The Magnolia DXer
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News from our members
1998 was a busy year for our club. We added several new members and the ones who have been around awhile were pretty busy. First, we will profile some of the new members so we can all get to know them better, then, we will here from other members as to their activities this year.
New Members
Originally from Wesson, Mississippi and now living in Ocean Springs. I'm 36 years old, have a beautiful wife Cindy KA2EZL, a 3-year old son Dustin, a 2-year old daughter Brittany, and a third child due this Christmas. At the end of 1998 I'll have 16 years completed in the Air Force. Assignments have included 2 tours at Keesler, 1 tour in Wichita, Kansas, and 1 tour in Geilenkirchen, Germany (NATO AWACS). I was first licensed in 1980, and have held the following callsigns: KA5FMC, N5GRU, DA1KG, AA0FB, & now K2FF. My main radio interests are DXing and Contesting. Main station equipment includes Yaesu FT-990 rig, Yaesu FT-890 rig, Ameritron AL-1500 amp, Yaesu FL-7000 amp, Cushcraft A4S (10 15, 20m) beam on a 60 foot tower, Cushcraft A3WS (12, 17m) beam on a 55 foot tower, and IBM Aptiva 200 MHz PC. So, let the games begin!
Jim has been a ham for 43 years and has held a Commercial Radio Telephone License for 54 years. He is married to a lovely lady named Mary and they have two sons , two grand daughters and one grand son. They currently live in Tupelo. Jim is retired from Microwave Service Company of Florida where he served as Vice President and Chief Engineer. He was elected life member in the Institute Of Electronic and Electrical Engineers in 1994. Other than ham radio Jim's hobbies include fishing, golfing, painting and writing. He has authored three papers in the ARRL book "UHF and Microwave Projects Manual" and the short story "Tornado" published in the book "Tupelo Mississippi Tornado of 1936". On the ham side, Jim achieved Top of DXCC Honor Roll in 1993. His present country total is 347. He is an ARRL Technical Specialist and QSL Bureau Assistant. Jim served in the Signal Corps during W.W.II and as Artillery Comm. Office during the Korean Conflict.
I have been a ham for a bit over 20 years, first licensed as a NOVICE in May, 1978. I upgraded to ADVANCED in November, 1979 and then to EXTRA in October, 1987, when I received the callsign I had when I first began attending MDXA DX Breakfasts and other functions (NZ8C). In April, 1997, I received the callsign I have now.
DX has been an avid interest of mine since before I was licensed. It was what drew me to ham radio to begin with. My first QSO was from the UC club station with a ZS on 20M. DX operators typically have the finest stations, and the most efficient operating techniques, and by hanging around the MDXA, I hoped to have some of that rub off on me!
My interests and activities in Ham Radio include:
- DX - I am the regular NCS for the MDXA Weekly DX Net
- Satellite (I am an AMSAT Local Coordinator)
- SAREX (Space Amateur Radio EXperiment) of which I am
a member of the AMSAT ground operations team.
In particular, I spend a great deal of time transferring
my professional skills, (High-Performance Computing System
Integration) to my ham shack...and vice versa!
My station is:
HF: ICOM-781, 1.5KW amp, embarrassing dipole antennas
VHF/UHF/SHF/Satellite: ICOM-970H (45 W out) with 23cm xcvr
(10 watts out), 144 MHz 170 watt brick, 435 MHz 135 Watt
Brick, 22 ELE 2M Sat ant, 38 Ele 435 MHz sat ant, 40+ ele
23cm (L-Band) loop yagi, computer controlled rotors, plus a
13 ele 2-M yagi for 2M SSB.
I have an assortment of things like a Bencher Iambic CW Paddle, an MFJ 1278B/DSP Multi-Mode, MFJ Phone patch, 2 computer systems (1 LINUX, 1 Windows 95) and various other stuff.
My name is Stan Burks and I live in Oak Grove, MS, not Hattiesburg. I am married to Jo Ellen and we have a six year old daughter Josie. I got my Novice at age 12 in 1976. My first call was WN5QZZ. I have upgraded to Extra and have been Having a ball CW DXing. I LOVE CW, but I will use my microphone if the DX is new.
My station consists of a Yaesu FT-840, a Heath SB-220, Ten Tec Scout, a hombrew 20 meter vertical, and a 500 foot long wire. Its modest but seems to get out well enough.
I am in the process of updating the antenna farm. I will have 50 feet of Rohn 25G with a TH-5 at 52 feet and a 2 el 40 meter Yagi at 60 feet. I will use dipoles for 80 and 160. I hope this is all up by the end of the year.
I am a pilot for the MS Forestry Commission and I also fly for the local power companies. I am the current President of the Hattiesburg Amateur Radio Club.
News from the Rest of the Gang
Worked both FO0's from the car, on back to back Sundays, 100 W to a vertical (thanks to Ed Byrd did the car mount and install) with the FT107. upgraded computers several times, running both Win9 and NT 5 Beta, both mostly ok. Got a CD ROM Writer, mostly making Audio CD to listen to at work, seems they have me chained to a computer there all the time now. The company won a new contract, looks like another 5 years in Sealy. And IT's STILL RAINING HERE!
The local High School football team got off to a ruff start but seem to be running on all 4 burners now. 5 for 1 so far this year, it remains to be seen if they can pull it off 5 years in a row.
Had a really great time again this year at the New Orleans DX Conv, after which spent a few day's in MS, thanks to Floyd and Sherry, was good to be home and always hard to return to Sealy. And finally, opened the "WEST" office of the W5 Buro, helping the GUMP with some buro chores.
