May 2, 2019 Club Meeting
Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 7:00 PM Medford Police Department Community Room, 219 S. Ivy St., Medford, OR
Program: Contesting, Tim Duffy, K3LR
Our program this month is a special treat. Tim Duffy, K3LR, well known contester, DXer, President of DX Engineering and all-around great guy will be presenting on contesting.
Biography: Tim Duffy, K3LR— Tim has been an active amateur radio operator for 47 years. He has hosted 132 different operators from around the world as part of the K3LR Multi-Multi DX radio sport contest efforts since 1992. He is a founding member and current President of the North Coast Contesters. K3LR serves as chairman of Contest University (13 years), the Dayton Contest Dinner (27 years), chairman of the Top Band Dinner – as well as coordinator of the Contest Super Suite (34 years) in Dayton during the yearly Hamvention. Tim was elected to the CQ Contest Hall of Fame in 2006. Tim is the Chief Operating Officer and General Manager at DX Engineering.
Announced in the May 2019 issue of The Repeater.
Meeting Notes
From the June 2019 issue of The Repeater.
2019-05-02 RVARC Meeting Minutes
Meeting opened and speaker introduced by Tom, N5EG, at 7:03pm. Attendance was about 30 people.
The presentation followed, via Skype, by Tim Duffy, K3LR, a 47 year ham, and CEO of DX Engineering. Title: Contesting
Points raised were:
- Who enters a contest? Mainly three types: casual, feisty, and committed contesters.
- What are the benefits of contesting? Fun, improving operator skills, good use of ham spectrum, preparation for emergencies.
- You don’t have to have a ‘contest station’.
- How to win: work lots of stations, use as many multipliers as possible, work smart: don’t waste words or time, know when to ‘run’ or ‘search & pounce’, know when to take a break.
- Efficient technique: compress replies.
- Types of contest: SSB, CW, RTTY, DX, National, Specialty.
- Categories: Single Op, QRP, Low-power, High-power, Single band or mode, Multi-Op Single- or Multi- transmitter.
- Duration: Mostly Weekends, 4 hour to 48 hour length.
- Resources: WA7BNM has a contest calendar website. ARRL contest update newsletter, contesting.com, ncjweb.com
- What is required: radio and antenna, logging system.
- Interfaces to radio: serial, USB, or Parallel for logging automation.
- Reports can be sent in by USPS, email, web apps, or unofficially at 3830.com
- What you win: Plaques, trophies, certificates or goodies.
- Where to find local help: North Coast Contesters
Presentation ended at 7:21pm, and it was time for questions.
How do you get the kids to get involved? Tim said young ham Violetta and 5 other kids made over 3000 contacts. See K3LR.com and click the Youth button for more info on that group of kids.
How did you start at DX Engineering? Tim was Sr. VP at AT&T when Paul Sergi, N08D, asked him to run DXE. Tim got sales up 4x and DXE had top growth.
Race Cars? Summit Racing owns DX Engineering.
Do you do DXpeditions? K3LR takes most of Tim’s time, but he operates VP2V in the British Virgin Islands when there.
What about K3LR? It has an 11 op station with 13 towers. See k3lr.com for details.
Q&A ended at 7:31pm, with thanks to Tim for a great presentation.
Q&A ended at 7:31pm, starting a break for visiting and snacks.
8: 03pm Acting President Scott Cummings, NA7OM, opened the business portion of the meeting.
President John Laybourne’s (AC7S) request to resign was rejected due to his importance to the club and he was authorized a temporary leave of absence.
The need for club funds for the 7QP contest, covering food and gasoline, was expected to be less than the $150 threshold requiring a vote.
Tom, N5EG, remarked that the club website was back online, restored from an 18 month old backup, so some newer data is lost. Comments are turned off and the for-sale section is off. Apparently, the club Wordpress page was the victim of an SQL-injection or buffer overflow attack via a comment (which we were supposed to be patched against), 2 days later the entire host had much bigger problems due to a cryptolocker (so they were busy with their big customers). The backups were changed to be off-site from the webhost.
Don Bennett, KG7BP, had results from the last Quarterly Test Session and five new Generals were issued, and one Extra. Darryl Barker, N7CZX, got his Extra. Go Darryl!
The upcoming 7QP contest will be held at Agate Lake, and setup is scheduled for Noon on Friday. Raoul, KG6DKA, mentioned that an RC Club event at the same location would have a food truck, which could be helpful to hungry radio contesters.
Tom, N5EG, said he would put up a 7QP map on the club website, W7DTA.ORG.
It was mentioned that the Club Secretary takes over the Treasurer’s duties while he is out with the flu. One of our visitors, Erika Wilson, AG7UL, won a years free club membership for getting her Extra with her first test. Way to go, Erika!
The meeting was adjourned at 8:19pm.
John Armstrong, KF7UMK
