Northern Lights Radio Society
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(If you are looking for the other Northern Lights, i.e. pictures of the Aurora Borealis, you may want to click here for a beautiful photo, © 2001 by John Russell of Nome, Alaska, and used with his generous permission. And check his web pages for many more photos.

Quick Navigation Links to This Page

If you are familiar with the structure of the NLRS home page and want to get right to a certain part of it, you can use this index to jump to the area of interest.

Introduction to the Northern Lights Radio Society (NLRS)

The Northern Lights Radio Society is an organization of Upper Midwest amateur radio operators who are active in weak signal (SSB/CW) work on the VHF, UHF, and Microwave bands. The majority of our members are located in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, but we also have members in South Dakota, Iowa and western Wisconsin. An Online Directory of our membership is available.

NLRS Club Officers, 2006 - 2007
President Jon Platt, WØZQ
Vice-President Chris Cox, NØUK
Secretary-Treasurer Glen Overby, KCØIYT

Click this link to send email to any or all of the club officers.

Annual Dues

are $5.00 per calendar year (January 1 to December 31). Please make checks payable to the Northern Lights Radio Society. Checks can be mailed to the club's Secretary/Treasurer, Vice President, or President. All of their call signs are listed above. Or, you can use the link above (email to club officers) and select the treasurer as the recipient of your message to connect with him. You can also use the tool below to look up any of the club officers (or anyone else, for that matter) in the QRZ online callbook.
 

Constitution and Bylaws:

If you want to examine the current Constitution and Bylaws, you can click either of the following links: Most Recent Club Bylaws Changes: To take advantage of ARRL's intentions to change some of the rules concerning club competition, and to clarify some ambiguities on dues, we made some minor changes to the NLRS bylaws at Aurora 2002. You can read a summary of the recent changes by clicking here.

NLRS Logo Club Jackets

Some time ago, we put together an order for club jackets with the official NLRS logo embroidered on the back, and optionally some of you had your name and/or your callsign embroidered on the front. While we do not anticipate doing this again anytime soon, due the the minimum number of jackets that need to be ordered at one time, you can click on this link to see what you may have missed.

Calendar of Events

Follow any of the links in the table below to a calendar of events for a given month. From there, you can also scroll backwards or forwards to other months for which calendars have been prepared. Note that some of the calendar links below may not have actually been prepared yet, and are marked in the table below accordingly.

Month   2002     2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010  
  January  
  February  
  March  
  April  
  May  
  June  
  July  
  August  
  September  
  October  
  November  
  December  

Club Meetings

According to ARRL Club Competition rules, if you want to submit your January VHF Sweepstakes, June VHF QSO Party, or September VHF QSO Party score as part of a Club score, you have to be active in the club. Until recently, the ARRL defined "active" to include participation in at least two club meetings per year in most cases. These rules changed in November of 2002, according to this article on the ARRL web site. Our bylaws were amended to correspond to the new ARRL rules.

Although there is no longer a need to comply with the old "two meetings per year" attendance requirement, it goes without saying that membership in a club tends to be more enjoyable when its members actually get together to share one another's company. And there are ample opportunities to do so.

Aurora

Our major annual meeting is at Aurora, the largest annual gathering of weak-signal VHF'ers in the Upper Midwest. These conferences were begun in 1984 by KØFQA and are currently hosted by WØUC.

This year, as for the past six years, the Aurora conference will be held at the First Lutheran Church, 4000 Linden Street, White Bear Lake, MN 55110. This is near the intersection of Highway 61 with County Road F. Linden Street is a service road for Highway 61. The church is rather large, so it is easy to see from Highway 61.

Aurora 2008 will be held on Saturday, April 26, 2008.

Links to the last few years' worth of Aurora events:

Microwave Contests, Gatherings, Picnics, and Antenna Measurement Parties

We get together prior to the annual ARRL 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest to "tune up" microwave transverters and test antennas, and also to enjoy one another's company at a picnic gathering.

In 2001, we decided to get a little more agressive in working the 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest. During the first contest weekend, a bunch of NLRS folks went up to the Lake Superior area to run long paths across the nice, flat stretches of water. (A substutute for the lack of mountains in this part of the country.) The second contest weekend was more conventional (for us), with folks starting out at Indian Mounds Park in St. Paul and the St. Paul Capitol Overlook, and spreading out from there.