Donna has learned to walk on her new left leg (She had a below the knee amputation last fall). She is doing well with crutches and occasionally with only a cane. The "stump" is still quite tender and will take awhile to heal so it will be some time before she's climbing towers again!!!! Early summer saw her back at the surgeon's for a knee joint replacement on the right side, which has healed up quite nicely. On the DX front, Donna is closing in on CQDX Honor Roll, all SSB. Steve has finished up his chemotherapy program, which followed a December 97 surgery for colon cancer. His doctor is keeping him on "limited duty" until the new year. I know Steve is rarin' ready to go back to sea and continue his travels around the world. Hey Steve, you gonna be stopping by North Korea anytime soon, by chance? Seriously, I know that ALL member wish both Steve and Donna a full and speedy recovery. You are both in our prayers.
Well, this has been a pretty busy year for your webmaster. In May, I upgraded from General to Extra. One of my first actions after passing the Extra was to apply for a vanity call so I could FINALLY get rid of that awful KC5YJI. I received W5UE and quickly became known as the "other UE" by Stan, N5UE. I was happy to give John, KR4QQ a break by assuming the role of webmaster for the MDXA. I hope our members enjoy the web site as much as I do bringing it to you. In addition, I help out Floyd, N5FG with W5 Bureau chores by being the "Y" sorter and creating and maintaining a web site for bureau users. I also tried to continue working on my DX totals since rejoining the ham ranks in 1996. In the two years since getting relicensed I have worked over 170 countries, all with 100W and wire antennas, mostly CW. Late this year I have taken steps to upgrade the station a bit. I recently added an FT920 as my main rig and have a TH5DX yagi waiting to be installed. Can an amp be far behind?
The Florida DXpedition Group traveled to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands the last part of October 1998 to participate in the CQWW SSB contest. Members of the group utilized Windwood Estates on the north shore of St. Croix as their QTH from October 19th-27th, 1998. Operations before and after the contest included SSB, CW, and RTTY, with the individual team members signing their own call /KP2. During the CQWW SSB contest the team utilized the call sign for Windwood which is WP2Z.
This year's team includes the following members:
Clarence Kerous W4CJK, Bill Gallier W4WX, Bill Beyer, Jr. N2WB,Jim Mornar AA9TK, Chris Allingham VE3FU, Ernie Orman Jr. W5OXA
As a point of info I have worked 4 new countries and hope to work three more. I have helped five or six needy hams with antenna projects as a results of the 1998 Hurricane Georges.
Not a lot to report from here. I did work E30GA, XZ1N, and FT5ZH recently for new ones. ARRL DXCC totals as of today:
308 worked (current) 312 total
305 confirmed (current) 309 total
I also count two more that ARRL doesn't count, but they
were there, and I worked and confirmed 'em. This year I have
also completed DXCC on 12 meters (115 worked) - my seventh
band, and DXCC on RTTY (111 worked), but I'm still waiting
on some more cards to submit those.
This Just In. Ed reports that he worked XU1A
recently, he added three new ones in three days! Way to go
Ed!!!
I retired on 1 August 1998, after 38 years of federal service. 34 of those years were at Keesler AFB, as an instructor and training specialist. This leaves much more time for chasing DX, and my country totals worked have increased substantially since 1 Aug.. 98.
Just a crazy memorable contact. The storm bent my 30-meter ground plane antenna into an inverted-l, Thanksgiving night after 20 shut down, I tried the bent antenna. with 100 watts I got J6/Ki6T on the first call and then had a 20 minute qso with North Dakota. Not bad for about 4 feet of antenna above the clothesline counterpoise!
Bill is happy to report that he completed 5 Band DXCC and is waiting for five 80M cards. Bill's DXCC totals are: 297 Mixed countries confirmed and is waiting for 5 more cards for a total of 302 plus 8 deleted = 310. He has 235 confirmed on CW and 267 confirmed on Phone. Bill is QSL manager for Peter, 9H1PF and VP5/K5YG. He recently became the W5 QSL Bureau O sorter. Bill has received over 1000 QSL cards for his 1997 VP5/K5YG operation, with every one of them being "in the log".
It has been a very interesting year at WU3V. I accepted a plaque at Dayton for the W5WMU contest team for CQWW-RTTY. We were in a photo finish with W3LPL for the multi-multi high power category. We missed winning the world plaque by just a few qso's. I moved my family and the Mega Cluster DX node from Abbeville, LA to Lafayette, LA with just a few hours of down time. The network interface was upgraded from a 28 kb connection to an ISDN connection, and the computer count has increased to 5 for my cluster system. Our new QTH is in the suburbs and I could not put up the 130 foot tower, but we are making things work regardless! WU3V has set up 2 TEXNET nodes and we hope to connect to that network in a month or two, actually everything is ready and running at my QTH, and the main user port is installed at the 650 foot level on a local TV station transmitting tower. All that remains for that connection is the TEXNET programmers to produce the necessary software so that we may connect over the Internet. 73 to all and I hope to make the dinner, if not our hopes, prayers and wishes go to all for a wonderful Christmas Holiday and a great 1999.
Only big news in my life lately is that my son Chris has completed boot camp and is in Dam Neck, VA at A-School. He received his orders the other day and is going to the USS Gettysburg. They're gonna fly him to Saudi Arabia then helicopter to the ship which is in the Persian Gulf. From there, the ship will be finishing it's cruise and returning to homeport in Pascagoula. How's that for coming home the long way!
