NORTH COAST CONTESTERS
Supporting Ham Radio Contesting Since 1989

Supporting Ham Radio Contesting Since 1989

NORTH COAST CONTESTERS
Photo Gallery

K3LA, ND8L, K8CX, K3GP, N8NB, K8IV, WW3S, K3LR Not shown: KB8VAO

Nearly 30 Members and guests attended the 30th NCC Anniversary picnic at K3LR's place on July 21, 2017.

Hover your mouse over the pictures to see the captions. NCC Diddlers set new LP record in the 2016 CQWWDX RTTY contest operating from the K3LR Super Station. See NCC News for a description of the operation.

In August 2016 Jim K8MR visited the site of Marconi's first transatlantic QSO back in 1903. See http://www.stormfax.com/wireless.htm for some interesting background, and also see the NCC Member News for the real skinny on Jim's visit.

Here are a bunch of miscellaneous pictures taken at the 2016 Annual NCC Summer Picnic at K3LR's fantastic QTH. A good time and good food was had by all. The drone demonstration by Greg W8WWV was certainly one of the highlights. Thanks to KB8VAO and W8Ken for the photos.

Here are a few pictures of the 1930s-style 2016 Field Day at NO3M. Using the call sign W8CDX, Eric and some of his local friends put Eric’s new 30s replica station on the air on 40 meters, making over 150 contacts. All information was sent on a vintage Vibroplex bug and the log was kept on paper just like it would have been back in the day. See the NCC Member News section of this website for more information and a link to Eric’s own website where he has posted more photos of this event as well as some very nice videos of the equipment in operation.

Here you see the transmit Four Square at NO3M that has been helping Eric produce the big 160 scores he has been achieving the last 5-6 years. See the member news for details about Eric's 160 scores.

Here is a pic of NCC Members operating from the James A. Garfield Presidential Home site as part of the ARRL National Parks On The Air celebration of the U.S. National Park Service's 100th Anniversary. Seated are Reno WT8C (L) and Bob K8BL and standing is Jim AA8OY. This was an activity of the Lake County ARA using the club callsign N8BC. There are a lot more pictures on their QRZ.com website. This club is doing a great job. Congratulations!

Barney K3LA) and Ed K8IV working the deserving dring the North America QSO party-RTTY with George K3GP looking on. This was a shakedown cruise for our September CQ worldwide RTTY effort at K3LR. The majority of time in the big chairs was spent getting RTTY noobs K8IV, K3LA and N8NB comfortable and they did a tremendous job.

Here are some pictures of the slick Field Day operation at the QTH of W2GN in the Finger Lakes area of NY. Just two ops, Dean, NW2K, and Charlie, W2GN, operated QRP. They used two K3 radios running 5W, an A3S at 40', 40 dipole at 40', 40 2el wire Yagi at 40', 80 dipole at 60', in elevated condominium designed for harvesting deer. In the hills just above Keuka Lake, in the Finger Lakes Region of NY. If you look hard, just over the tractor's seat, that's Keuka Lake in the distance. W2GN offers >300 acres of great views, forests and terrain.

Hover your mouse over pictures to see captions. In May, 2016 Dan W8CAR suffered a damaging lightning strike. These pictures show part of the consequences of this disaster. See Member News for Dan's description of this event

Here are a few pictures of my May 2016 expedition to southern France to operate the WPX contest. Hover your mouse over the pictures to read the captions. I found this property advertised on a rental vacation website and it explained that this was a renovated 300-year old windmill, one of a series of identical windmills placed on hilltops in this part of France. There were lots of trees on the property and it looked like a good QTH for a contest operation. The owner said no problem to put up antennas so I booked it. I certainly had my share of problems – for more details see my 3830scores writeup at: http://3830scores.com/showrumor.php?arg=HDaUzLgcyfcvK But I was able to overcome most of them get the station set up in time for the contest, and I chalked up over 1400 contacts and a score of 1.8 million points, which appears to be enough to win the LP category for France. As you can see, the outside of the windmill was rather dilapidated and hadn’t had much attention for years. The windmill blades are long gone and I don’t know what that ugly ladder-like wooden thing hanging down is. But the inside has been modernized so it was reasonably comfortable. The structure is only about 20 feet in diameter and with three-foot thick walls, that doesn’t leave much floor space. The first level where I operated consisted of a small kitchen, a dining table (suitably round) and a sideboard. The second level was occupied entirely by the bathroom and the stairs. The third and fourth levels were bedrooms. The picture of the bedroom with the disheveled bed was where I tried to sleep (see the 3830 report) and the fourth level contained one more bed. The fourth level had more floor space because there were no stairs to eat up space and the walls were thinner. One of the pictures shows the mast for my 20 meter dipole which I fashioned from a mop handle and an aluminum extension handle for a swimming pool net that I bought at a Carrefour, France’s equivalent to Wal-Mart. For an operation like this, the antennas only need to stay up a couple of days, so construction methods can be rather haphazard.

