From Da’Prez
By DAVE RATLIFF, W5ATV
As of this writing, the OKDXA banquet is still fresh in the ol’ memory. Was that a good time or what? Attendance was in the high 50’s with lots of good BBQ, a good DX’pedition speaker, some fine harmony singing and… Yes… Oklahoma beat Texas that evening - Thank You!
Many thanks to everyone involved for their efforts. If you missed it, you missed a good time. Plan to attend next year. I can just about promise you won’t regret it. And no, Mark, KD5DLL, you can’t have my special P5 card, but it was good to see ‘The Big Red Box’ at the banquet.
Congratulations go to Clif Sikes, N5UW on his “OKDXA Ham of the Year” award for 2002. FB Clif, and it’s a well-deserved award, I might add.
I had a great time in the Oklahoma QSO Party this spring. This was sponsored by the OKDXA and was the first QSO party for Oklahoma in nearly 20 years. Hey, we’re going to do it again in ’03, so mark your calendars for the weekend of March 22/23 and try to grab yourself an award. Complete details will be found on the well-maintained OKDXA website, and we can thank Bob, K5SIT for that.
I’m sure most of you know by now that Jerry, K5YAA has taken over as our 5-Land QSL Bureau chief and the OKDXA is now the sponsoring club. How’s about that, QSL fans? Please check the news section of this issue for the new mailing address. At last report, Jerry is about to settle into a routine for the bureau and will have everything flowing smoothly. I have volunteered as one of the pre-sorters and am enjoying it a bunch. Gosh, I hope I don’t accidentally discard any of N5PMP’s cards, or get them stuck on the wall of my shack!
I hope all of you enjoy the revived bi-monthly newsletter. No doubt Nelson will do a great job. Please pay special attention elsewhere in this edition about "website subscribing" (for lack of a better term) so Bob can maintain a good list of those wishing to receive this newsletter electronically. We can handle that, can’t we? A good Holiday Season to everyone and I hope to see you at Green Country!
¾ W5ATV
Secretary / Treasurer’s Report
By JERRY CHOUINARD, K5YAA
With the absence of a newsletter for a while, there are plenty of new OKDXA members to recognize:
K5GPI
Lou Renne Tulsa, OK
WA5YNE
Wayne Rumley Broken Arrow, OK
N5ZV
Volley Clark Prue, OK
KB5VOA
Rod Roberts Shawnee, OK
K5QM
Jerry Rochelle Altus, OK
KØCIE
Karl Kaukis Stillwater, OK
AD5KD
James Roden Tulsa, OK
KD5RQ
Claude Matchette Lawton, OK
K5DNL
Ken Roberson Shawnee, OK
KD5JGA
Eddie Chandler Drumwright, OK
N5OP
Kim Elmore Oklahoma City, OK
KØUO
Steve Walz Kiowa, KS
NB5N
Dave Cox Tulsa, OK
N5CE
Gene Lewis Mounds, OK
Notes: Dave, NB5N is a past ARRL Section Manager for Oklahoma and volunteered to be a pre-sorter for the W5 Incoming QSL Bureau recently brought back to Oklahoma by the OKDXA.
Gene, N5CE is a returning OKDXA member and was active with the OKDXA in the early nineties. Gene volunteered to assist the W5 Incoming QSL Bureau by accepting duties as the letter "G" handler.
Welcome to all these latest additions to the OKDXA roster. As of November we have 89 OKDXA members and that’s a good increase from last year. Renewals have been quite timely this year and I appreciate this as it makes my job a little easier. Updates to the roster are made regularly and uploaded to the website by our webmaster Bob, K5SIT. Should you see needed changes to the data in your roster entry, please forward them to me at .
I've been hearing quite a bit of talk in anticipation of the Oklahoma QSO Party sponsored by the OKDXA in March. Seems a number of top operators in the state plan to be "in the field" for the next one. In October I had the opportunity to make the W5 DX Bash put on by W5KFT near Llano, Texas. Some of the Texas operators I met were making noise about coming up to cover some of our southern counties. I let them know their participation would be welcome. The XYL and I met a number of Texas DX'ers and listened to a description of a certain wine tasting jaunt to a local winery, and rumor had it two OKDXA members were in attendance. Seems the price of a jug was too good to pass up and half a dozen central Texas wine bottles made their way to Oklahoma… Somewhere around Oklahoma City, I believe.
