August CQ and QST out

[HENRYPOL at aol.com]

Made a stop by the PO box on way home between the thunderstorms that were
passing through the Raleigh area.  I was surprised to find both CQ and QST
had arrived since my last trip Monday morning.  

My tree limb-hanging 4 element 10 monobander survived all the winds from
Bertha.

I was somewhat disappointed in CQ.  K2EEK (editor) had stated in an earlier
issue (June 96) that the August issue would be an "Antenna Special".
 Remembering all of the annual antenna issues from Ham Radio and CQ in the
past, I was anxiously awaiting this issue (keeping my fingers crossed, hoping
that K4PC would not do another Half-Square, re 9/92 & 9/94, or Lazy-H, re
4/92 & 3/95, article).  So, imagine my disappointment when I turn through
this issue looking for those antenna feature articles and DON'T FIND ANY!
(except for one on antenna guying).  There's not even an antenna on the front
cover!  Plus, there is no explanation in the editorial.  Even Bill Orr's
column did not address any antennas.

OK, now that I have got that off my chest, what's in this issue of CQ:

Cover photo of contester K2TR in his shack (nothing covered-up by a sheet,
this time) with some details on the table of contents page.  Sounds like he
has an impressive antenna farm (could have been a great antenna issue front
cover!).

Contest related articles: Results of 95 CQ WW RTTY DX Contest; Rules for 96
RTTY Contest; Build a Snap-On RF Current Probe; The Guying Problem, A
Calculator Approach; 96 CQ 160 Meter Contest High-Claimed Scores; and Contest
Calendar column - pile-up timing and Contest Hall of Fame inductions
(congrats to OH2MM, K4VX, & K3EST).

Other interesting items: FCC Responds to Amateur Concerns Over Little LEO

Regular columns: Math's Notes - primer on rechargable batteries; VHF Plus -
FCC proposal targets 2 meters; Radio FUNdamentals - reverse telephone
interference; Doug's Desk - overview of small parts and kits; World of Ideas
- mobiling 96 Part II (HEY, there's some antenna stuff here!); Packet User's
Notebook - antennas & digital RF communications (more antenna stuff; so this
"antenna issue" is not a total lose); DX  - using beacons; Propagation -
sunspots continue to decrease.

Interesting ads:  Yeasu's new compact HF transceiver, FT600; new ad from AEA;
K6STI's DSP Blaster; a boom mic headset for $45; and Raibeam has antennas
that "eat yagis for lunch" (wonder what they have for breakfast? quads? :-)
).

Now, on to the latest issue of QST....

Nothing directly related to ham radio in front cover photo of a river
paddleboat and bridge (wait a minute!, maybe this is a recent Field Day site,
that bridge was possibly used as a Beverage antenna for 160, or the boom for
a 80/160 yagi, and the river current turned the paddle wheel which was
connected to a generator; WOW!).

Contest related articles: Correspondence - Too Many Contests-Not; Install a
House-Bracketed Tower - the right way; Hints & Kinks - Make High Quality
Ladder Line at Home; and Results 96 ARRL RTTY Roundup.

Other interesting items: Quadrifilar Helix Antenna (anyone tried one of these
on 160 or 80 yet? :-) ); Intermod - A Modern Urban Problem; Underground
Radio; and review of the BayGen Freeplay Windup Radio (no batteries needed;
looks like the perfect gift for the ham who already has every other kind of
radio :-) ); An Aeronautical Antenna Farm; Product Reviews - Alinco DR-M06 /
Azden PCS-7500H 6-meter FM rigs and K6STI's RITTY 1.0 Program; and more... 

Ads: Two page ad from Kenwood titled In-Depth Look At IF-DSP - TS-870S.

OK, its 11:30pm and I'm tired of typing, so that's all.  Notice that I have
not added my thoughts about WRTC-96.  A "tongue-in-cheek" posting is being
formulated.

