Don't forget the link to SARA from the links area here

We continue to be proud members of SARA
we are the members that are a club within the club (SDXA membership is within the SARA organization)
We pride ourselfs in having friendly get togethers AFTER the SARA meeting at Chef Lee's
Here is a direct link to the SARA Blog, please contribute to both Blogs SARA and SDXA
I am recruiting Moderators for both and those that wish to contribute articles even on an in frequent basis are encouraged to contact me.

73
steve

Wow a lot of Hams are on U Tube.......

here is a link to one with a contest theme and near the end is some Sick looking antennas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOOd48j6WA

This might be fun, makin g movies to share
Something for after the new year

73
steve

A Challenge

Last year I entered the ARRL RTTY Round-Up
I choose Multi-OP (It was me plus Pkt cluster)
I also selected High Power

I was the sole entry in this class from the Delta division
and recieved a very nice wood plaque

The cahllenge is for some of you guys to challenge me
compete against me and see if you can take this plaque away !

here is my results from last year...............

10

KG5VK

79,050

850

93

M

B

LA

Shreveport ARA

(+packet)

By the way RTTY round-up also includes the PSK modes !!!!!
again remember I entered in the QRO category Multi-Op
You do not nned a lot of power and make sure you dial it down
esp when on PSK or near the PSK frequenciues !!!!!

who wants to challenge me ?

The contest is Jan 6-7 2007

RTTY contesting is a lot of fun
esp with MMTTY
(I use the MMTTY plug-in with WriteLog)

73
steve
KG5VK

Links to tools and resources.. what have you found ?

here is one I found...........

www.n0hr.com has a tool for FireFox browser users called PropFire
yeap a propagation tool built-in to the firefox web browser

here is a link to the new N0hr Blog
http://www.n0hr.com/hamradio_blog/

what have you found that we may find useful for Hamming ?

73
steve
KG5VK

The Team that beat the pants off us for Delta 1st place last year...

The team that beat us for 1st place in Delta Division last year was not QRV this year !!!!

Here is ana email I got from one of the "Team Members"

Hi Steve,

Well, the best laid plans, etc...

We had planned a full SS Phone effort at K4JNY's until Murphy showed up. One team member had a death in the family, another caught the flu and K4JNY came down with a bug at the last minute. So we had to abandon our plans for this one. K0EJ op'ed for a few hours from the K4JNY QTH with his call and I worked from home. Hope you all did well.

73, Ted W4NZ

So we may have 1st place in the bag for Delta division and hopfully we will move up a notch or two in the region

Thanks again for all of the Team members supporting the KG5VK SS Team !

steve

Zone Prop an On-Line live CQ Zone to Zone prop tool

ZonePropZone to Zone Propagation information will be available for the CQWW cw fromRadio Sport Canada
http://www.radiosport.ca/zoneprop/

ZoneProp uses an widely accepted propagation engine to determine the band onwhich a contestant in one CQ DX zone is likely to be able to contact acontestant in another CQ DX zone taking into account the current geomagneticactivity.

ZoneProp produces a 40 zone by 40 zone matrix that is updated hourly atapproximately 20 minutes past the hour. The intersection between a row andcolumn gives the band on which a contestant in the zone represented by therow is mostly likely able to contact an contestant in the zone representedby the column.The zone numbers in the left hand column are clickable. Onceclicked the information for that zone is displayed in isolation above a mapof CQ DX zones. The pages are refreshed every 10 minutes in order to capturehourly updates of the matrix

For technical details seehttp://www.radiosport.ca/zoneprop/manual.phpZoneProp is designed for high speed Internet access using IE 6/7 or a recentrelease of FireFox. It has not been tested in other browsers or on slowspeed (e.g. dialup) Internet access.SylSylvan Katz - VE5ZXSaskatoon, SK

Immediate Contesting Results in fact real time scores...

It is not a fantasy
It will occur in the reasonable future
in fact real time score bopards are now available for most major contests
and here is a team that is promoting "real time only players"

http://rfsport.com/Home_Page.php

the next (and the first HF contest) with this tool is the Stew Perry Top Band challenge

cheers !
steve
KG5VK

Thanks to all the Sweepstakes ops at KG5VK !!!

here is what we did.................

score 184,960 pts

Q's 1156
Multipliers 80 (sweep)
Hours on 24

Ops KG5VK,NZ5S,KJ5SZ,KA5M,KH2DF,K5SL

by band......
80m 88q's 7 mutipliers
40m 485q's 36 m
20m 465q's 25m
15m 118q's 12m

Last year we had 1,033 Q's so we excelled by another 123 Qso's
we of course did a Sweep again and I will be placing a check in the mail soon for te Clean Sweep mugs and greatly appreciate Marsh (KA5M) footing that bill



Next year I promise to have the voice keyer working on both radios !!!

73 and happy Turkey Day !!!!!!!!!!

steve

New Band Plans will take effect 15 December !!!

FCC "Omnibus" Amateur Radio R&O Published in Federal Register, Takes EffectDecember 15NEWINGTON, CT (November 15, 2006) -- Just a little over a month after theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) released the Report and Order(R&O), the so-called "omnibus" Amateur Radio proceeding, WT Docket 04-140(FCC 06-149) to the public, appeared today in the Federal Register. It willtake effect on Friday, December 15 at 12:01 EST, 30 days after its publication.The complete news story is found at this link.
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/11/15/100/?nc=1

a Tip that I thought was worth reviewing.........

just saw this Tip on the ARRL Contest Reflector and felt it was worth a review..........

One more tip for phone contesting - before responding and giving the
contest exchange, breathe in. Then say the whole exchange in one
long exhalation. Do not add extra words like "Please copy" or "Your
number is" or "Check," "Uh," and "And." They are just time and
breath wasters. Listen to the top operators when you tune by them.
The key to sounding like a pro is efficiency and rhythm, giving the
information in the expected order, enunciated clearly for easy copy.