Lately, I've been modifying my station to handle a two-radio operation known in contest circles as SO2R. This involved new cabling, antenna switching gear and console construction. I'll report later on how, when, and whether an old(er) dog can learn new contesting tricks.
W5 Incoming QSL Bureau Report
Early in October I accepted the manager's job for the W5 Incoming QSL Bureau. Floyd, N5FG of the Magnolia DX Association and his crew of card handlers had the task for over four years. From all my reading, W5 Land really appreciated their work. Floyd needed to be relieved of his duties for personal reasons and I accepted the task on behalf of the OKDXA as the sponsoring club. I can report we made great progress in October getting the bureau operation established. Much of the credit goes to Floyd and Randy, W5UE for their guidance and answers to the many questions I had before (and after) startup. Their help saved many hours of discovering how the bureau works.
To get the bureau going I needed help. Too many tasks for one individual. I want to acknowledge and extend my personal appreciation to the first five Hams who volunteered to assist me with one of the largest and most important bureau tasks… Card Presorting. They have given quite a few hours of their time this month by attending our kickoff meeting and in card presorting. My thanks to:
NB5N Dave Cox
KF5RD Pete Mann
W5ATV Dave Ratliff
K5PX Bruce Burnette
K5YAC Mark Chouinard
These guys helped sort 17,000 cards the first month of bureau operations, and that was just short of the average of 20,000 cards per month. We filled bureau central letter bins with QSL’s and user envelopes that will be mailed out to individual letter handlers next week.
Floyd's "G" letter handler needed to be relieved of his duties due to a personal workload increase, so Gene, N5CE in Mounds, Oklahoma volunteered to take on the letter G. I met Gene the other day and delivered the inventory of envelopes and cards sent by Gary, AF5K from Huntsville, TX. I also hand carried all the cards received this month to Gene. He is working on setting up his G letter database records now. With the fine work of these volunteers the short-term goal of staying on schedule with card deliveries will be met this month. It appears we can handle several thousand more cards per month without too much strain.
The website for the bureau will be changing soon from the facilities provided by the MDXA to facilities we have available for the bureau through a sponsorship. Domain name registration and one year of website service were made available through a donation by a local business in Claremore. Thanks go to MessageXpress for their generosity. We will make good use of the web site as time goes on.
In a future newsletter I will detail the inner workings of the bureau. For now I am happy to report we are nearing the end of a learning process that has taken several weeks. Some of the tasks simply had to be done the first time to gauge the workload and develop patterns to accomplish things like post office visits, user envelope preparation, card drop offs and pickups, and finally the mail out to our volunteer call sign letter handlers. These are jobs that take several hours of time every month to get the cards into the hands of the deserving. More on the work of a letter handler in a later newsletter, you really have to like handling QSL’s to do this. Some of the letter handlers will receive more than 800 cards this month and I'm sure other months will run well over a thousand for some of the letters. We have three members of the OKDXA handling a letter each, and my hat’s off to them and all the other sorters. W5VW Bill Clark (T), W5VXU Mike Schenkel (S), and N5CE Gene Lewis, (G).
Hopefully by mid-December you will be able to see photos of the new "Bureau Central" and if you shade your eyes when you look, myself and each of the volunteers who help with presorting will become more than a name and a letter...
¾ K5YAA
From Da’Editor
By NELSON DERKS, AC5UP
Well… Well… Well… You were starting to think you’d never see another OKDXA Newsletter, weren’t you? Tell the truth, it was the ShaZamaHamaTronics adverts you were most worried about, but that’s OK, you’ll find a new one on the last page. Yeah, I thought about running the traditional NomaTuner IV, but I think we’ve ridden that pony about as far as it will go. Maybe it’s better we should concentrate on something where the well never runs dry..… Like KD5DLL jokes!
