morning. This issue, however was not without some "challenges". Among them are a couple of human error things which I prefer not go into here.
One challenge I had was figuring out how to overline two characters. This is an easy trick with MS Word, but not a trick that Publisher can do. Maybe someday we'll figure it out.

The other challenge was getting all the hyperlinks to work.
A little background, I edit the newsletter using MS publisher 2007, then print to PDF using a program called Primo-PDF. it's a good program, but seems to have a problem with hyperlinks that extend beyond the end of a line. I solved that problem this time by using www.tinyurl.com to shorten most of the hyperlinks. It works, but that's not the way I want to solve this.

There's no answer yet, but I'm working on it.

Our Monte Carlo issues - part 1

My wife has an 01 Monte Carlo SS, that she just loves. Well, that isn't 100% true. Lately, it's been sort of a love-hate thing. She never knew when Sassie (That's her name for it) would go temperamental on her, and refuse to start.
Sassie had two failure modes. She would either:
1) refuse to start, and the security light would come on.

or

2) refuse to start, and the security light would not come on.

With the help of the internet (Thank you Al Gore), we diagnosed it as a worn ignition lock cylinder. I started checking around for prices, and found that we'd be out about $200 for the cylinder alone. I'm sure it would be less, if we didn't have to buy the Passlock sensor with it. But GM has to make money too, I suppose.

Then, the cylinder had to be coded to our key. The price for this varies, quite a bit, depending on the dealer. The first one wanted $85.00 to code it. The second dealer quoted me $20.00, then only charged $10.00. Guess who I bought from?

Then, it was time to change the cylinder. I searched & searched on the net for instructions, only to come up empty. I even checked with Alldata-DIY which I subscribe to. It was as if this was some closely guarded secret, known only to a chosen few.

I finally did find some info in my Haynes manual. I haven't been a fan of the Haynes manuals, but on this repair, it really bailed me out. I could have figured the procedure out without it, but the job would have taken longer.

So, I have the manual, I have the part, and I have a free evening. In the next installment, I'll try to describe the procedure to change the switch on this model.

Till then, Take Care

73,

DE KD8MQ