In 2002, we reversed the schedule. The first weekend was mostly devoted to working folks in the Twin Cities metro area, and the die-hards went up to the North Shore on Saturday of the second weekend, and then worked some more metro area contacts on the second Sunday. And a couple of weekends later, we had an antenna testing / 10 GHz tune-up / picnic gathering at Mounds Park.

In 2003, we went back to the original schedule, with the Lake Superior expedition on the first contest weekend (August), and metro area activity during the second contest weekend (September). Activity from our group and from this area of the country was higher than ever.

In 2004, we made the trek to Lake Superior on the first contest weekend (August), and then split up for the second weekend more than usual. Some folks toured the sites in the metro and surrounding areas. One group went to Sisseton, ND, for some long-haul QSO's back to the metro area. Another group visited the Red River Valley. The activity level from this part of the country was once again excellent. Many of the participants in 2004 prepared their own web pages describing their experiences. Check out pictures from:

In 2005, we changed our tactics completely. We split up into two general categories of operators: fixed stations and rover stations. Some of the operators set up at a couple of different sites in Sisseton, SD (EN15), while another group set up just south of the Twin Cities Metro area in Lonsdale, MN and Vasa, MN (EN34). The rovers drove around like madmen in southwestern Minnesota, making numerous stops in EN23, EN24, EN25, and EN34. The rovers would pull up to a stop, point to Sisseton (somewhere to the northwest), work those operators, then turn to the east to work the metro folks on a different frequency. In this manner, some of the rovers could still be working Sisseton while others were simultaneously working Lonsdale and Vasa with minimal to no interference. The rovers (and some of the Sisseton operators) also worked Mike (KMØT) in EN13vc whenever we could -- he wasn't able to put in a full-time effort, but his QSO's did help our scores also. There were more rovers and fixed stations in northwest Minnesota and southern Canada, who were able to work the Sisseton folks but could not reach the SW MN rovers (unfortunately). Many of the rovers and Sisseton operators also finished off the second weekend of the contest by working some of the Twin Cities locals who weren't able to get out for more than an hour or so of activity and who had to stay close to home. There were some very impressive scores from the NLRS group when the 2005 contest results were published!

In 2006, we considered sending a rover pack up the Red River Valley for one of the two weekends, but those plans got scrapped close to "show time", and we used a modified (simplified) version of the 2005 plans. We still had a rover pack, this time in Southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa, but only a single "fixed" site per weekend, very close to the Twin Cities. More records were broken by the NLRS group!

In 2007, the first weekend of the contest was plagued with cold, rainy weather in our neck of the woods, which put a severe damper on activity levels and first weekend scores. We still used the model of a group of (relatively) fixed operators working a group of rovers moving around southern Minnesota. At one point, the fixed operators resorted to working from the penultimate floor of a public parking garage in Eden Prairie to keep the rain off the operators and equipment, while allowing for adequate (certainly not spectacular) paths in most directions. For the second weekend, the weather was still rather cold but at least it was dry, allowing some of the fixed operator group to work from the top of Buck Hill in Burnsville. Our scores were down significantly from the prior two years, but a lot of fun was still had.

 

At the microwave gatherings, we generally include an antenna testing session. Here are the results of those test sessions. Note that we skipped the microwave antenna testing in 2001 during the contest weekend, and included the higher bands at the Aurora 2001 session.

If you want to see the data from all the testing sessions combined (so you can compare antennas measured at different times to one another easily), check out either of these composite files: Here is a "blank" Excel file that can be used at future antenna measurement gatherings to hold the data in a form that will be a little easier for the webmaster to convert to the online HTML format used on this web site:

NLRS Monthly Breakfasts

We generally meet for breakfast one Saturday each month, 8:30 AM, alternating between the Old Country Buffet restaurants in Roseville and Richfield. If you are going to be in the area, check with one of the locals for details and please join us! (You don't have to buy breakfast to join us.) Breakfasts are currently scheduled as follows (check the net for any late changes): The Roseville location: (even-numbered months)
Map of Old Country Buffet:651-639-0088 2480 Fairview Ave N Roseville, MN 55113, US
is just north of the Rosedale mall on County Road B-2, near the intersection of Highway 36 and Snelling Avenue. The street address is 2480 Fairview Avenue, Roseville, MN 55113.