73 and good reading,
Henry Pollock - WB4HFL
henrypol at aol.com

>From georgec at techline.com (george claussen)  Thu Jul 18 13:23:04 1996
From: georgec at techline.com (george claussen) (george claussen)
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 05:23:04 -0700
Subject: Countdown 'til Fun !
Message-ID: <199607180524.WAA28305 at wishkah.techline.com>

Yes folks, only a few short days left until the NAQP RTTY party begins!
Almost all of the "Old" hand digital ops I know will be in with both hands
and feet and team formation continues apace. WF1B wrote a neat article on RTTY 
contesting in the July/August NCJ, which covers the topic really well. Now
then, you may not have any RTTY contesting software, but don't let that stop
you from
getting on and making some Q's! The exchange is short and simple, and lends 
itself nicely to paper-logging. Just like the CW/SSB tests, the RTTY contester
is hungry for a Q, and we don't care what you are using for hardware,
software or what color your eyes are! The complete rules were in the
May/June NCJ, or I can supply on request. So, find some cohorts, name your
team, and send the team
registration note to: ab5kd at easy.com  HOWEVER !!! You don't have to be on a team
to join us for the fun, just join us please!! But be careful, you just might
find out what you have been missing all these years. "Here's Looking For You
Kid"     73, Ole'George K7WUW

As Winston Churchill said, "I like a man who grins when he fights".  
george claussen  --- A Subscriber at Techline 


>From syam at Glue.umd.edu (De Syam)  Thu Jul 18 07:20:56 1996
From: syam at Glue.umd.edu (De Syam) (De Syam)
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 02:20:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: WRTC: A Judge Comments
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960718015448.17120A-100000 at z.glue.umd.edu>

As three busloads of contesters wended their way through Napa
Valley the Monday after WRTC, a few of them suggested that I do a
"post-contest" summary of the event along the lines of what I have
written after some of the major contests.  So even though N0AX and
perhaps others by now have beaten me to the punch, here it is.
 
The event was superbly organized and handled by the WRTC, Inc.,
Committee.  While the occasional participant arrived at the airport
only to find that his promised ride was nowhere to be seen, and the
bus first took us to the wrong pier, etc., I have to say, from the
perspective of one who has participated in a number of IARU
Conferences and Meetings in recent years, and one whose job it was,
in a previous life, to organize press conferences and public
events, that the entire week was remarkably error-free.  
 
It will be awfully hard for anyone else to organize a similar event
in the future on the same scale.  You just don't find an area where
you can combine the industry-insider contact knowledge and fund-
raising acumen of a W6RJ and a W6QHS, the drive and energy of a
W6OAT and a K3EST, the organizational talents of an AI6V, an AA6KX,
an AA6MC and a W6RGG (I know I've missed a few) in one place.  It
was these guys who made it go, and my hat is off to all of them. 
Thank goodness all I had to do was show up!
 
For me it was to be the combination of a reunion with an old friend
with whom I used to barnstorm around to ham radio events in
Southeast Asia, Phil Wight, W5UHK/VS6DR, and a reunion with new
friends from all over the world who I have been working for years
but had never met before in person.  Phil has taken up residence in
Mountain View, CA, in recent years, and had invited me and my XYL
Somporn to stay with him if we ever had occasion to be in the Bay
area.  So we did, but unfortunately, on the second day of the
event, Phil was hospitalized, so Somporn and I moved into a hotel
close to the WRTC Motel 6, there being by that time "no more room
in the inn."
 
The first organized event was a working dinner for the judges, of
which I was one, at which Chief Judge K4VX, along with K3EST and
W6OAT, went over all of the rules and procedures in detail for us. 
In retrospect, it seems that some things that took up a lot of time
in the discussion, such as the checking of transceiver power levels
and the use or not of "quick-disconnect" connectors between the
bandpass filters and the second rig, turned out not to be very
important in the end.  There was an interesting thread as to
whether any attempt should be made to pair up certain judges with
competitors thought to be the most likely to try to get away with
something, but, in the end, K4VX and K3EST prevailed in their
insistence that the pairing of judges with competitors had to be
completely random in order to make the event completely fair to all
and fully perceived as such by the competitors.  Beyond that, this
session allowed me to meet my fellow judges, almost all of whom I
had met at Dayton or Visalia or Friedrichshafen at one time or
another, but it was nice to be working on the same team with them
all and to get to know them a bit better.
 
