Hi Everyone,
It’s that time of year again — time for the School Club Roundup! Recently, the mid-atlantic region has been hit with several snow storms, but that didn’t stop Tom and I from making some contacts today during the SCR! We made most of our contacts via PSK, but we also snuck in a few voice contacts. We worked 20m today, but we will try 40m tomorrow for both PSK and voice.
You can check our website for a list of the states and schools that we have contacted as well as our current score. I’m not sure how we rank compared to other schools, but compared to our progress last year, we are ahead of schedule. There are also a few pictures of the shack and the 2 feet of snow that we had to trek through to get to the shack.
We were planning on having a club wide operating event on Thursday, but from the looks of the weather and the fact that our parking lot is not plowed, the event might be canceled. But keep checking your email and our website for updated info.
If you are from another school, please let us know via a comment if you will be on the air in the coming days. 73 and hope to see you all on the air!
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Josh KB3QNA
Tonight was our first meeting of the Spring semester and it looks like there is a lot planned! Here’s a quick run down of things that were decided at the meeting:
-We are going to keep the same meeting times as last semester – 7PM Thursdays at the shack
-We will be participating in the School Club Roundup next week, 2/8-2/12. We will have an open house type event again on Thursday from 1-7. Everyone is invited.
-Involvement Fest is this Weds in the Commons Mainstreet. Stop by and see our table and learn a little more about amateur radio. We are also looking for people to help staff the table. Email Tom if you are interested.
So far that’s all we have going on. We tested the radios and antennas for the SCR tonite, and everything is in working order. If all goes as planned, we will have another successful contest and might even earn more points than last time. Well, that’s all for now.
73,
Josh KB3QNA
This weekend our club President, Tom, and I had the chance to participate in a special event at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum, MD (K3NEM). The club was holding a special event to commemorate the anniversary of Pearl Harbor and was using the call sign W2W. Tom’s dad invited us to help him operate. The club was operating on 20 and 40m, but Tom and I worked 20m. We were pulling in contacts from all over the country, but mostly towards the west. We made contacts with California, North and South Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington state. I even made a DX long spot contact with someone in Australia!
I have to admit that I almost didn’t operate today because I felt kind of intimidated. I watched Tom’s dad work a few contacts on 20m and I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to try making any contacts. It all seemed to happen so quickly, and it was hard to hear what people were saying on the radio. But after I got on the air, I had a lot of fun talking to people – albeit all of my contacts involved short exchanges. All in all, it was a great way to get experience using HF and showed me that I need to work harder at earning my General class license.
This entire event was kind of last minute notice for our club – that’s why only Tom and I went. Hopefully next year we can schedule it so that more of our members can attend. It was definitely a great opportunity to get your feet wet without having the pressures of participating in an actual contest. We snapped a few pictures of Tom and I operating. I’ve posted one below and I’ll put the rest up on our website.
Tom and Josh at the W2W Event
Till next week,
73
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Josh KB3QNA
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