The Richfield location: (odd-numbered months)
Map of Old Country Buffet:612-869-1240 9 E 66th St Richfield, MN 55423, US
is on the southeast corner of Nicollet and 66th Street. The street address is 9 East 66th Street, Richfield, MN 55423-2455.

NLRS Reflector

NLRS has an e-mail reflector where news of local interest and meeting reminders are posted. All subscribers who were on the old majordomo mailing list should have been automatically transferred to the new list.

You can subscribe, unsubscribe, change between regular and digest mode, put your subscription on temporary hold while on vacation, and so on, all from a single account maintenance web page.

To send mail to the list, simply address it to
   
and all of the list subscribers will get it.

If you want the list members to see your messages, you MUST send them in PLAIN TEXT only. If you do not know how to send plain text messages with your mail client, visit one of the sites below for instructions (most popular email clients are covered).

You can also access the archives of the NLRS mailing list (and, for that matter, all other mailing lists hosted by QTH.NET) from the URL http://mailman.qth.net. In the top left frame window, enter NLRS for the mail list name, and then click on the button that selects which form of the archive you are interested in viewing. You can also search the archives by entering a search term in the appropriate window and clicking the SEARCH button.

Weekly Nets

NLRS has four to six weekly nets operating in the area:

There is also an informal chat net Saturday evenings at 9PM on 144.250.

 

Just to the east of us in Wisconsin, the Badger Contesters also meet weekly:

Central States VHF Conference

In 1996, NLRS hosted the 30th annual conference of the Central States VHF Society. Many of our members travel to the conference each year. In July 2002, the conference was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, and was hosted by the Badger Contesters. The exact dates were July 26 - 28, 2002, and more detailed information on the 2002 conference can be found here. Some photos taken at the NLRS Hospitality Suite at the 2002 CSVHF Conference can be seen here.

The 40th annual conference in 2006 was held in Bloomington, Minnesota, hosted by the NLRS!

The 2007 conference was held in San Antonio, Texas, hosted by the RoadRunners Microwave Group (RMG).

The 2008 conference will be held in Wichita, Kansas on July 24-27, 2008.

Southeastern VHF Society Conference

Here you will find information about the SVHFS and the activities they have going on, including the 12th Annual SVHFS Conference, which will be held in Orlando, Florida, on April 25 & 26, 2008. The conference includes the SVHFS Design Contest, which looks like it could be a lot of fun.

Rochester Amateur Radio Club -- WØDXCC Midwest Summer Hamvention

The Rochester, MN Amateur Radio Club (RARC) is sponsoring the Midwest Summer Hamvention as described in this PDF file which is in newsletter format. You can also follow this link to a Microsoft Power Point presentation about the conference.

The RARC WØDXCC Midwest Summer Hamvention will be held August 8 - 10, 2008.

Contest Activities

NLRS was originally organized to compete in the club competition of the ARRL's January VHF Sweepstakes. Active participation in the contests has spurred tremendous growth in microwave activity in the area, with good activity now on all bands through 10 Ghz.

10 GHz and Up Contesting

At the higher microwave frequencies, making successful QSO's generally depends on more than simply having adequate equipment. It almost always requires either a clear line-of-sight path between the two stations, or else that each station have a clear line-of-sight path to a large object at an intermediate location which can act as a reflector of microwave energy (such as downtown skyscrapers, large water towers, etc.) The NLRS crowd has been actively searching out good locations from which to work the bands on 10 GHz and up. The link below will take you to a page where some of the good sites found so far are documented. It also offers links to useful software tools for 10 GHz and up operating, such as computation of bearing and distance, creating a log for the ARRL 10 GHz And Up Cumulative Contest, etc.:

10 GHz and Up Operating Locations and Software

Interested in getting active on the bands from 10 GHz and up? Many of the NLRS locals started by putting together a 10 GHz WBFM (Wide-Band FM) rig, and here are a few links to get you started. Most of us are using narrow-band (SSB, CW, FM) rigs now on 10 GHz, but some of us still use WBFM on 24 GHz.