The next event was the picnic at which all participants --
organizing committee members, station hosts, competitors, judges,
referees, hangers-on -- met each other.  WJET-TV of Erie, PA, was
interviewing people for the special on the event that they hope to
place on ABC's "Good Morning America" and someone suggested to them
that I would be a worthy victim for an interview, which probably
means that the effort to get on ABC is doomed.  On a hunch I
confirmed with K3LR that WJET-TV is owned by none other than K3TUP,
a call not exactly unknown to the contest world himself.  This
explains why a TV station in PA went all the way to SF to cover a
story.  Then I limbered up my rusty Spanish with LU6ETB, EA7TL and
EA4KD, none of whom I had ever met before, and also met OH0XX for
the first time ever, a real pleasure.  
 
I drove over to the event (yes, it turned out to be almost a
necessity to have a rent-a-car for one's full-time use) with my
"IARU boss" VE3CDM, the President of IARU Region 2.  Tom knows an
awful lot more about contests than he did before he went to the
event, and somehow I have a feeling that any attempt to propose a
"Contest Free Zone" on the bands in a future IARU Conference will
quickly be relegated to the trash can.  Ham radio politicians were
much in evidence at WRTC, reflecting the importance we as
contesters have in organized amateur radio out of all proportion to
our numbers.  Many ham radio politicians are contesters in their
own right -- need I even mention K1ZZ as an example?  Dave and XYL
Linda, KA1ZD, were there.  Chief Judge K4VX is an ARRL Director,
judge W7RM is a former ARRL Director, competitor YT1AD is the
President of Yugoslavia's SRJ, judge PY5EG is the President of
Brazil's LABRE, referee UA6HZ is the immediate past President of
Russia's SRR, etc.  One might even venture this thought on the
future of Amateur Radio:  "As goes contesting, so goes ham radio."
 
I got in the barbecue line and sat down for lunch next to that
real-life judge, K4BAI.  John and I have been working each other
regularly for all of the 44 years we have each been in ham radio,
have been fellow members of FOC for about 20 years, and yet had
never met in person before.  Little did I suspect that this balding
fellow in my age bracket would turn out to be one half of the
second-place team after the dust settled.  Some people are ageless! 
 
Towards the end of the picnic judges and referees selected the
stations they would be stationed at as observers, and I drew
WB6AFJ.  I called Alex immediately upon getting back to the hotel
and arranged to go over and inspect his station that very evening. 
The very organized WRTC committee had already given me a folder
with a lot of the info on Alex's station, and, except for noting
that his VCR (to be used for recording the entire contest on tape
in case disputes about call signs or other matters needed to be
resolved after the event) was busted and he was hoping to borrow a
neighbor's, there was not much additional info to report other than
what the committee had already given me.  I did have Alex turn on
the rig and was pleased to hear that there was absolutely no line
noise.  Most of the visit was spent getting to know Alex and his
XYL Winnie.  Alex is a DX'er, not a contester, but that might have
changed since (more later).
 
Age and the desire not to let the XYL get bored combined to keep me
away from a lot of the beer-drinking bull sessions, but I heard
rumors of sprinkler systems going off in the hospitality suite, the
house detective chasing everyone outside to keep the noise down in
the hall, complaints by the owner of the motel restaurant that the
pizza being ordered in from outside was depriving him of yet
another chance to demonstrate how only five patrons can be served
per hour, etc.  I am sure there are plenty of participants who can
give graphic descriptions of this aspect of the WRTC in case there
is a clamor for this information.  At any rate, the JA gang and the
S5 gang (were there any S5's who stayed home?) are to be thanked
profusely for staging a couple of the more prominent such events. 
 
