Category Archives: Contests

Contests, Field Day, News, Photos

Another Winter Field Day in the books for WVARA

The weekend between 1/28/and 1/29/2023 marked another successful Winter Field Day endeavor for our association.

Originally scheduled to be held in Henry Coe Park, bad weather forced us to “relocate” to Mt. Madonna County Park.

The day started cold and foggy…

But we set up successfully and celebrated appropriately:

more setup:

Green light @ 11:00 AM PST on 1/28/2023:

And, of course, a gift from mother nature to make the experience truly unforgettable:

This was my first Winter Field Day but I highly recommend it to all the WVARA members. Join us next year! You will be glad ! ! !

73,

Max – W6BG

Contests, News, QSO

Congratulations to WVARA – CA QSO Party

Dear WVARA Members,
Congratulations to WVARA for a competitive 3rd place finish among 32 clubs in the Small CA Club category.  Thank you for participating in the California QSO Party last October!

California QSO Party 2020 results are now available at:
https://cqp.org/Results.html

Highlights:
* 1,365 logs received.  48% increase in logs over 2019.  Beats all-time CQP record logs received by a margin of 360 logs.

* Records shattered.  104 new records set.  All-time CA S/O HP record set by KI6RRN and all-time CA S/O LP record set by N5ZO.  New club records set by SCCC, REDXA and TCG.

* Strongest Top 10 CA S/O scores in the history of CQP.  The threshold to place in the Top 10 of all Single-Ops inside CA was over 300,000 points, an all-time high.

* SEQUOIA 1×1 station success.  Over 42,000 QSOs were made by our 21 1×1 SEQUOIA stations.  11 stations outside of CA made more than 100 overall QSOs with the SEQUOIA stations.  Over 500 stations spelled SEQUOIA at least once.

* 57 plaques, 40 bottles of wine, 13 SEQUOIA calendars and hundreds of certificates will be awarded.

* Largest results package in CQP history.  19 PDF files, links to two SEQUOIA station blogs, and a link to your 2020 CQP Certificate of Achievement await you at https://cqp.org/Results.html
Stand by for more information about the SEQUOIA certificates.

* Make sure to look for your callsign listed in all of these files.  You may very well find yourself listed in a Top 10 table of the comeback award, operating time improvement award or the top 10 SEQUOIA QSO counts by operating class.

Thank you for participating in CQP 2020!

73…
-Dean – N6DE
CQP Organizing Team: K6MM, NS6T, W6GJB, N6DE

Activity, Contests

SF 5th annual 2 meter FM QSO Party

The San Francisco Radio Club has announced its 5th annual 2 meter FM QSO Party on August 24th.https://www.sfarc.org/2019-2m-fm-qso-party.html
 This is a fun event — hams head to the hills in SF and try to contact as many zip codes all around SF and in the Bay Area as they can.  One end of the QSO has to be in San Francisco but there are plenty of zip code “mults” out there both inside and outside of SF.   
 73, Mark W6IA

Contests, Field Day, Meeting

June 13th WVARA Meeting – N1MM+ Logger Review + Field Day Strategies

It’s time for the June WVARA meeting! June 13th at 19:00 in Meeting Room 5 at the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross, 2731 N. First Street at Plumeria Drive (southwest corner) in San Jose. Talk in is available on the association repeaters, 2m is a good choice.
I’m sure none of us have forgotten, but just in case, Field Day is June 22nd-24th, and when we’re this close to Field Day, it’s hard not to talk about Field Day.
In this meeting, we’re going to do a deep dive into N1MM+, the logging software we’ll be using at field day this year. Last year, standardizing on it ended up working out really well — but this year we’ve refined some rough edges, learned from a few mistakes, and are using a few new features. Specifically, the waterfall bandmap will likely be of interest to a few people as well as the use of skimmers (which according to the ARRL, believe it or not, is allowed on Field Day.) You don’t have to have to be an expert at N1MM+ to use it by any means, but knowing a few shortcuts probably won’t hurt our score. Additionally, we’ll talk about some strategies and operating tips for the various modes. Perhaps we’ll even have time to make some eyeball-QSOs. I’ll lead the discussion and present some slides, but there’s quite a bit of wisdom elsewhere in the room, so we’re sure to learn something.
Field Day isn’t a contest, but they do keep score and publish/rank the results at the end, so it sure feels like one sometimes. There are some folks in this club that almost never contest, and others, who can’t stop contesting (hi.) No problem, but one of the most important goals of Field Day is to a) get as many of us on the air as possible, and who knows, maybe we’ll even get you hooked and talk you into taking a road trip for a real contest in the not-so-distant future.
A few of us usually meet for dinner somewhere near the Red Cross (I’ve been rotating between a few locations) around 6 pm prior to the meeting. This month, it’s back to Dish’n’Dash just a block down the street: https://www.yelp.com/biz/dish-n-dash-san-jose  I’m thinking of trying somewhere new entirely for our September meeting, so look for that!
See you there!

Bill/W9KKN

Contests, QSO

California QSO Party 2017: New Club Competition Rules

From: John Miller
Date: Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 1:27 PM
Subject: California QSO Party 2017: New Club Competition Rules
To: support@cqp.org

Dear Contest Club Official:

Club Competition in the California QSO Party has been supported for many years, but traditionally only a handful of larger clubs in California tend to compete each year.   To encourage more small-medium club participation for 2017, we’ve created three new competition categories:

  1. “Small” = the 10 highest scores from a club whose members who submitted their log in the Small category will count for this competition category.
  2. “Medium” = the 35 highest scores from a club whose members who submitted their log in the Medium category will count for this competition category.
  3. “Large” = clubs may combine the scores of any number of their members

All CA clubs are eligible to compete in CQP, except for NCCC, which sponsors the contest.

Plaques will be awarded for each of the 3 categories for both California and Non-California clubs:  a total of 6 awards.

Further details can be found on the CQP website:

http://www.cqp.org/Clubcomp.html

Date-Time Reminder:  1600 UTC October 7, 2017 to 2200 UTC October 8, 2017

We hope to see many members of your club on the air this October in the 52nd running of the California QSO Party!

73, John, K6MM CQP Chair

Contests, News

January 2017 VHF Contest Results

From the July 2017 QST – -Your West Valley ARA Participants:

# Call Score QSOs Mult Class Section Grids Club Ops
1 N9DK/R 2,552 83 22 RL SCV 4 West Valley ARA N9DK KA4VBF
2 W6ESL/R 1,088 48 17 RL SCV 2 West Valley ARA
3 W6IA 264 21 8 FM SCV 1 West Valley ARA
4 AE6JV/R 65 9 5 RL SCV 2 West Valley ARA
Totals 3,969 161 52

Note that N9DK/R was first in the Pacific Division for Limited Rover,
and That N9DK/R and W6ESL/R were numbers 2 and 3 in the West Coast Region for Limited Rover

Tom W6ESL