I just watched two PVRC’s webinars last night, the August 5^th presentation and ‘Design, Construction and Maintenance of Antennas and Towers for Long Term Reliability’ by W3LPL. Both were very informative! Contest Antennas was especially enlightening in terms of radiation angles for domestic contest and the antenna height necessary to put good signal strength around the US and Canada. ‘...Long Term Reliability’ is full of both tower and yagi common sense issues and specific tips on both.

It’s well worth spending the time to watch these webinars. I have DSL internet connection and the video stream was very good.

For those not yet familiar with a webinar, it is simply a seminar via the internet. In the comfort of your favorite chair at home (if allowed !!), you can sit back and sip on your beer or red wine of choice, while watching the entire seminar in ‘real time’. You can either type in questions to the moderator or if you have a microphone in your PC/Laptop, you can literally ask questions to the moderator when time is allowed for that.

Tom – W4BQF

From: secc-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:secc-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Hal Kennedy
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 3:39 PM
To: secc@contesting.com; sedxc@contesting.com
Subject: [SECC] FYI -

Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:42:44 -0700

From: "RDStraw" <n6bv@arrl.net>

Subject: [CQ-Contest] Hints and Kinks for Using HFTA -- A Joint

      PVRC/NCCC   Webinar Event

To: "Contest Reflector" <cq-contest@contesting.com>

Message-ID: <MOEHINNKCFHGODHEHEDHIEGPLNAA.n6bv@arrl.net>

Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="iso-8859-1"

Date:  Thursday, September 24, 2009 8 PM EDT (September 25 - 00:00 UTC)

Reserve your Webinar Seat Now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/765264739

A Joint PVRC/NCCC Event - Presenter Dean Straw, N6BV, will build on the introduction to HFTA in the PVRC Webinar on Aug 5, 2009, which was entitled "HF Antennas DX or Domestic, What's Your Pleasure?"  Attendees to the Sep 24 Webinar may wish to review the Aug 5 presentation for background information and perspective. Go to http://www.pvrc.org and click on the "PVRC Webinars" button.

Arguably, the most difficult part to using HFTA is obtaining digital terrain data for the program to manipulate. On Sep 24 Dean will ask for a volunteer to give the exact location of his/her tower, and then show how to gather the required terrain-profile data from three on-line sources. Once he generates the terrain profiles, he will analyze various antenna configurations using HFTA, discussing a number of practical "hints and kinks" determined from his experience analyzing lots of QTHs around the world.

Pass the word!

Ken K4ZW

President, PVRC

(relayed by N6BV for K4ZW, who is traveling)