The following day -- Thursday -- participants had a choice between
going on a tour of Silicon Valley or the city of San Francisco. 
Somporn and I chose San Francisco and were pleased to see that our
tour guide was none other than old friend and erstwhile PVRC'er
N6RA, who in addition to being one of SF's premier patent attorneys
has become sort of a history buff about his adopted home town. 
Tom's XYL did the honors on the other SF bus.  We were introduced
early-on to San Francisco's famous fog.  As we went up the hill Tom
described in detail San Francisco's 1000-foot candelabra tower,
which has just about all of the city's TV and FM broadcast antennas
on it as well as paging services, etc.  It's a good thing he was
able to describe it so clearly because when we got up there we
couldn't see a thing of it for the fog.  After going across the
Golden Gate Bridge and then heading downtown where we clambered
over San Francisco's famous hills, we ended up in Chinatown at a
restaurant specially selected for us by a prominent member of San
Francisco's Chinese community, K6KQN.  All present, including my
XYL, who is something of an expert on the subject, agreed that    
the dim sum was the best we had ever had.  Vince, you really came
through!  One of the sights our attention was directed to on the
tour, incidentally, was Vince's KT-34 atop his office right in the
middle of downtown San Francisco.  How his radio waves manage to
hop over the surrounding buildings is anyone's guess.  To describe
his QTH graphically, if King Kong ever falls off the Transamerica
Building, guess whose antenna will get crushed!  Nevertheless, I
understand Vince is up there on the DXCC Honor Roll.
 
Sitting near me on the bus were WN4KKN and KM9P, busily discussing
the internet access business which they both know something about. 
I had never met Bill either, and after getting to know him in
person I felt somewhat sheepish about having written a certain
essay on this reflector once.  At any rate, his performance as the
other half of the K4BAI team should allow him to assume his
rightful role as one of America's premier contesters.  
 
That evening the buses took us to the oil refining center of
Martinez for a big feast at a Shell Oil clubhouse, and on the way
we were allowed to sample some of the Bay area's finest rush hour
traffic.  I was sitting next to VE3CDM on that trip, and I think
that on the way over we solved every problem the IARU has ever had
and began dreaming up some more to solve.  But once we got there it
was a great feast put on by W6RJ's favorite Mexican restauranteur. 
I learned much to my surprise that, having run out of new DX
countries on 80 meters to bag, Bob now travels to Africa to bag
real live big game!  Everyone filled themselves to the brim and
there was still plenty more to go around, along with fine examples
of California's great wines.  You know, the stuff you win in the
CQP.                            
 
On Friday we began to get down to business.  First of all, judges
and referees were called together and given their final marching
orders by K4VX, K3EST and N6AA, and then the competitors were
called in and the drawing began which paired up the two-man
competitor teams with their stations and judge/referee on-site
observers.  Never have I admired my good friend and former
housemate Bob Cox more as, in his own friendly, relaxed way, he
kept order of the proceedings at this time.  Not only can Bob keep
order in a pile-up on the air, he knows how to do it in person too. 
A couple of the judges and referees had cancelled their trips to SF
at the last moment, and in what I thought was a particularly
brilliant and appropriate move on the Committee's part, the Coach
of the Chinese demonstration team, BA1FP, was chosen as a
replacement for one of the missing on-site observers.  LU6BEG of
Team Argentina was in bed with a fever, so OH0XX, who thought he
was coming just to observe and have a good time, was pressed into
service as the other member of that team with LU6ETB.  Olle had
operated in Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish so it was no more
of a reach to put him on Team Argentina than for RA3AUU to be a
member of Team Belgium.  KZ2S and N2NT were also pressed into
service as competitors at the last minute to replace another team
that hadn't shown up.
      