Since I last typed up one of these, we’ve re-elected our officers at Ham Holiday…
OKDXA President
Dave Ratliff, W5ATV
OKDXA Vice-Pres. Of Administration
Jim Green, N5PMP
OKDXA Vice-Pres. Of Activities
Mark Duensing, KD5DLL
OKDXA Secretary / Treasurer
Jerry Chouinard, K5YAA
Thanks to all for their continuing support of the OKDXA and, although you don’t have to address any of them as “Your DX’ellency”, it wouldn’t hurt…
¾ Our Statewide Directors are ¾
Northwest Oklahoma:
Bob Armstrong, K5SIT
Northeast Oklahoma:
Ross Hunt, K5RH
Southwest Oklahoma:
Bill Clark, W5VW
Southeast Oklahoma:
Clif Sikes, N5UW
Central Oklahoma:
Coy Day, N5OK
Contest Coordinator:
Jim Hood, K5TT
Packet Cluster Technical Coordinator:
Coy Day, N5OK
K5SIT will continue as our web page nanny (Thanks, Bob!) and your humble scribe, AC5UP, will continue to redefine the art of electronic scribbling.
So… Why haven’t you seen a newsletter since March? Those of you who attended the meeting at Green Country recall that CORA had discontinued publishing the C&E in paper form in favor of web page distribution. Since that time, CORA has published no new C&E’s or contacted the OKDXA about our participation. With this in mind, the OKDXA directors voted to end our association with CORA as of May 15th. Since that time, the discussion has been how best to serve the interests of the club while conserving our treasury resources as printing and mailing costs do add up, especially for short-run jobs like a monthly newsletter. With the addition of the W5 Bureau (which should become self-sustaining financially), the mission of the OKDXA has grown to include our traditional support of DX’peditions, the W5 Bureau, and keeping the membership informed. Like any other transition, it took a while to sort this out and things do tend to move a little slower in summer.
This newsletter is being mailed to all members so you’ll know what’s going on, as there will be some changes. With the switch to a stand-alone newsletter we’ll be publishing every other month and the primary form of distribution will become the OKDXA web page or via e-mail. For those of you who can’t download the newsletter, or work with a Microsoft Word 7.0 .DOC file, it will remain available on paper if you request it. Bob, K5SIT has agreed to do the mailing duties for those who need it and can be reached via Robert Armstrong, K5SIT, RR 1 Box 227, Woodward, OK 73801-9716… E-mail to .
The goal is to hold the costs down while providing regular updates to all club members. Mailing and printing costs of a monthly newsletter are prohibitive at the moment, but if you have a better idea, please share it. You’re also invited to join the OKDXA Mail Reflector, which has been running for almost a year and has proven to be an excellent way of sharing news with other club members. Plus, there’s always the Monday Night Net on 3860 kHz +/- QRM at 6:30 pm, SSB. Stay tuned for updates…
In other news, the videotape I shot at the banquet turned out nicely and, with almost an hour of video to work with, should edit down to a solid 15 to 20 minute piece. It will probably debut at the January, 2003 TARC meeting and be shown at the Green Country HamFest in March. In true Amateur Tradition, it will be edited on Genuine Boat-Anker 3/4" equipment. Could be a hoot, as I haven’t forgotten my old editing tricks, and I’d like to apologize in advance to KD5DLL and N5UW… You’ll see why.
In closing, and this is a perfect transition into the next section, (theme music from the film ‘Midnight Express’ playing in the background) I had the pleasure of joining the 3830 Group for a little rag-chew early one Wednesday morning in late October. Best chance of catching these folks is between 2 and 4 am Central time, and a regular of the net is Art Bell, W6OBB. The QSO Is Out There… ¾ AC5UP
And Now, For Something
Completely Different
News Of The PARA-NORMAL
By MARK DUENSING, KD5DLL
We have a newsletter tradition of all new club officers writing up a short biography as a way of introducing themselves to the OKDXA membership. Here’s what came back from KD5DLL… And, yes, it has been Generally… No, make that Extra… enhanced by AC5UP - Ed.