Here are the Upper Midwest standings in some of the major VHF, UHF, and microwave contests:

Here are the all-time record contest scores in the Upper Midwest: Contest results in Excel spreadsheet format:

Official Rules for ARRL Contests


 
The ARRL has a set of rules that applies to all of their contests, a set of rules that applies to all contests above 50 MHz, and then specific rules for each contest. This link will take you to an ARRL web page that consolidates links to all the rules, and to useful forms, etc. Here is a quick guide to the various rules:

General Rules Common to Multiple ARRL Contests

2008 ARRL Contest-Specific Rules
Please note, some contest rules and dates have not yet been published by the ARRL. In such cases, the links may not work yet.

2007 ARRL Contest-Specific Rules

2006 ARRL Contest-Specific Rules

2005 ARRL Contest-Specific Rules

2004 ARRL Contest-Specific Rules

2003 ARRL Contest-Specific Rules

Contest Results from the ARRL Web Site

The following table will bring you directly to the PDF files published by the ARRL on their web site, with the full contest results for the events listed. The PDF files are generally virtually identical to the report as published in QST. Here you can see how the whole country fared in a particular contest, not just folks from the Upper Midwest.

Starting in the calendar year 2002, the ARRL also publishes the results in a number of different formats:

Some of the links in the table below, such as the links to the newest PDF files (prior to their appearance in QST), and some of the expanded coverage links, are restricted to ARRL members only. Any item in parentheses (like this) hasn't been published by the ARRL yet, or at least your webmaster hasn't found it yet.

Year January VHF
Sweepstakes 		June VHF
QSO Party 		August UHF
Contest, a/k/a
Rovermania 		September
VHF QSO
Party 		10 GHz & Up
Cumulative
Contest
1997 PDF PDF PDF PDF PDF
1998 PDF PDF PDF PDF PDF
1999 PDF PDF
and
correction		 PDF PDF PDF
2000 PDF PDF PDF PDF PDF
2001 PDF PDF PDF PDF PDF
Year January VHF
Sweepstakes 		June VHF
QSO Party 		August UHF
Contest, a/k/a
Rovermania 		September
VHF QSO
Party 		10 GHz & Up
Cumulative
Contest
2002 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
2003 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
2004 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
2005 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
Year January VHF
Sweepstakes 		June VHF
QSO Party 		August UHF
Contest, a/k/a
Rovermania 		September
VHF QSO
Party 		10 GHz & Up
Cumulative
Contest
2006 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
  		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
Log Check Report 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
  		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
Log Check Report 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
 
2007 PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
Log Check Report 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
Log Check Report 		PDF
Line Scores
(Web Report)
Soapbox
Scores Database
Logs Received 		PDF
Line Scores
Web Report
Soapbox
Scores Database
Log Check Report 		PDF
Line Scores
(Web Report)
Soapbox
Scores Database
 
2008 (PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
Soapbox
(Scores Database)
Logs Received
 (PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received)
2009 (PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
 
2010 (PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
(Logs Received) 		(PDF)
(Line Scores)
(Web Report)
(Soapbox)
(Scores Database)
 

Here's a link to the ARRL Contest Results page, since they have a habit of moving around their contest results, and the NLRS webmasters can't always keep up with them, which may leave some of the links in the above table out of date. You should be able to get to any available file or link from that web address.

To give you an idea of the power offered by the new ARRL Score Tool that allows you to download data in comma- or tab- delimited format for processing on your own computer, here is an Excel spreadsheet that contains the complete breakdown of band activity by all participants in the January 2002 VHF Sweepstakes, the June 2002 VHF QSO Party, the August 2002 UHF Contest, and the September 2002 VHF QSO Party, including the number of QSO's and number of Multipliers on every band:

2002-ARRL-ContestData.xls

Using this spreadsheet, it was simple to analyze the distribution of activity in the January 2002 VHF Sweepstakes by band. Now you don't have to guess what band would be most appropriate to add to your station if you want to maximize your score in the next major contest:

AnalysisOf_2002-ARRL-ContestData.xls

Click here for the band analysis for January 2002.
Click here for the band analysis for June 2002.
Click here for the band analysis for August 2002.
Click here for the band analysis for September 2002.
Click here for the band analysis for all four 2002 contests.