There was quite a bit of tension in the air as competitors and on-
site observers wondered who they would draw as companions.   The
first one to draw me was the representative of my own club, PVRC,
KF3P.  Since there was a rule that -- except for the USA, which had
so many participants -- no country's competitors could have a
fellow countryman as on-site observer, the Committee felt that my
club relationship with KF3P would create room for doubt and so my
envelope was thrown back in the hopper.  I am happy to report that Tyler 
and teammate KR2J did a superb job without me!  The next time I was 
drawn by the Yugoslav team of YT1AD and YU1RL.  I had met Hrane, YT1AD,
on several occasions in the past but had never met YU1RL before. 
I informed them that there was no CW keyer available at WB6AFJ and
they would have to use a keyboard at all times, but they managed to
borrow a keyer from DJ2YA, and, after I collected my XYL from our
hotel, we were off to San Jose and the QTH of Alex, WB6AFJ.  Tom,
VE3CDM, joined us for the ride.  
 
Alex met us at the door and put his place at our disposal.  The YU
boys decided to use his rigs (FT-1000-D + TS-930-S) instead of
their own, but YT1AD wanted to use his own laptop which he had
brought with him.  We left the boys there to get things arranged
while Somporn, Tom and myself headed for Sacramento and a small
gathering of DX'ers/contesters that W6GO had invited over to his
place for a get-together in my honor.  It was great to see some old
friends and the great W6GO station, but it had been hard to fit the
event in because of the heavy WRTC social schedule, and the five
hours on the road meant that we didn't get back to our hotel until
2300 local, only to have to get up again at 0300 local to be able
to get over to WB6AFJ's house in time to be sure there was time to
put everything in order.  We worked feverishly to get the main rig
to where it could be keyed by CT coming out of YT1AD's laptop, and
to where the receiver audio from the FT-1000 could be fed to the
borrowed-from-a-neighbor VCR and thence provide the line drop
whereby I could monitor what the boys were doing all through the
contest.  Alex got out his soldering iron at this ungodly hour to
make up one last cable which put us all in business.  At 0430
local, a half-hour before the contest, I pulled out the magic
envelope and handed it to YT1AD, who with trembling hands opened it
and learned for the first time that he and his partner would have
to get used to sending K6N for the following 18 hours.  
 
Meanwhile my XYL Somporn learned that Alex's XYL Winnie had been
born in Indonesia, and that they both enjoy gardening and cooking
as among their hobbies, and I breathed a sigh of relief that
Somporn would be entertained for the weekend while I concentrated
on paying attention to what the boys were doing at the radio.  
 
The beginning of the contest came at 0500 local, and I sat back
just behind the operators, my own favorite set of Realistic Nova
Pro earphones on my head, pen in hand to make note of any observed
discrepancies as the contest went along.  Sasha, YU1RL,
acknowledged by both of them as the better CW operator of the two,
started the ball rolling on 40 CW.  The boys had climbed the tower
during the previous afternoon to re-orient the 40 meter inverted-v
and the CT rate meter seemed to show that this had been time well
spent.  YU1RL is an excellent cw run operator and I was impressed
watching him in action, and learned a lot.  Especially good was the
fact that he was aware when more than one station had called him
and therefore would usually not sign his call again until he had
worked everyone who was waiting to call him.  But at the same time
he varied the number of times he signed his call so that during
slow times he would sometimes send it three times before standing
by.  He also expertly varied his keying speed, speeding up when the
pile got big and slowing down when the Q's began to drag out a bit. 
The one thing I suggested to him after the contest was over is
that he learn to send "test" just prior to standing by during slow
times so that stations know he is QRV for callers and not in the
process of calling somebody else.
 
The boys ended up with a unique rate of 3.7, somewhat high, but I
think most of the uniques were run up in the first part of the
contest when the boys were getting used to the set-up and when
YU1RL, who had never computer-logged before, was getting used to
the keyboard and to CT.  As they gradually became more familiar
with their surroundings, they became aware that every time I raised
my hand to write it was because I had observed an error -- usually
a broken call -- and they began to be spooked by my hand motion. 
The minute I would raise my hand they would call back the station
they were just finishing with and make sure they had the call
right.  Thus I would say most of my four pages of notes were
written during the first two hours.  
 