I know our team does this well but I some times habit of adding those fillers
and we need rate ! So you all remind me when I get sloppy.

Am I getting too serious, yea maybe, but we are going to still have a Boat Load of fun
One we get started I will chill, promise - because I know our team is at the helm !
I am just in pre-contest neveves Hi Hi !

Great news my wife gets to come home from the hospital today.
I just talked to her and told her I was finishing a post to the contest team ops...

She said Your not cancelling the contest are you, I said no unless you want me to and she said absolutely not, I do not want you to cancel playing in SS with the guest ops

Is my wife awesome or what !!!!!!!!!!!!

73
steve
KG5VK

It is this week-end !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course "It" is the ARRL Phone Sweepstakes contest
and it starts at 3 PM Saturday afternoon and runs tell 9 PM Sunday night (local times CST)

It is going to be fun, new gear and more antennas at KG5VK's qth to play with

Computerized voice keying that even gives the contest exchange including the serial number automaticly and even if you need to present a fill that can be done by the voice keyer !

Yeap we could almost lock the microphone away, almost.

I have added dual monitors for increased "computer desk top space"
Band maps for the spots rcvd thru AR user Dx cluster software are clickable
I also added F Keys for a single mouse click to the rate graphs and the multiplier chart as well as change Operator tool all theses buttons are in one small but easily found box at the bottom right of the log entry window

And of course on that seperate computer monitor desk space is ACE HF prop software showing us the status of propagation on each band by color code....
Green (path supported on this freq)
yellow (path about to open or starting to open)
and red (band not yet usable)

on the left radio we have automated rotator support for 15m/20m and 40m
push one keyboard button the antenna will point to the call area for the callsign in the log window

the right radio power band is 75 meters with a beverage antenna and Four Good antennas just for that one band, the right radio is capable of all bands 10/15/20/40/75
the antennas for the higher freqs on this radio are Kt-34xa tri bander at 40 feet and a 4el 40m at 18 feet

The 75m antenna choices are from a low Moxon pointed West, a Hy Gain Hy Tower vertical with a very good ground plane, a long OCF Dipole sloping from 70 feet to 15 ft above the ground to the North West and a large Delta loop broad side favors East and West.

Left Radio is my new "found" Icom 775 DSP you guys are going to love this rig !
she of course drives the Henry 3K amp to legal limit

Right Radio is the famous FT-1000MP that Bobby KF5XV found for me
it is a really neat rig and I have it setup as our primary radio for 75m

The contest software (WriteLog)
auto switches the mike line (and the Voice keyer) to the correct radio based on where you have the mouse there are Two log entry window lines the top one is the left rig and the bottom is the right rig

We can manually select rcv audio from a SO2R switch box
this audio can be left rig in left ear and right rig in right ear
Or audio mixed or even right rig in both ears or left in both ears
easily done with one toggle switch and a pot on the Top Ten Devices DX Doubler Box which sits between the two rigs -- sounds more complex than it is !!!!!!

one radio can CQ by itself while you look at another band for an opening or multipliers on the other rig - I spent about $800 making it so we can use two radios at the same time (one transmit and one rcv with I.C.E. auto switching Band Pass filters

almost all band switching is automated like last year when you change bands change the band switch on the appropiate amplifier

This year we will probably start out the contest on 40m, then move to 75m
and the next morning get started on 20m as the sun rises

Of course with the two radio configuration we can work more than one band at a time
the rigs are set-up so that there is ONLY one Transmit signal at any time per the ARRL rules
There are no band change limits in sweepstakes so we can change bands as often as we want but we of course need to concentrate on high a High Q rate.

Our Goal is 1800 QSO's which comes out to which is a minimum of 75 QSO's per Hour
if we find ourself hunting and pouncing our rate will suffer, one way to keep the rate up is to USE the Two radio configuration while the Voice Keyer is CQing do the Search and Pounce on the other rig - just make sure you listen to both radios and answer any calls from our CQ !!!

The Tennessee contest team that took first pplace ARRL Dekta Division last year from us is K4JNY and they had 1570 Q's with a sweep
KG5VK team had 1,033 Q's with a sweep

So the 1800 target is just that a target
less than that we are looking at a need of 1600 Q's to be in the running for 1st place delta

Remember last year we were 5th in the ARRL Region
yes we made the region box and that was the first time in a long time that our team has made the region box top scores (they only list the Top five)
so even if we don't push ahead of the K4JNY crew we will make the region box again and move us a notch to fourth or third in it - iow I am really happy with the team we have !!!!!!!

The Fun is this week-end please come join us and operate
if your ears are not up to the ssb chatter you can still be an asset to our team
help us not miss that Ten Meter opening and look for multipliers on the pkt cluster spotting computer etc....

The coffee and the sodas as well as the munchies are on me
Marsh KA5M has genrously volunteered to buy the Clean Sweep mugs for our operators
and I greatly appreciate that !

Man are we going to have Fun !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ops may start showing up at my QTH any time after 12 Noon

73
steve
KG5VK

SARA Club to be presented a Woody from Mickey Cox at Monroe Hamfest

SARA Club to be presented a Woody (Wood Plaque) from Mickey Cox at Monroe Hamfest

Plaques will be presented to the Minden ARA/N5RD, the Shreveport ARA/K5SL, and the
Central LA ARC/N8OO in recognition of those clubs' outstanding Field
Day performances this year.

For hamfest details, visit http://www.ares-nela.org/hamfest/

73,
Mickey Cox K5MC
LA Section Manager
Email: k5mc@arrl.org
LA Section Website: www.laarrl.org/