Club News

Bob Beaudet W1YRC Puts W1FH on the air During the ARRL DX SSB Contest

Charlie Mellen W1FH

Charlie Mellen, W1FH received the first DXCC ever awarded by FE Handy of the ARRL. It was for mixed mode and the award was made in April, 1947. A couple of months later in 1947, W1FH was awarded the first DXCC Phone DXCC. He was the very first member of the DX Century Club.
Bob tells us that In about 1962,Charlie adopted him as a new kid who Charlie was going to help become a DXer. Charlie was my DX Elmer Bob says and taught me lots of tricks and techniques, mainly by his examples. When Charlie died at the age of 91, his daughter Jill asked me to help her dispose of W1FH's material which I was honored to do. I wrote his obit for the DXCC Yearbook at the request of the DXCC manager, Bill Moore NC1L.

The opportunity presented itself to obtain his famous call sign, W1FH. I could have picked it up for myself and I gave that some thought, even though I have held W1YRC since 1953. However, in the end I couldn't because I could never fill the shoes and my own expectations of this giant of a DX personality. I decided that it would be appropriate to have the So NE DX Association
hold the call as a memorial to him. Using the call in this contest will be the first major usage of the call since obtaining it in 2006. I hold an LoTW account for W1FH, so QSLing will be simple. In time, I'd like to find someone who could design a suitable QSL card to serve as a memorial for Charlie, Mr. DX.

Charlie was my DX hero. Everything I did as a DXer was always as I thought Charlie would have wanted. I have written a tutorial loosely based upon Charlie, W1FH. It appears as a monthly column in four club newsletters in RI and Texas. All copies may be read at www.w1ddd.org  our club's website. The stories are called Charlie's Whistle.

CTRI members operate during the NAQP RTTY contest all using "Ernie" in memory of Ernie N1SW

This past weekend was the NAQP RTTY winter contest and members came together to remember one of their members. Members from VT to WV to RI, & CT Used the name Ernie in thier exchanges. About ten members participated.

From Bob Beaudet The RI Section Manager
Appearance in QST's Silent Keys is something that I've always considered to be the final courtesy that we can extend to our fellow Amateurs. This action suggested by N1HRA brings this courtesy to a new level. It's been done before for highly beloved and respected club members. I can recall SK Jim White K4OJ, son of Ellen and Bob White (W1YL and W1CW). See http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/02/13/2/?nc=1 for details.
Jim founded the Florida Contest Group and that club used Jim's "OJ" call suffix in some their operations following his becoming a Silent Key. The group arranged to keep his complete K4OJ call for the club's call. As the news article says, "When you see that sea of orange shirts at Dayton, you will remember OJ." Jim introduced the pattern of members all wearing bright orange shirts at Dayton and other conventions to honor his state of Florida. Now and forever, those orange shirts will honor the club's founder, K4OJ.

As Pat said, having so many Ernies in the recent contest was pretty cool! I'm sure that many participants around the country are wondering what that was all about. Thanks for suggesting it, Bill.

73, Bob W1YRC

Members return from Puerto Rico
after operating in the wpx rtty contest
from NP3U

W1AN, AJ1M, WP4U, K3IU, N1HRA
put in a great effort with 10.5 million points.
Missing from picture is Carlos WP4N

NEW REAL TIME SCORING WEBSITE GOES ONLINE

Matt Atwood, WE1H a charter member of CTRI who designed Hamlogsonline.com has been busy designing a new real time scoring web site called RadioSportOnline.com that is now up and running and is labled "The World's Premier Online Radio Sport Score Server". Matt tells us " The real guts behind RadioSportOnline.com is the web site itself. The site is a Microsoft Active Server Pages site, and listens for score updates via HTTP, saves them to a Microsoft SQL Server Database, and serves them up dynamically for each visitor". Score postings are made every minute via HTTP (the same way your browser works, so there are no security issues) so your score is always up to date. Currently, "RSO Contest Monitor" works only with WriteLog v10.x (big thanks to Wayne, W5XD and Ron, K5DJ for their help!), but will hopefully be supported in other logging programs soon. If you are a developer and would like to interface with "RSO Contest Monitor", please see the developer FAQ's page, there is a wealth of information as to how to interface with the site.
     

Work Party at N1SW

   
CTRI members showed up at N1SW and installed Ernies TA-66 yes TA-66 & a 2 element 40M Beam. Thanks go out to Pat NG1G, Ken K3IU, Norm NR1H, Peter N1EZT, Paul KB1NCV, Bill N1HRA, John W1XX, Bob W1YRC, John KO1H, Gary KB1KA, Tom Ernies son, Oscar Ernies son in-law, and Amy Ernies Daughter. More Pictures

New Tri-Bander & 6 meter beams go up at K3IU

Members of CTRI are at it again helping member Ken K3IU put up a new Tri-Bander and 6 Meter beam at his Portsmouth RI home. Ken says all is working fine. "Many thanks to the crew that appeared to make this an easy project. Rick(ki1g) and Pat(ng1g) were the intrepid climbers and John (w1xx), Ernie(n1sw), Ed (k5rji), and I were the ground crew." Ken K3IU

CTRI Members are gearing up for the 2009 CQWW WPX RTTY Contest in Feb

Members John W1AN, Joe K1JN, John KO1H, Ken K3IU, Jim KS1J and Bill N1HRA are planning to go back to Porto Rico to operate NP3U and defend the clubs NA record in the CQWW WPX RTTY Contest that was put in the books last year.