Competitors were not allowed to use the super-check-partial feature
of their logging programs, but once the program began to build up
a database of the stations in this particular contest, the error
rate also began to drop accordingly.  
 
As the contest went on I gradually became aware that neither YT1AD
nor YU1RL have had much experience with S&P.  They have been
accustomed mainly to going to rare islands or third-world countries
for the major contests, or else operating from home at one of their
country's superstations, and a contest has usually meant for them,
as K5GA once put it on this reflector, "sitting back and pressing
F1 over and over again."   Neither was particularly adept at tuning
through a crowded band and picking out the multipliers in a hurry. 
My conversations with other observers after the contest indicated
that they observed much the same thing on the part of many of the
operators they observed.  This, in my opinion, gave the USA and
Canadian operators a leg up over many of their overseas competitors
in this particular competition.  Regardless of how easy it may be
to run people from the East Coast, for example, I don't think
you'll find many top operators from over here who haven't spent an
awful lot of time S&P'ing.  I also heard comments about operators
passing over easy QSO's while S&P'ing, looking only for multipliers
and not bothering to work anyone else.  This was often true for the
YU's as well.  
 
Once he did find a multiplier, however, YT1AD was very aggressive
on SSB about getting through to the station being called.  EA8ZS
allowed as how K6N was his first WRTC station worked in the
contest, and practically let out a whoop of joy in the process.  
YT1AD also kept the multiplier factor in mind, and got a number of
stations to change bands for him for a new multiplier.     
                
Sasha, YU1RL, is more a man of my own tastes, however, and hates to
move people.  Also, on several occasions he quarreled briefly with
Hrane when Hrane had found a multiplier on the second rig and
wanted Sasha to break a run in order to go get it.  Much as I
empathized with Sasha at the time because I feel the same
reluctance in breaking up a run, he should have listened to Hrane,
as the final results showed.   
           
You can't help sitting with top operators for several hours,
watching them go through their paces, without a certain amount of
bonding taking place.  Toward the end of the contest I got
frustrated with Sasha trying to drag VK4EMM's call through without
success after several attempts (he knew he hadn't gotten it right
yet because my pen remained poised ready to write).  He was trying
to make a two-letter call out of it.  I finally violated the rules
and gave him a hint:  "You're missing a letter, and it's a very
short one."  About two tries later he had it.  He told me after the
contest he was pretty impressed that I could read the guy so
quickly.  Call recognition certainly helped, but I found that Sasha
could frequently copy stations at a pitch of about 100 Hz. that I
couldn't even hear, but that once the pitch was up to around 400 or
500 Hz., I could sometimes hear better than he could.  Whether the
audio lashup we had through the VCR was somehow rolling off the
lows or whether my ears naturally roll off the lows, I don't know,
but N6AA said later that the same thing happens when he operates
with K6NA -- they always hear different stations in the pile.
 
A corrollary of Sasha's unfamiliarity with S&P was the fact that he
would frequently call a station too far off frequency to get him. 
I would say to myself: "If only you'd move up 400 Hz you'd have
him."  He would just stay on the same spot and call and call and
call.   Thinking all this over after the contest, I wonder if there
aren't some Europeans who are experts at S&P because they run QRP
all the time and never get to run anybody, and whether they might
have fared better than some of their better-known brethren in this
particular instance.  On the other hand, it would be hard to match
Sasha in sending technique and smooth pile-up control.  He is a
real cw technician.
 
The contest ended at 2300 local, everybody was happy, the boys had
made considerably more QSO's than they had expected to, with a raw
QSO total of just over 2300.  Alex, the perfect host, was pleased
that his station running barefoot had gotten out so well.  Both
9K2MU and 3V8BB called K6N rather than the other way around.  Alex
had some of his local ham neighbors over to see what was going on,
and then they would go home and work the station on all bands.  I
observed no overloading from any other WRTC station, but a few of
the local hams overloaded the receiver now and then.  It was not a
serious problem.  On 10 meters during the hottest part of the day
they had a bit of line noise which mostly wiped out ground-wave
sixes trying to call from directions other than where the antenna
was pointed.  On 20 and 40 there was noise caused by distant
thunderstorms from time to time.  There never seemed to be a
problem on 15.
 
