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Posts published in “Club Station”

SPARC Tower Damage from Pinellas Park Tornado

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 02/08/2020

The recent tornado that passed through Pinellas Park on Thursday February 6th was not kind to SPARC. While this damage pales in comparison to people that had trees fall on their homes; nonetheless, the tower at the club station suffered some damage such that it will not crank down. The tower appears to have bent at the base of the joint where the sections overlap. One element on the log periodic antennas appears damaged as well.

Club tower bent

Further behind the club station, you can see from this picture taken by Pat AA0O how the high tension wire poles fared (yes, that pole appears to be leaning over).

Club members Dave KR4U, John KI4UIP and Pat AA0O (among others) stopped by to check out the damage. The wire antennas were taken down. Plans are underway for how to safely remove the tower from its base. Restoring this will be a big project requiring lots of volunteers so more on that later.

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Another W4TA RTTY Win

By Bob Wanek N2ESP on 12/13/2019

W4TA, the SPARC Contest Group, continues its winning ways by taking First Place in both the West Central Florida section and ARRL Southeast Division as well as Third Place in USA/Canada in the Multi-operator, Single transmitter, Low power category of the 2019 RTTY Roundup.ARRL RTTY Roundup 2019 Award certificate

Posting a score of 88,788 points were: Paul KA4IOX, Rex KB8ESY, Ron KP2N, Dave KR4U, Bob N2ESP, Dee N4GD, Don VE3XD, Tom W4CU, Johnnie W4TSP and Leslie WA4EEZ.

If you are interested in joining this elite group of operators in the 2020 RTTY Roundup, save January 4th and/or 5th on your calendar. No experience necessary, just the desire to learn a new skill with a great bunch of hams. Contact Ron KP2N for additional details.

 

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W4TA World Champs

By Bob Wanek N2ESP on 11/13/2019

Radio teletype (RTTY) may be a technically ancient mode of communication in these days of sophisticated digital modes, but it can be a lot of fun. Members of SPARC’s contest team proved that by winning 1st place Worldwide and 1st place North America in the Multi-Operator High Power (Multiple Transmitter category in the 2019 running of the Makrothen RTTY Contest. With a total score of 3,003,769 points consisted of 652 QSOs, each having an average distance of 2,902 mi (4,607 km).

Makrothen 2019 Certificate

Member taking place in this record setting event were Pat AA0O, Paul KA4IOX, Rex KB8ESY, Ron KP2N, Dave KR4U, Bob N2ESP, Dee N4GD, Tom NY4I, Tom W4CU and Leslie WA4EEZ.

Also participating in the contest was club member Rich AA2MF, who worked the contest from his home station. Rich finished 1st place Worldwide and 1st place North America in the Single-Operator, SO2R, Low Power category.

Congratulations to all participants for a world class effort.

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Are You Ready to RTTY…

By Bob Wanek N2ESP on 07/13/2019

 

As announced at the last meeting, will be participating as W4TA in the North American QSO Party-RTTY.

This contest begins at 2:00 PM local time on Saturday July 20, 2019. The contest continues for 12 hours, ending early Sunday morning. W4TA will be operating in class M2, i.e. two transmitters will be on the air at the same time, but on different bands. 

This contest is a great chance for newcomers to get your feet wet in digital contesting. WARNING: RTTY contesting is addictive, so plan to stay awhile. There is no formal operating schedule, so show up when you can and we will fit you in. No experience needed…we will provide a mentor to get you started. 

With poor band conditions at the present, we will be operating primarily on the 80, 40 and 20 meter bands. With luck, 15 meters might open at start time, similar to our Field Day experience.

If you would like to operate in this contest, please send a quick email to Ron, KP2N (ronkp2nATgmailDOTcom).

 

 

 

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2019 Florida QSO Party Report

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 04/29/2019
Wyoming and North Dakota proved elusive during the 2019 Florida QSO Party.

Building on our half-time report, we completed the 2019 Florida QSO Party under very tough 40 meter conditions with 1185 QSOs. Our goal was to defend our 2018 Club win and get some new operators on the radios. We ran two stations—20 and 40 meters. 40 meters during the day was quite challenging as 10 and 15 meters are not much use nowadays. We had 630 CW QSOs and  555 SSB QSOs. Dave KR4U had the high QSO count with 324 contacts followed closely by Tom NY4I with 317 QSOs. As usual, we balanced our desire to get as many contacts as possible with working with new ops. Glenn N4GRC sat in with us for a bunch of contacts as did returning op Pat AA0O.

Dave KR4U and Ron KP2N. [N2ESPhoto]
Dave KR4U racking up the points at the CW station. [N2ESPhoto]
Dee N4GD operating with Ron KP2N and Dave KR4U in the back. [N2ESPhoto]
Pat AA0O operating the phone station. [N2ESPhoto]
Kudos to all the ops that participated. This was a challenging contest to keep both the CW and Phone station active. One of our regular CW ops, Tom W4CU is traveling and we of course lost Scotty N4RI (SK). We always need more CW operators. We get great rates on CW and it is a great way to get your speed higher.

As usual we had the regular assortment of contesting accoutrements such as all the drinks you can handle. Sunday morning coffee and bagels combined with lots of discussion of yesterday’s progress fueled the early morning conversation.

The online QSO score board was active to on the station so those keeping score at home could track our progress. Check into our club web site during our next event to follow our progress.

[Photo produced by N1MM_VIEW]

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Florida QSO Party – Halftime Report

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 04/28/2019
States and Providences worked so far.

We started the party Saturday April 27 at the club station at Noon. We had Bob N2ESP, Dave KR4U, Johnnie W4TSP, Dee N4GD, Tom NY4I, Rex KB8ESY, Ron KP2N and Glenn N4GRC as operators. We ran two stations the whole time with one on CW and one on SSB. Dave KR4U, Ron KP2N and Tom NY4I manned the CW station with the others working the SSB station. Our goal is to remain competitive with last year’s winning score as well as train a few new ops. Glenn N4GRC joined us for the first time making quite a few contacts.

According to last year’s log stats, we made 867 QSOs last year on the first day. This year we made 874 so we are on track for another great showing. I should mention that we call CQ the whole time as stations want to work Florida stations. The pile-ups waiting to work us were quite large. It’s quite a bit of fun to operate the station in the FQP.  The FQP is broken up into two sessions both 10 hours each. Saturday’s session went until 10:00 PM and Sunday’s starts at 8:00 AM until 6:00 PM local time. You can still join us to operate. Just come down to the club station at 6699 90th avenue north in Pinellas Park anytime Sunday before 6 PM.

You can also check us out on the club webcam as well as track our score on the contest dashboard.

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