So, I received my February 2002 QST yesterday in the mail.
There are 11 articles, not counting the one contest results article
or the regular columns. The QST Table of Contents breaks these up into
three section: "Technical," "News and Features," and "QST Workbench."
(They also have "Operating," which has exactly one article underneath it -
the ARRL UHF Contest Results.) I thought it would be interesting to see
how many of the articles make a reference to contesting and/or DXing:
Contesting DXing
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Build an APRS Encoder Tracker"
"The Return of the Slide Rule Dial"
"A Portable Twin-Lead 20 Meter Dipole" Pro
"Digital Voice: An Update and Forecast" Indifferent
"An Island Sprouts its First Amateur Inhabitants" Pro
"A Virginia Ham Goes West"
"Making the Media Work For You" Pro
"Annoucing the 11th Annual Philip J. McGan Award"
"Amateur Radio at the 2001 New York Marathon"
"A Ham Radio Fishing Expedition in the Wilds of Quebec" Pro
"A CW Generator and Audio Distribution System"
Thus, five of the eleven articles (45%) mention what I consider to be the
"high performance" operating activities of contesting and DXing, and none
of them refer to the activities in a negative light.
Of the 33 columns and regular features, however:
Contesting DXing
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Review Pro
It Seems to Us...
DC Currents
Happenings Con
The Doctor is In
Test Your Knowledge!
Short Takes
Hints and Kinks
ARRL UHF Contest Results Pro
Amateur Radio World
Coming Conventions
Contest Corral Pro
Correspondence
Ham Ads
Hamfest Calendar
How's DX? Pro
New Books
New Products Pro
Old Radio
Public Service
QRP Power
Section News
Silent Keys
Special Events
Strays
Technical Correspondence
Up Front in QST
VUCC Awards Pro
W1AW Schedule
We're at Your Service
The World Above 50MHz Pro
YL News
75,50,25 Years Ago
So, of 33 regular features and columns in QST, only 8 this month mention
either contesting or DXing at all (24%) and one of them mentions contesters
in an unfavorable light!
It seems to me that feature articles, contributed by active and involved
hams are much more likely to mention and support contesting and DXing than
the regular month-to-month material in the journal. It seems odd, then,
that the ARRL BoD would be considering "tweaking" the balance so that
there is even less regular material in QST about contesting and DXing, when
clearly it is something that comes up frequently in articles written
by hams who are actually doing something with their tickets....
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences VP, Central Texas DX & Contest Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>From J. Allen, VY1JA" <jallen@internorth.com Wed Jan 16 19:26:58 2002
From: J. Allen, VY1JA" <jallen@internorth.com (J. Allen, VY1JA)
Subject: [CQ-Contest] VY1JA Log repairs and E-QSL
Message-ID: <000501c19ec3$c505fd80$03000004@vy1ja>
Hi All,
Many of you know that a while back my computer crashed and my log had to be
rebuilt from bits of salvaged data. I lost about 30000 QSOs and the rest of
my log has errors regarding dates, times, and in a few cases, the band or
frequency.
I am in the process of putting the repaired log on e-QSL.cc and will be
correcting the log, based mainly on feedback from the amateur community. I
have had some excellent feedback already and have been able to correct whole
sections of the log for date.
When you receive an e-QSL from me, please take the time to answer it. It is
especially important to me that you let me know if the e-QSLs are wrong by
date, time, band or the callsign I was using.
I am sending the e-QSLs out as only asVY1JA QSO's, but many of the contacts
were made using special prefixes or calls, Please let me know if the
contacts were made with a special call such as ??1JA, or the VY?JA, VY 50
JA, or similar calls using VY1RAC. For example I may have used XK1JA,
VY7JA, or CK1RAC
If you have the time to send e-QSL's for ALL of your contacts made with me
over the years, it will help me get the log data corrected. Your input can
help me get things fixed for a lot of other people.
Please be patient with me as this will take a few months to complete due to
personal time constraints, and I will be sending e-QSL's out until the
project is complete.
Also, if anyone has had a similar problem and has written a program that can
read through files that were recovered from cross linked files with mixed
log and other data in them, it would help. I have about 150 such files to
extract the log data from, and may be able to get a good part of those
30,000 QSOs back.
Thank you all for any help you can provide, and I apologize for any
inconvenience this causes you.
J., VY1JA
vy1ja@rac.ca
CP20kw
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