CTRI Memebers put in great effort in CQWW WPX SSB

This past weekend CTRI memebers came out and put in a great effort in the CQWW WPX SSB Contest. John W1XX used the call NA1L, new memeber Ernie N1SW, Ken K3IU, and Andy KA1VMG operated as well. Matt WE1H had a rough go of it losing power half way into the contest but came back on after 8+ hours of darkness. Joe K1JN, using the call NW1E, also put time in the chair. The M/2 operation of KI1G put in a great effort with over 3100 Q's and a score over 7.5 million. Operators were; KI1G, KO1H, W1AN, WF1B, NG1G, KS1J and N1HRA.

The web cam didn't work out like we would have liked. We just couldn't keep the audio working. We hope the picture was ok and we will work on the setup as time goes on.

CTRI RETURNS FROM PUERTO RICO
AFTER THE 2008 CQWW WPX RTTY CONTEST

Taken from Radio-sport.co

"In the multi-op categories, the world leader is the team at NP3U, which tallied a contest high 14.9 million points, almost five million better than second place Z37M.

While short of the world Multi-2 record, the NP3U score will easily best the North American record set at KI1G. Rick Davenport KI1G also was a member of Team NP3U, so the record stays in the same hands!"
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Members NG1G, WE1H, KI1G, and N1HRA returned Feb 12th after spending 6 days at the home of Carlos WP4U ( "Mi Casita" contest station NP3U. ) The guys operated during the CQWW WPX RTTY Contest going after thier own NA record set last year at KI1G's QTH in Coventry RI. After only 24 hours they beat last years record and went on to set a new NA record.

Congratulations to everyone for their scores in the contest! What a great effort by the club! We had a great time working everyone that called us; I think we even worked Jay AJ1M and John W1AN on 5 bands, and Dean N1SXL got us on several bands as did Ken K3IU. Rick has the log file but I know you guys worked the heck out of us and we certainly appreciated it. Everyone had great signals.

There might have been some confusion as to us keeping our score secret, but that was not the intention. I don't have all the details by band, Qs, prefixes, etc (Rick is going over the log), but I can tell you what our score was at the end of the contest (rounding off to the nearest 1,000): 14,905,000

The K1GOX Memorial Marathon Contest

Chuck KA1CQR has come up with the K1GOX Memorial Marathon. This contest memorializes our friend, Ray Highland, K1GOX-sk. This contest is open to all CTRI Contest Club members, past, present, and future!
Awards: A plaque will be awarded to the category winners, with their name and call engraved on a nameplate. This will be awarded at the next reasonable meeting. After the "next" marathon, the award will be returned to the club. Then, given a new winner, another name engraved, and awarded again.
Download complete rules

CTRI (NP3U) Team returned from Puerto Rico after operating the 2007 CQWW WPX SSB Contest Takes 4th place world m/m
Check out the NP3U Video

Pat NG1G, Matt WE1H, Jim KS1J, John W1AN, Jay AJ1M Joe K1JN, Foster N3KCJ, and Bill N1HRA Had a great time in Puerto Rico operating during the CQWW WPX Phone Contest. This was Jim's (KS1J) first time doing a DX operation and he said "I had an absolutely great time!" Jay AJ1M was another first timer and he said "let me say thank you to everyone for making my first trip outside the US for a contest a wonderful one. I had a lot of fun." Pat NG1G had this to say, "I am extremely happy with our effort and our score. It's almost astounding to believe that a group as small as CTRI is such a force to be reckoned with in HF contesting. We are improving every contest we operate in, and one day soon we'll take #1 World and EVERYONE in contesting will know who we are. A new link has been added to the "Photo Album" with pictures of the operation. Thanks to all the stations that worked us and a big thank you to Carlos WP4U and the "Mi Casita" gang for their hospitality. Look for CTRI and the "Mi Casita"gang in the CQWW WPX RTTY this coming Feb. 2008
The RAW score has been posted and the team did a great job!

23,290,428 POINTS

 Members break M2 US Record
 and Place third in the world during
 CQWW WPX RTTY 2007

Rick KI1G opened his station to other members of CTRI for the CQWW WPX RTTY Contest back in Feb. John KO1H, Pat NG1G, Joe K1JN and Bill N1HRA operated M/2 and they broke the US record buy well over 3 million points with a score of 7,596,892 points

CTRI Places 3rd in the 2006
ARRL RTTY Round up
From QST:

On the Local Club level there were some new entries and no repeats from last year in the top three. The Alabama Contest Group won the category. Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado captured second place. These groups were followed in third place by the CTRI Contest Group. This is my type of
contest and DX group they support kids, as well as contest.