Coyote Amateur Radio Club

Not one, I bet. But I’m sure you had lots of fun with your handy 🙂

 KN5S made 215 QSOs in the Makrothen RTTY contest, good for 692,166 points:

2013 Makrothen RTTY contest score

The list of countries (*) contacted includes Chile, Morocco, Cuba, Germany, the Canary Islands, French Polynesia, England, Scotland, Columbia, Italy, Japan, Guantanamo Bay, Alaska, Argentina, Lithuania, Finland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Asiatic Russia, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and the good’ole US of A!

2013 Makrothen RTTY contest DXCCs entities

Not bad for 2 guys with 100 W and 2 wire antennas!

As always: thanks to our huge crowd of supporters 😉

(*) They’re not all countries (such as Alaska and Guantanamo Bay) but are called DXCC entities, for awards and most contesting purposes.

Because we recently received a new callsign and we had close to 1,000 KS5TX left we decided to send out the KS5TX to all stations we contacted in the past, rather than throw them away.

It took several hours of printing (and cussing at paper jams), boxing, labelling and stamp-licking; but all of them are ready to be mailed to the 11 incoming QSL bureaus and the outgoing QSL bureau in Newington, CT. Lets hope all of those recipients are happy with the KS5TX QSL card. Some of them might not even know that Uvalde still exists!

Our always generous President Jason KF5EJX paid for the postage!

I’ve kept a few in case someone requests a KS5TX QSL card in the future. There shouldn’t be a reason for that because I sent one to everyone in our log; but that doesn’t mean they all arrive. In other words: I got some spares in case one of the members wants one for sentimental reasons!

And yes: all of you are invited to send in some ideas for a new QSL card design! Or am I talking to myself here? 😉

 No need to go to the FCC website today. It’s closed:

Click me and I’ll get bigger

I hope that doesn’t mean we’re all operating illegally!

Dang you tea party sissies….

Jason KF5EJX and his (t)rusty sidekick Erik K5WW were active in the TX QSO party from the club station this past weekend. KN5S was well-received and received well all over the USA – and in some other countries!

We made 251 QSOs in 34 states, 2 Canadian provinces and even one fella in the Slovak Republic for a total of 62,742  points:

TXQP 2013 score

Yes, I know, the screen image says “60,742”; but I manually added 2,000 bonus points because we logged 2 mobile (“rover”) stations in 5 or more counties, and 1 station in more than 10 different counties! 

TXQP 2013 mults – you should click this one.

This was Texas size fun! Unfortunately Mother Nature didn’t seem to approve of what we were doing; and had to take us off the air for an hour or two. Rain, rain, and more rain!

Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

But the Texas QSO Party is not the only contest we participated in! There also was the CQ WW RTTY contest; and of course we had to try our new callsign there too 🙂

We made 128 QSOs for a total of 30,132 points. No extra bonus points in this one:

CQWW RTTY 2013 score

U.S. states and Canadian provinces do count as score multipliers, though! Here’s what we accomplished:

States and provinces worked in the 2013 CQWW RTTY contest

 And other countries (I should say “DXCC entities”) count as score multipliers too:

DXCC entities contacted in the 2013 CQ WW RTTY contest.

Big fun!!! Gotta do this again next year! 🙂

Thanks to the many visitors who stopped by to cheer us on!

Attending: Jason KF5EJX, David W5DUH, Jim AB5JK, Cici AA5EK, Mary KU5Z, Erik K5WW and Richard N5YPJ.

We are going to participate in the Texas QSO Party, September 28 and 29. This is a short (18 hrs) phone/CW contest, in 2 segments. It runs from 9 AM central time to 9 PM central time on Saturday; and again from 9 AM central until 3 PM central time on Sunday. Participants outside of Texas get extra points for every TX county they make a contact with; and because of the lack of contesters in Uvalde county it is always in high demand. Should be a truck load of fun; so stop by the shack if you can!

