(Updated June 2, 2021)
The Fort Wayne Radio Club announces a new, short, monthly VHF SSB/CW contest, the 30-minute, Two-Meter Classic Sprint. Read on for details and rules.
Continue readingSaturday, April 24 was a blustery, rainy day. But no amount of wet weather could dampen the intentions of many regional VHF enthusiasts, as they geared up for the first annual VHF SSB/CW 2M Sprint Classic contest.
The Sprint Classic is a contest that encourages VHF weak signal operations, using the traditional modes of SSB and CW. Stations were awarded points based upon the number of contacts made and the total number of grid squares worked (each grid square was a unique multiplier).
The action started at 1300Z (9 a.m. Eastern time) with the contest ending nine hours later at 2300Z. Band conditions were not favorable, due to a lack of wide-spread tropo. openings. However, band conditions aside, contest entrants reported working stations as far as Hamilton, Indiana; Lemont, Illinois; Cecil, Ohio, and all the way to Rudolph, Wisconsin! (Maybe Santa’s sleigh brought some good propagation to Wisconsin?)
Continue readingThe Fort Wayne Radio Club May meeting will be next Wednesday, May the 19th. We had mistakenly listed the meeting as May 12 in the editorial of this month’s Hamsplatter. The correct date was listed further down in the newsletter, so there was obvious confusion there!
We apologize to anyone that made the trip downtown to find an empty meeting! We will do our best to make sure these kinds of errors do not happen in the future!
Please join us on Wednesday, May 19th, for our club meeting at 6:00pm and our speaker from the Fort Wayne Police Department. Stay tuned for more club activity including Field Day at the Fort and the Tail Gate Hamfest in August.
The FCC has announced that rule changes that require amateur radio stations to be evaluated against RF exposure limits go into effect on May 3, 2021. Read more on the ARRL website.
It is with great pleasure that we announce the addition of MFJ Enterprises and DX Engineering as award sponsors for the VHF SSB/CW 2m Sprint Classic contest. These two ham radio-focused organizations have graciously donated several items that will be awarded to various category winners of the VHF SSB/CW 2m Sprint Classic contest. Thank you to MFJ Enterprises and DX Engineering for your generosity!
The following category winners will receive a special recognition award for their winning achievement from MFJ Enterprises.
Base Station:
High Power first place
Low Power first place
QRP first place
Basic Rover:
High Power first place
Low Power first place
Multi-Op Rover:
First Place
The top scoring “Rookie” station (a station licensed in the past 3 years) and “Legacy” station (a station licensed for 25+ years) will receive a special recognition award from DX Engineering.
2021 Indiana QSO Party
Fort Wayne Radio Club Involvement
Defending our Honor
Saturday, May 1, 2021, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (local time)
Once again, it’s time to make our club stand out! The club competition for the Indiana QSO Party (INQP) relies on aggregate scores submitted by individual club members. That means all we need to do is get on the air from our home stations, makes some contacts on HF (SSB or CW or both), and submit our logs as members of the Fort Wayne Radio Club.
During the 12-hour event, stations from all over Indiana will be calling, “CQ Indiana QSO Party.” Simply contact them, log their information (signal report and county . . . . or, if out of state, signal report and state) and give out a signal report (everyone sends 59 for SSB or 599 for CW) and your county.
Logging of contacts can be made by using special logging software like WriteLog, N3FJP, or N1MM. The INQP webpage (http://www.hdxcc.org/inqp/) also suggests several others but these are the ones that work the best. Both WriteLog and N3FJP are for purchase. The N1MM Logger+ is totally free and supports all contests and state QSO parties without having to download extra files. Like N3FJP and WriteLog, it can interface with your radio, connect to a DX Cluster via telnet, interface, and log FT-8, PSK, RTTY, along with producing files for uploading to ARRL’s Logbook of the World and whatever computer logbook you operate. You can also have it submit your score!
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Normally, we start the fox (hidden transmitter) hunt season on the first Sunday in February, but sadly this year one of our enthusiastic hunters, Don Glick, K9LI, passed away suddenly before the hunt. FWRC decided to cancel the February hunt and focus on March. So, Sunday, March 7, we started the first transmission with 30 seconds of silent air to honor Don. This began our hunt and the start of the 2021 season. If this first hunt is any indication, this could shape up to be a great year!
From the staring point we had a variety of hunters, some new to FWRC hunts, some experienced, and some new to the sport. The teams of Al, Jim, Carole, and Anne (WB9SSE, K9OMA, WB9RUS, KA9YYI) were there along with Charles, KC9MUT, who had a ride-along with newbie KD9QHL. We were happy that the team of N9FEB and ND9C, both from the Indianapolis area, drove up to the Fort to participate in one of our hunts. Then there was a new team of several Trine University students and their professor in the form of KC2TCP, N9AMT, KD9OKH, KD9QQW, KW9S, and Abigail (not licensed yet). Also, we had a visit from Fred, KC9EZP and his dog, Izzy. They weren’t in the hunt but passing through the Fort.
Prior to this first hunt, the fox team of Linda and Steve (W9LAN & W9SAN) had made several trips around the county searching out new hiding spots. We had identified six potential places but decided on returning to Franke Park back by the old soap box derby hill. With the help of grandson Alex, the microfox was literally hidden under the edge of a large rock and a small pile of leaves completed the disguise. At 1:30 pm, we started transmitting with the 25 watt fox and activated the microfox, the hunt was on! It was a beautiful late winter day with plenty of sunshine, but the temperature was not too warm in the range of 40 degrees. Since we were only about six miles from the start point, we figured it would be a short time before the hunters started showing up. Boy were we wrong! After about an hour we began to wonder if our “easy” hiding spot was anything but!
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