[Fourlanders] W4NH - January VHF Contest

[Bob Lear]

Time to get things started and make plans for the January 2017 ARRL VHF 
Contest.  Weekend of January 21-22.  At the W4ZST QTH as usual.

We will schedule a workday or two during the Holiday season to get the 
remaining antennas set up.  Right now, only the 2m terrestrial contest 
antennas are in the air at W4ZST.  I will announce when we schedule 
something.

I have heard rumblings about a new 6m amp going around.  Let me know 
about this for planning as I have NOT yet had time to work on whatever 
the problem is in my 6m Commander amp.  (See EME contest report!)

Johnny is also planning to use his Flex 6700 and Maestro for the 6m 
station.  This should be very interesting and a nice introduction for 
the group to the top-of-the-line SDR transceiver.  We have not yet set 
it up here for testing but a couple of folks are working out the 
interfacing, etc.  It is planned to do a test session sometime soon at 
the contest location to see if we have the set up figured out.  We have 
done computer and network testing with the different versions of Windows 
and WriteLog that are required by the 6700.  We'll keep everyone posted 
on our progress with this.

I expect the usual band captains to come forward and bring the usual 
stations except for the aforementioned 6m station changes and Kos 
working on using a new radio (FT-991) for the 2m station. Kos, let us 
know what progress you have made integrating that new radio for 2m and 
whether you need any help getting things going.

Highlight:  Johnny wrote a very nice article about the FourLanders 
contesting efforts for the November NFARL eNEWS bulletin.  Thanks to 
Johnny for a nice article that we hope will be good publicity with the 
large North Fulton club and that it may result in some of their members 
joining up with us.  The NL is online at www.nfarl.org

I did have the nice Fourlanders poster and some pictures up at the Stone 
Mountain hamfest but really didn't see interest from anyone.  I think 
attendance was down somewhat and I was pretty disappointed to have set 
up the tent, 3 tables, posters, radios, antennas and tuners on display 
and sold nothing!

I had sent this out to a few of the members but want to recommend it to 
everyone both for your own edification and to maybe help with our 
efforts to recruit more FourLanders:  Kim and  I went to the Microwave 
Update Conference (MUD) in St. Louis the weekend of October 13-16 and 
had a great time and learned some interesting new stuff and met some new 
folks and lots of old friends too. Anyway, the luncheon speaker was Ward 
Silver N0AX, who writes columns for QST and is the editor of the ARRL 
handbook and antenna book.  Very nice fellow and an interesting talk 
entitled 'Ham Radio......Now What?".   Sort of about the future trend of 
HR but also much about what we need to be doing to keep it going and to 
keep our clubs going; increasing membership, meeting attendance, etc.  
He sure got me thinking and I'm going to try to change some of my ways 
that are a possible negative impact on others (like dissing' FMers, 
DeathStar, etc.)  They aren't going to be receptive to our message if we 
up-front discount them!  The talk is available on 'Ham Radio Now' on 
YouTube.  It is episode 242 on HRN.  This talk was given at a different 
conference but it's the same one we got to see and hear.  It's an hour 
long but I think you will like it and hope you will find it instructive 
as I did. He is a good speaker.  Highly recommended.

This should be enough to get us started.  73, Bob