Metro DX Club Meeting Minutes—Meeting via Zoom
June 19, 2020 7:30pm
Thanks again go out to John K9EL who hosted the ZOOM meeting and coordinated checking in members.
The meeting was called to order by our President Jim N9TK. Those checking in besides Jim were K9EL, W9ILY, WA9LEY, NE9A, K9ARZ, K9DRS, KA9IUC, N2BJ, W9KXT, WB8BZK, K9AJ, K9XYL, K9NB, K9ZO, W9MK, N7US, K9BBQ, KC9EOQ, K9GY, K9GA, KD9FQP, WB9FMC, K9NU
We had quite a few visitors this month.
Each person had a chance to say a few words. Many comments revolved around the good recent DX on the air, especially on 6 and 10 meters. Some members talked about their antenna projects and shack upgrades. Several wedding anniversaries were announced.
OLD BUSINESS
TREASURER’S REPORT John W9ILY gave a report of the Club income/expenses for the month. We had dues income from a new member and have paid our yearly ARRL insurance premium. We had no Field Day or Picnic expenses this year. Detailed Treasurer reports can be found on our groups.io site.
WUST No updates this month.
NEW BUSINESS W9C SPECIAL EVENT JUNE 19-21 Our special event is starting today using W9C from your home stations. Our plans have been submitted to QST. Matt K9BBQ has designed a really nice QSL and certificate for the event. John W9ILY has set up an online spreadsheet for members to use to reserve operating slots so W9C isn’t operating on the same band/mode at the same time. Email John your interest in operating W9C and he will send you a sign up spreadsheet. Logs go to John W9ILY.
2020 FIELD DAY JUNE 27-28 Field Day is next weekend. Everyone is still encouraged to operate on their own. There are many ways to participate. See ARRL site for more info and the current rules. If you are using N1MM for logging, they have a FD module you can get from their site. Regardless of your logging program, make sure you enter Metro DX Club in the program so we get credit when the scores are tabulated. Enter the full name, not a shortened version. Submit your FD scores to John W9ILY. Also, check out this site contestonlinescore.com. It’s a score aggregator that can be used for every contest.
6 METERS IS HOPPING John K9EL reports working 9 new countries on 6 lately and is up to 79 all time and shared some info he got off of Club Log. This past week, there were 456K contacts uploaded to Club Log of which 70% were FT4 and FT8 contacts, showing the current popularity of these digital modes. SSB uploads were about 9% of the total. The most popular bands were 20 (46%) and 6 (24%).
DXPEDITIONS Many have been cancelled or postponed. Check DXWorld.com for current info.
CONTESTING John W9ILY reported the following Club results. CQWW CW, 42 of 65 clubs with 10 members participating, CQ VHF 32 of 36 with 3 members particapating and NAQP CW JAN 103 of 114 clubs.
REGULAR MEETING SITE Our Tinley Park meeting site is still not available to us due to the Corona virus restrictions. There was some discussion about maybe meeting at restaurant with outside seating at some time in the future.
VE SESSION W9KXT and NE9A held VE sessions in Steve’s garage resulting in many new hams.
PROGRAM We were fortunate to have as our guest Jim N7US who presented a primer (actually in depth) on the DX LABS free logging program. See dxlabsuite.com. There are many totally configurable modules that you can build on. Jim went through slides of how he has his set up. With his set up, he rarely has to even touch his radio. He does recommend to get into it gradually since there’s a learning curve involved but he says it’s worth it. Also, documentation is kept up to date and is very well supported. There’s a reflector to answer questions. Check their website for more info. Thanks to Jim for the interesting explanation of his use of DX Labs.
After some additional discussion , the net was closed. Thanks for the participation.
Submitted by Lee WA9LEY