Presidents Letter:
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and your family members. I wanted to get that in first! And please don’t forget to renew your OVH membership for 2019 now! Use the form at the end of this Newsletter or do it online at w4ovh.net.
Speaking of forgetting, every time I try to get on the air with the “new” FT8 mode, I have to try to remember what I did last time which didn’t work. One of these days I’ll get it working; and now I see that a new FT8 version has come out so I will have to download that and get up to speed with it. The recent, big FT8 contest with a lot of FT8 activity on HF provided a good incentive for me to get this working at last!
I really enjoyed the OVH’s Year End Holiday Party this year – held on Sunday evening, December 9, 2018. Of course I have enjoyed all the ones I have attended in the past too. It was good to see so many people come out and the food was really good too (as usual). Thanks to those that brought the delicious side dishes. I was telling Jay / NQ4T, that you can’t go wrong with burnt cheese (he referred to it as blackened). Growing up we always fought over the corners of the baked mac and cheese where it was blackened. Thanks to Theresa for all she did, which was a lot, for the wonderful Holiday Party this year. Thanks too to the Yorkshire restaurant for again hosting us and providing us with the turkey and ham. I meant to get up and socialize more but was caught up in the conversations at our table with various club members rotating through. You can tell when I am fascinated during a conversation because I don’t say much: I just listen.
I know I have mentioned this before, but as a reminder, starting in January 2019 we will be meeting at the Yorkshire restaurant on the Saturday before our club meetings at 8:00 am for breakfast. It will be an opportunity to socialize and eat a great breakfast. I never get to talk to everyone I would like to at our meetings because of the time restraint and thought that this would be one way to get to talk to more club members. If you have time to join us on January 12th, please come and feel free to invite family and or friends.
Something else has been on my mind too and that is that I would like to do a radio direction finding exercise that involves a larger distance. I know other clubs have them so why not the OVH? I would like someone with some experience in RDF to help put this together. Maybe we could prepare by meeting on a weekend and building Adcock antennas? I would like to try this over 5-10 miles where the fox broadcasts for 5 minutes so everyone can get and bearing and then drive to their next spot and take another bearing when the fox comes back on the air after a five-minute break. This would repeat till the everyone found the fox. The first person to find the fox would get to be the fox for the next time and get a prize. What do you think? We could continue this discussion on the reflector.
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season with family and friends and a Happy New Year. May we be kind to one another. And don’t forget the next regular OVH meeting will be on January 15th in the new year and there should be another Newsletter just before that as usual.
73 BYRON AK4XR