About midnight we got away after effusive farewells to Alex and
Winnie, and I dropped off the diskettes, tapes and notes to I2UIY
at Contest Central and went back to my hotel to catch some shuteye.
About 0830 local I came back and pitched in to help score logs,
which by then were pretty much done.  
 
I quickly realized that without the tools put into the Committee's
hands by N6TR, they never would have been able to score the logs by
the time the awards banquet took place that evening.  The Xtree
Gold program developed by Tree over the years, based on the
requirements drawn up by N6AA, to be used as a tool by the CQWW
Contest Committee, was simply invaluable here.  The truth is that
there simply wasn't enough time to do much with many logs over and
above the first cut that Xtree Gold provided.  The not-in-logs, the
bad calls and the uniques were all pulled out by the program and
the judge working on that particular log only had time to go
through, subtract points and assess penalty points based on what he
saw in front of him, and move on to the next log. 
 
It was immensely helpful to me in doing this that I had listened to
the contest as an observer and knew to a substantial extent what
stations had been on.  Thus when K7U was detected as a non-existent
call in the log I left it in, because I had heard that station very
clearly call the boys at K6N on a couple of bands.  I even remember
remarking to Sasha at the time that maybe the state of Utah was   
celebrating its centennial or some such.  
 
The iron men in log checking were N6AA, N6ZZ, and I2UIY.  These
indefatigable fellows, and perhaps a couple of others, had stayed
up all night crunching numbers.  By 1000 local Sunday morning the
job was done except for typing in the AH3D (China team) log --
which had been hand-written by the operators -- which was done by
N6TR with vocal assistance from W3ZZ and occasionally yours truly. 
But disaster had struck the Finnish team of OH1JT and OH2IW, as the
last six hours of their operation had inexplicably not been found
on the disk.  And the backup VCR tape recording was also unusable. 
So Silicon Valley's finest computer super sleuths -- N6TV and K2MM
-- were called in to work on the corrupted disk.  An estimated
score was arrived at so that the OH team could be put into the
results along with the others in time for the banquet, with an
asterisk by their score.  The last I heard, after unloading all the
TSR's from the OHs' laptop, the data was being recovered
successfully by PC Tools from the corrupted disk 512 bytes at a
time.
 
The final banquet, a real feast at the Stanford University faculty
club frequented these days by that former industrialist W6QHS, was
a happy affair with brief speeches of recognition for all who
helped organize this unbelievable and historic week.  None other
than the President of ARRL KB6ZV joined the festivities and the
crowning event was, of course, the awarding of the first three
places to KR0Y/K1TO, KM9P/K4BAI and N2IC/K6LL in that order. 
VE3EJ/VE3IY who had a brilliant fourth place finish were also
judged most the most congenial duo by the judges and referees, and
VE7CC/VE7NTT  were honored for their leading low-unique rate. 
I agree that some mention probably should have been made of the top
European team, the top Japanese team, etc, but I can only guess
that the continuing uncertainty of the final situation for the OH
team kept the Committee from wanting to say too much too soon.  
 
Most of the participants stayed on for the next day's tour of the
Napa Valley wineries, which afforded me the pleasure of interesting
confabs with K1AR, K5ZD, WX3N and G3OZF as well as BA1FP, between
naps on the bus and on winery lawns.  As I have been saying for
years, the West Coast shall rise again.  Just wait till all of
those BA's, BD's and BG's start fattening the contest logs of our
Left Coast brethren.  No more comments will be heard about Right
Coasters and their worn out F1 keys, I am sure.
 
Thanks, WRTC, Inc., for a once-in-a-lifetime experience!      
      
                                         Very 73,

                                     Fred Laun, K3ZO