Spring Sprints

These short (mostly 4 hours long) contests are an excellent opportunity to "tune up" your gear in preparation for the June, August, and September contests. They were formerly sponsored by the ARRL, and until 2006, were sponsored by the East Tenesee DX Association. Sponsorship has changed again. They are now sponsored by K9JK (John Kalenowsky) and W4SHG (Steve Gilmore), with support from Ham Radio Outlet of Virginia. Here is the schedule for 2008:

Band Weekday Date Start Time End Time
144 MHz Monday April 7, 2008 7:00PM local 11:00PM local
222 MHz Tuesday April 15, 2008 7:00PM local 11:00PM local
432 MHz Wednesday April 23, 2008 7:00PM local 11:00PM local
Microwave
(902 MHz and Up)		 Saturday May 3, 2008 6:00AM local 1:00PM local
50 MHz Saturday May 10, 2008 2300 UTC
7:00 PM EDT
6:00 PM CDT
5:00 PM MDT
4:00 PM PDT		 0300 UTC
11:00 PM EDT
10:00 PM CDT
9:00 PM MDT
8:00 PM PDT

Please note that for all Sprints except the 50 MHz Sprint, the start and end times are local time, no matter what time zone you are located in. So, when people on the East Coast are finishing up most of these events at 11:00 PM local time, the folks on the West Coast will have only been operating for an hour (8:00 PM Pacific time = 11:00 PM Eastern time). This may cause you some grief, however, if you attempt to make a contact with a station in a different time zone, or one located in a place that has different rules for using or not using Daylight Savings Time. You might be calling them before the start of the contest in their time zone if you point west, or after the end of the contest in their time zone if you point east, for example. For the 50 MHz Sprint, the times are specified in UTC, so the event start time or end time occurs simultaneously for everyone in the country, albeit at different local times. This makes sense on a band where cross-country contacts are more likely to occur. Officially, the 6 meter Spring Sprint runs from 2300Z on May 10th, 2008 to 0300Z May 11th, 2008, everywhere. The table above lists the starting and ending times for the four USA time zones on Daylight Savings Time. Convert as necessary if you are not using DST or are in a different time zone.

Here is a link to the Spring Sprint Rules for 2008.

They are similar to the ARRL rules, but but there are some significant differences. Logs must be submitted within 15 days of each event, not 30 days as is usually the case with the larger ARRL contests. To help keep the log checking manageable for the event sponsors, participants are strongly encouraged to submit their logs electronically, using the Cabrillo format.

Logs can be emailed to:
      springvhfsprintssysadnet.org

Bruce Horn, WA7BNM, has graciously agreed to provide 'web forms' to facilitate generation and automatic submission of Cabrillo-formatted logs for the Spring VHF & Up Sprints at the web site that he maintains. The Cabrillo format has been slightly modified to suit the requirements of the Spring Sprints. Another difference is that operators are encouraged to send and record 6-digit Maidenhead grid square locations instead of the usual 4-digit grids, although for the purposes of re-working a mobile station, grids must be unique in the first 4 characters.

Although discouraged, logs can still be sent on paper. You will need a Summary Sheet and a Log Sheet to submit your score on paper. Paper logs must be mailed to:

Results for the 2007 Spring Sprints may be viewed here .

When available, the log submissions for the 2008 Spring Sprints will appear at this location .

Fall Sprints

These short (mostly 4 hours long) contests are an excellent opportunity to "tune up" your gear in preparation for the January VHF contest, and to have some fun after the rush of ARRL VHF and up contests which are concentrated in the June - September months. They were formerly sponsored by the ARRL, and are now sponsored by the Southeastern VHF Society (SVHFS). Here are the schedule & rules for 2007:   Note: The schedule & rules for 2008 are not yet published!

To give you an idea, here was the schedule for 2007:   Note: The schedule for 2008 is not yet published!

