Category: Veron

Vereniging voor Experimenteel Radio Onderzoek Nederland (Dutch ARRL).

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The ARRL of the Netherlands is called the VERON. The organization is grouped into different regions. Every region has its own members. To promote the participation of contests the VERON does organize a division league between the different regions. When you participated in a contest, you submit your Q’s on a website and the every year there is a overall winner but also a region winner.

In my region Wilko PA3BWK wins for years in a row now. I know Wilko and consider him a friend. He has a spotless reputation in contesting. When Wilko wants to win, he will win, no matter what. But this year Wilko had a very busy year involving a big move etc. So he couldn’t spend as much time contesting as he wanted. I did see this reflecting his low score during 2013. At some point I decided to take a shot at the league and try to defeat Wilko. As you readers might noticed, I reported about quite a few contest participation’s over the last months. I didn’t blog about this subject on purpose to not reveal my strategy/intentions to Wilko. Unfortunately for me Wilko did recover on time and we had a great battle the last few contests. Tuesday 17 December the deadline for the division league closed and all scores are calculated. Turns out I lost from Wilko:

Afdelings Resultaat in de VERON Competitie.
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1. PA3BWK                 70                38.8 %
2. PA1JIM                   61                 33.8 %
3. PA3CJP                   42                  23.3 %
4. PA3EER                  4                    2.2 %
5. PA3FYG                   3                    1.6 %

Totaal score: 180

And again a marvelous example of the determination of Wilko PA3BWK. Even in the last weeks of the division league he was able to turn a lag of multiple points on me around in a lead and win the league with no less then 9 points!!
All I can do is being humble, take the second place and congratulate Wilko PA3BWK for this spectacular victory.
Wilko: thanks for a great achievement. I did everything to keep you behind me, but you beat me fair and square: congrats!
Hopefully we’ll meet again next year in the division league of 2014! 😉

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Last weekend I entered the RTTY-contest part of the Greek Triathlon contest. Because we had some family visiting the house in the afternoon, I didn’t had much time for the whole contest. I looked in the schedule and find out the first part of the contest (0:00 – 7:59 UTC) is RTTY only. Because we’re only one hour later then UTC, I figured I could get up real early and make a few contacts. So Saturday morning I got up at 5 o’clock AM (4:00 UTC) and flipped on the radio. Then I struggled with N1MM again for a full hour to switch from SSB-macro’s to RTTY-macro’s. It took me a hour to figure out I had to type “RTTY” in the call log box :S.

After a few hours of search & pounce I collected 26 contacts. I didn’t participate in this contest before so I don’t have any comparison. But I had to search the bands with a magnifier to find stations. The result of a few minutes of giving CQ: 0 replies. So I quickly returned to S&P. Well, at least I earned 1 extra points in our regional divisional league (25 contacts represent 1 point).

Next weekend I’ll participate in the PACC-contest. I read in the contest calendar this is also the weekend of CQ WW RTTY contest! So maybe I switch forward en backward between these two. Because I really like to meet Jim, K5ND in the CQ WW RTTY 🙂

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I’m a member of the national radio club Veron. Every region in the Netherlands has its own department which are coordinated centrally from Veron Headquarters. Based on your address you’re member of that region (I guess this is the way it works in every country). Because I’m living in Hilversum I’m member of Veron department ‘t Gooi.

A few years ago the old clubhouse burned down and since then ‘t Gooi was located in a temporary location above a local primary school. Needless to say the location was not ideal of course.
But the last two months there were very cool things going on. We’ve got an offer to move in a new location: the old NERA-building. The NERA-building is a pretty old building that was used for radio communications with Indonesia back in the days Indonesia was still a colony of the Netherlands. The location was chosen for it’s perfect soil conditions for radio.
Of course this would be the perfect place for a radio club to have their clubhouse!

So we’re in the new locations for a few weeks now. Enjoying all the space! Last evening (every tuesday is our get-together-evening) we had a meeting about what antenna’s there should build, how the clubhouse must be decorated, should or shouldn’t we have a bar, etc. It’s nice to be member of a club were all the members are active, enthusiastic and there are some financial means to do something! I will post some pictures of the new location asap!