Happy New Year to all my readers! The first day of the new year did bring a little contest: SART New Year RTTY contest. Of course I want to score some fresh and first points for 2014, so I entered the three hour contest on 80 and 40 meters. Quite a contest! Lots of stations participating and I even managed to do a few runs! I’ve made 77 Q’s, worked 13 DXCC’s and score 2618 points. I think a nice start for 2014.
K6XX Zero Beat Indicator
My Elecraft K1 is a need little rig. One thing I think it missed was a zero beat indicator. K6XX designed just that. Christmas holiday is the perfect period for a little home brewing, so I warmed up the solder iron.
After a hour or so the kit was finished. My first attempt with SMD’s. I’m not disappointed with the result. The test drive isn’t successful yet. All though I’ve seen the led blinking, I can’t get it to work. The SMD variable resistor feels weird (no resistance when adjusting) so I think maybe I damaged it. In the manual there is a piece with voltage points. I hope I can find some time to check all points and figure out what is going wrong.
Losing division league 2013
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! 😉