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Posts published in “Operating”

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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SPARC – Top Florida Club Station in 2018 Florida QSO Party

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 04/11/2019
Photo by Pat AA0O

While working on Tom NY4I’s tower project, Dan K1TO hand-delivered the above plaque for SPARC. It seems that in the 2018 Florida QSO Party (FQP), we WON the top Florida Club honors.  The results from the FQP show the following:

You can find the write-up of the results here on the FQP site. Note while the list above shows those that operated in the log, many thanks to Ron KP2N for all his efforts to organize this effort. Ron suggested we switch to the Multi-op, Multi-transmitter low power class and it was a great choice obviously. I’m not sure if it was just a logging error that Ron did not appear but regardless; that was an oversight.

If you review the original article where Bob N2ESP reported on the 2018 FQP effort, Bob highlighted that we keep score less by how many contacts we make and more by how many new contest ops we help. Bob also mentioned Dave KR4U’s 6 minute slow CW QSO. What makes this even sweeter is even with our focus on training, we still won in a very close race. That tells me that mentoring new ops and winning are not mutually exclusive.

But now for our next trick…the 2019 running of the Florida QSO Party is on April 27th starting at Noon. We plan on operating both CW and SSB stations. FQP is unique among contests in that the hours are reasonable to still do other things on the weekend. The contest runs from, Noon Saturday until 10:00 PM and then again on Sunday from 8:00 AM until 6 PM. We need operators! If you like operating at Field Day and want to have fun with your fellow hams, please plan on attending. Please check the signup sheet here and email contesting@sparc-club.org with your desired time and if you operate SSB, CW or both. First responders get the prime spots.

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SPARC Scores High in 2019 RTTY Roundup

By Ed NZ1Q on 03/26/2019

The ARRL has announced the preliminary results for the 2019 RTTY Roundup held the first weekend this past January.

In the Multioperator, single transmitter, low power class the W4TA team finished third place overall and first in W4 land!

N8LRG 109,557
K9NR 103,360
W4TA 88,780 – First in W4 land

Bob, N2ESP
Dee, N4GD
Leslie, WA4EEZ
Don, VE3XD

SPARC Members of the “W4TA Green Key Bunch” were Don, VE3XD, Leslie, WA4EEZ, Dee, N4GD, Tom, W4CU, Dave, KR4U, Rex, KB8ESY, Paul, KA4IOX, Tom, NY4I, Bob, N2ESP and Ron, KP2N.

For the first time we were also using the FT8 mode to make contacts. As other
stations using this mode reported that it was most useful Sunday afternoon
to contest end.  W4TA picked up mult #100 (NP2Q) with 5 minutes left on the clock.

The next RTTY contest from the DMI station will be NAQP in July. Watch for details.

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Phone Contest – CQ WPX SSB March 29th @ 8:00 PM

By Tom Schaefer NY4I on 03/11/2019

The CQ WPX SSB contest is a great contest for people that liked the fun of contesting during Field Day. This is a 48 hour contest with exciting runs where we call CQ most of the time. If you have ever wondered what it was like on the other side of the pile-up, this is the contest to find out.

We will use callsign NY4I which is a multiplier. That means other stations want to work us. Last year, my first hour run was 160 stations per hour. It is hard to describe the adrenaline rush one feels when working stations that fast. We will start at 8:00 PM on Friday 3/29 at the club station and go all through the weekend until Sunday night 3/31at 8:00 PM. We obviously need operators to do this level of contest. SPARC is inviting members of other clubs as well since we had so many people involved in our joint Field Day that liked working phone contests.

We need a schedule so please email Tom NY4I at NY4I@NY4I.com to say when you would like to operate. I can get a schedule online for ease of signup.

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