Double-click the picture to see all of the slides. Dan, W8CAR, and Ron, K8NZ, often team up to operate the Ohio QSO Party in the mobile category, producing excellent results. These pictures show their 2012 operation. Those four antennas on the roof are enough to allow each of them to operate SO2R (but I don't think they actually do it)! The picture of Dan in his impressive shack was taken by Hal W1NN in April 2016 during a visit to Dan's QTH near Sandusky, Ohio. Note the radio Dan uses for his second radio when doing SO2R. It's that handsome piece of gear all the way to the left on the desk level. It is known as a DX-40.

K3GP, ND8L, WW3S and K8UT were back in Bermuda to operate VP9I in the 2015 CQWW RTTY contest. The picture shows the guys sitting on their big guns at the Royal Navy Yards. Here are their comments from their 3830 report: Welcome Larry K8UT to the team, wish conditions were better. At the 0800 mark we were 100+ qsos ahead of our last years record score, then mid morning, the wheels fell off the bus (solar flare?)Never really did recover, Bermuda is far enough north 10m never really did open, even 15m was flaky at times. Strong interference between stations, blew the 15m section of bandpass filter, S9 noise level on 80m...congrats to many fine scores, and congrats to the ops at PJ6A, who are rumored to have broken our North American record. Good times, and great fellowship !!! Special thanks to Ed VP9GE for all the work he does....

Here is K8MR's description of his seaside operation in the 2015 ARRL International DX Contest (CW): I operated the ARRL CW DX contest from a roadside park overlooking Sarasota Bay, running QRP with a KX3 and an MFJ telescoping whip planted at the edge of the water. The antenna was extended to a quarter wave for 10-20, and I clipped on a 16 foot extension wire to make it into an Inverted-L on 40. Being next to salt water, it worked very well to the north, very poorly to the south. LU, PY, etc., were tough qsos. I operated in 3-4 hour stints, tearing down to leave for lunch (and battery recharge), as well as bathroom breaks, as there were no facilities at the park. Setup took perhaps 10 minutes. Depending on the tide, setup/teardown was either in wet sand or a few inches of water. Great atmosphere watching the sunshine, kayakers, dogs playing in the shallow water, etc. I had several interesting conversations explaining ham radio contesting to other park visitors. And the band were great! With no spotting it was just me and the radio. Finding juicy multipliers with no pileups was fun, especially when they were able to hear and work me. I worked only one other QRP station in my 600 QSOs, GJ2A on 15 meters. Although I missed operating from a serious, competitive station, waterfront operating in warm Florida weather was certainly worth it compared to the miserable cold weather alternative up north!

Here are some pictures of the 2015 NCC annual meeting and open house at the QTH of Tom, K8AZ. This was Tom's 27th such open house! ND8L opines that the event was a lot more fun than the pictures indicate! If you look carefully, you can see the empty pizza boxes testifying to the quality of the refreshments.

Tnx for all the QSO's from NCC in the 10M Contest and other bands during the week. It was a great time for sure. I will enter the new catagory SO / Both modes / HP / Assisted. I had the cluster on but didnt have lots of time to chase the needed spots. However, I did get some new mults from it. My line: CW 1407 / 138 SSB 1929 / 150 Total 3336 / 288 = 2.7M (after dupes) I think it was close to as good as I could do. The station and antennas played great. There was always an S4 - 5 noise level until exactly 6:00 PM every day when the noise jumped up to 10 / 9 beaming north on 10M. It would drop back to S4 at sunrise. I think a neon sign on a restaurant a few blocks away was the offender. I dealt with it... I worked another 3238 QSO's during the week making over 6500 QSOs total for the week. The JA's told me last time I was there that most of them need P4 on 30M. There was a vertical mostly used on 30M (very few radials and noisy). I took a 30M dipole and strung it between 2 towers at about 65' broadside JA and worked around 400 of them on that band, even several longpath in the evening (plus one HS0 longpath). I got to visit with 5 hams on the island (P43C, P49MR, P49TR, P43P, P43L). This was also very much fun. Alsandro P43L was over the house on Monday morning when we got the call about Carl becoming a SK. This was very disturbing and sad. Carl surely created a legacy for himself. His 2 different homes in P4, world travels, DXpeditions, Contester Hall of Fame, WRTC support, frequent radio conventions; he was well known world wide and a friend to all. Someone mentioned they saw his vet in Slovenia WRTC so he could ride the Autobon. Carl was a lifetime member of the BONNEVILLE 200 MPH Club with a car he built. Very impressive! I will do a tribute to him on HamGallery soon. Most of the photos here were taken by Nancy KB8OMO. Tnx agn & 73, Tom K8CX / P40CX

This gallery presents a few pictures of W1NN's trip to Palau to operate the 2013 ARRL DX contest. He was issued the call T88UU by the local authorities. The station used was that of T88CN, the owner of the VIP Hotel in Koror. This station was built and is maintained by a group of Japanese hams who frequently visit Palau.

K8AZ 2007 ARRL CW contest pictures

Solar Data
K8ZT Useful Links
NCC member K8ZT has a website full of useful links and resources. See the following: http://www.k8zt.com/contesting http://www.k8zt.com/dx http://www.k8zt.com/propagation http://www.k8zt.com/maps