Band Weekday Date Start Time End Time
144 MHz Monday September 17, 2007 7:00PM local 11:00PM local
222 MHz Tuesday September 25, 2007 7:00PM local 11:00PM local
432 MHz Wednesday October 3, 2007 7:00PM local 11:00PM local
Microwave
(902 MHz and Up)		 Saturday October 13, 2007 6:00AM local 12:00PM local
50 MHz Saturday October 20, 2007 2300 UTC
6:00 PM EST
5:00 PM CST
4:00 PM MST
3:00 PM PST		 0300 UTC
10:00 PM EST
9:00 PM CST
8:00 PM MST
7:00 PM PST

Please note that for all Sprints except the 50 MHz Sprint, the start and end times are local time, no matter what time zone you are located in. So, when people on the East Coast are finishing up most of these events at 11:00 PM local time, the folks on the West Coast will have only been operating for an hour (8:00 PM Pacific time = 11:00 PM Eastern time). For the 50 MHz Sprint, the times are specified in UTC, so the event start time or end time occurs simultaneously for everyone in the country, albeit at different local times. This makes sense on a band where cross-country contacts are more likely to occur. Officially, the 6 meter Fall Sprint runs from 2300Z on October 20th, 2007 to 0300Z October 21st, 2007, everywhere. The table above lists the starting and ending times for the four USA time zones on Standard Time. Convert as necessary if you are in a different time zone.

Log submissions: Logs are sent to different volunteers for each of the band-specific fall sprints. Here is the most recent list of log checkers:

Fall Sprint Mail paper logs to Email electronic logs to
144 MHz Ottmar Fiebel (W4WSR),
PO Box 957,
Hayesville, NC 28904		 ottfwbia.net
222 MHz Bob Lear (W4ZST),
PO Box 1269,
Dahlonega, GA 30533		 w4zstwindstream.net
432 MHz Jim Worsham (W4KXY),
1915 Oak Wind Lane,
Buford, GA 30519-6766		 w4kxyarrl.net
Microwave Dexter McIntyre (W4DEX),
16164 Pless Mill Rd.,
Stanfield, NC 28163		 w4dexarrl.net
50 MHz Ray Rector (WA4NJP),
3493 Holly Springs Rd.,
Gillsville, GA 30534		 wa4njpbellsouth.net

San Bernardino Microwave Society (SBMS) Microwave Club Contest

This is a club contest that focuses on the bands above 2.0 GHz. It is very similar to the ARRL 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest, but is shorter, and includes the 2304, 3456, and 5760 MHz bands that the ARRL microwave contest omits. There are a few other differences also. This one allows only club entries, not individual entries. But they are pretty liberal about the definition of a club. Any 2 or more people who are willing to combine their scores and give themselves a name can be a club for this contest. The scoring is similar to the ARRL 10 GHz contest except for the addition of multipliers based on the frequency band (if any contacts are made at or above 24 GHz), and bonus points for the number of microwave bands activated.

This 38 hour long contest is an excellent opportunity to "tune up" your microwave gear in preparation for the August and September weekends of the ARRL 10 GHz & Up Contest, and also to keep your microwave gear humming during the lull in the ARRL contest calendar. This contest is sponsored by the San Bernardino Microwave Society (SBMS). For 2008, the contest will run from 6 AM Saturday May 10, 2008 to 8 PM Sunday May 11, 2008.

The NLRS has had some success in playing in this contest:

Here are links to the rules and the schedule for the 2007 contest:
HTML format
PDF format
Word format

And here are the published results of the SBMS contest:

August UHF Contest Rover Schedules -- RoverMania

The August 2004 UHF Contest was rumored to be the last ARRL UHF Contest ever, and so the NLRS made plans to make it go out in style. We had a large number of rover stations hitting a large number of grids with a large number of bands, and blew away a lot of records that year. And, lo and behold, ARRL saw fit to not give the contest the axe after the 2004 contest as originally rumored, nor after the 2005, 2006, or 2007 contests, either!

RoverMania I (2004) event information here.
RoverMania II (2005) event information here.
RoverMania III (2006) event information here.
RoverMania IV (2007) event information here.