This will be the first time we will be using our new call sign: KN5S. Yep, you read that right: KS5TX has been retired. KN5S was assigned to us on Saturday September 21, after a nail-biting 18 days of waiting, and a short battle with David AC5LS, who had also applied for KN5S. Sorry David, better luck next time! 🙂

With the club having a new call K5WW is looking for a good way to use the old KS5TX QSL cards. And we will need new QSL cards for KN5S, so the audience was asked to think of a good QSL design, such as the most famous building or feature in Uvalde.

The hole for the new tower will be dug after the TX QSO Party. After that the concrete will be poured, which needs to cure 28 days before the tower can be installed. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

David W5DUH reports that arrangements have been made to remove the repeater from its current location to inside the radio shack. That should be complete by the end of the week; but the repeater might not be active again until the new tower is in use. Also, because of the club’s new call sign David shut off the repeater remotely, until he can get his hands on the equipment to change the ID to KN5S. As soon as the repeater goes live again it should be on a different frequency pair as well.

Treasurer Cici AA5EK reports that the club has close to $800 in an old sock under her mattress. Shortly after that announcement president Jason KF5EJX asked the members to bring some suggestions to next meeting’s table regarding HF beams and rotators. Will do, sir!

The meeting was adjourned at 7:43 PM.

Will be on Tuesday the 27th. You should attend. There will be lots of news. VE testing too!

Towers are made to be standing up, not laying down!!

Click for the full 55 ft view!

Delivered Friday September 20th: 55 feet of tower loveliness 🙂

That slab looks pretty good right there…

I knew it. Sooner or later… Even the best people suffer from it, eventually. Just put them in a position with a little bit of power, and it will go to their heads.

Email received today, from the guy with the scepter:

> News from the president of the coyote amature radio club.
>
> US tower called today that the tower is ready to ship.
> The tower should be here the end of the week or first part of next week.
> If I receive am exact date for delivery I will let you know.
>
> But, we probely will not have it installed for the texas qso party at the
> end of the month.
>
> all of my subjects I thank you
> Jason KF5EJX

Well, at least we’re still called subjects, not objects. And since we’re still being thanked I suppose we’re being spared from the gallows, for the time being. 😉

A follow-up email, received tomorrow, claims that the tower will be received on Friday the 20th. Woohoo!!

The meeting was called to order at 7:15 PM. Those same people were late again…

Attending: Mary KU5Z, Cici AA5EK, Jim AB5JK, David W5DUH, Richard N5YPJ,  Cathrine Tull, Jason KF5EJX and Erik K5WW.

Erik K5WW brought the previously received WAS award to the meeting and delivered it to our club president Jason KF5EJX who’s going to hang it on the club’s wall. He also promised to keep it clean for the rest of his days!

The results of the August 2013 NAQP SSB were discussed. All of the participants had big fun, they made more QSOs than in 2012; and it was a good test of hardware and software, and training for the operators for the next one. The next contest we’re going to be active in will be the Texas QSO Party, at the end of September.

Erik K5WW sold a 2 meter FM radio with a little issue that was donated to the club by David W5DUH. A generous buyer on eBay paid a little over $100 for it, which came down to a little under $100 after eBay’s fees. K5WW added a few bucks and cents to make it an even $100.

Treasurer Cici AA5EK reports that the club’s treasure keeps growing: almost $700 before the last eBay sale, so now it’s close to $800. And everybody started dreaming about what to do with that fortune 🙂

The club’s VHF repeater is on the move. It will be moved to downtown; and at the same time its frequency pair and/or CTCSS tone may have to be changed as well. More on this later, after it’s been moved.

Jim AB5JK reported that his internet-linked system now also has a 2 meter input on 147.570 with a 162.2 Hz PL tone, in addition to the 70 cm input.

The big tower that the club is expecting has not been delivered yet. Bummer! 🙁

Three high-ranking club officials recently visited the Medina County Amateur Radio Club Corporation. Not sure what to think of that. They must be thinking of defecting. If they do we’ll hang’em high…

Cathrine said she wasn’t quite ready for the test yet. But we’ll get it done in September, I’m sure.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:48 PM, and as always we stood around in the parking lot for another 30 minutes!

The next meeting will be September 24. Consider this your invitation!

It’s on Tuesday the 27th. There will be plenty of stuff to talk about. Show up! 🙂