January 2004 VHF Sweepstakes Rover Schedules

Here in the Upper Midwest, we rely heavily on rover stations to boost our scores in the VHF/UHF contests. Let's face it, the population density is much lower than on the East or West Coast, and the terrain is pretty flat (i.e., devoid of mountaintop operating locations for line-of-sight shots to distant grids). With that in mind, it is useful to know ahead of time who is going out to rove, what bands they will have along, and what grids they plan to activate.

We posted information on the plans of several rover stations prior to the Jaunary 2003 contest, so local contesters could gets some insight into when and where to find the rovers and what bands they could operate on. Hopefully, we will do something similar for each future ARRL contest. We also did this for the January 2004 contest, even though we missed the intervening events. For those with an interest in past history, here are those plans.

January 2004 VHF Sweepstakes Fixed Stations

Here is a list, mostly compiled by Rich, NØHJZ, of the fixed stations that planed to participate in the January 2004 VHF Sweepstakes that NLRS folks might be likely to work. This was a last-minute addition to the web page, sorry it's not pretty, but it's there! Thanks, Rich, and thanks to the NLRS mail reflector for being a place for folks to announce their intentions.

As it turned out, we actually had more people submit logs than these plans reflect. In fact, we hit 51 or more logs submitted, pushing us into the "Unlimited Category" with only one other club! Outstanding participation level, let's keep it up!

Contest Station Locator and VHF Helper

The Contest Station Locator is currently an Excel spreadsheet that allows you to keep a database of other stations that you have previously worked, or hope to work. By including their location coordinates, the spreadsheet can display the antenna beam heading to each station (the direction you point your antenna), and the distance to the station in miles or kilometers. It also includes their grid square. You could sort the table by beam heading, and then as you spin your antennas in a 360 degree circle, watch the table to see what stations are in the direction you are currently pointed. Or you could sort the table by grid square, if you are hoping to "fill in a hole" in the grids that you've worked so far. Or perhaps you are a rover station, and as you move around to new grids, you need a handy way to figure out the bearing and distance to the "big guns" you've worked from other locations. Just enter yourself a new location, and the info is automatically re-computed for you! In the future, I hope to add fields for the bands and modes that the stations operate, so you could use the built-in features of Excel to query, for example, "what station is in grid EN13 that has 1296 MHz SSB capability?" Also, in the future, we hope to convert this spreadsheet to distributed database technology, and allow folks to update their own records interactively via the web. But that, as we say in the biz, is "a future enhancement" that is not yet here.

Mike King (KMØT) wrote a Microsoft Access program of a similar intent, called VHF Helper. Mike gave a presentation on this software at Aurora 2002. The link to the program disappeared when he moved his web site from QSL.NET to KMØT.COM, but it may re-appear at some time in the future.

Other Links

Propagation Beacons

    One good way to find out if a band is open is to listen for a beacon on an appropriate frequency. Here is a list of some known beacons that might be audible in NLRS land when conditions are right. If you know of any other beacons, or if you can fill in any of the blanks in the table, or if you have corrections or additional data, please let us know about it so we can get the page updated!

Propagation Links

Scouting for band openings? Some of Paul's favorite propagation links are compiled here.

More interesting technical links on solar and geophysical phenomena have been compiled by WØLCP.

Propagation reports and technical chatter are found on the "VHF Reflector". To subscribe, send an e-mail message to vhf-requestw6yx.stanford.edu ; the body of the message should be the single word "SUBSCRIBE".

Microwave Literature

Paul Husby (WØUC)'s comprehensive index to UHF and Microwave literature is available here. It includes all articles in the Central States, Microwave Update and other proceedings published by ARRL, as well as various other sources.

Link to More Links

For a comprehensive list of other VHF-related links on the Web, check the N.E.W.S. Group (North East Weak Signal Group) VHF WWW Site.

DUBUS - the serious magazine for VHF and up amateur radio.

A magazine originating in Germany, published in bilingual (English and German) format, focusing on VHF through Microwave operations. Their Web site has information about the magazine itself, and links to many of the articles archived in PDF format.

Your Webmaster's Links

John Toscano (WØJT) is slooooowly adding a page of other links that are of interest to him and hopefully of interest to you. It's slow going, but check back there occasionally to see what progress, if any, he's made so far!

Thanks for stopping by!

Please send your comments and suggestions for these pages to:
the NLRS Webmaster: John, WØJT