November 2019 WVDXA Meeting

WOW, it was WAY TOO long since our last meeting!  You could certainly tell that by the fact that no one wanted to leave - Hi!  Of course, it might have been the food since we all know DX'ers travel on their stomachs! Note that in the photo of the 14 hams who attended (shown above), I had to add Jimmy, W8JA, as an insert because he was stuck downstairs when the photo was taken.

W8UZ  -  N4HT

Roger, KD8BZY, and Becky, KD8IZK, kindly offered their home for the second time as a location for this meeting.  In addition, they supplied the bulk of the food which included two spiral hams which Roger cooked.  There must have been at least a dozen positive comments about that ham.  WOWZER was it good!!  My biggest regret is that my wife refused to bring any of it home when it was offered - bummer!  (Sure wish I had known that!)  As I recollect, we enjoyed hot baked ham, potato salad, coleslaw, rolls, a shrimp cocktail platter, a veggie platter, deviled eggs, a Kentucky Bourbon cake, craft beer, Mary's Ellis' excellent cake, Evelyn Stewart's brownies, banana nut muffins and cookies, broccoli casserole, and probably some other items I forgot.  What a wonderful spread!

PowerPoint Presentation

We had 17 persons attending: W8JA, W8JA's mom (Oleta Aeiker), Oleta and Jimmy's Caretaker (Brenda Thornton), K4JWA, K8KT, WT8V, N8RR, W8IW, K8RRT, WA8WV, W8TN, W8TN's XYL (Evelyn Stewart), KD8BZY, KD8IZK, W8UZ, N4HT, and W8OI.  Unfortunately, Hal, W8HC, made a critical error with his calendar and just HAD to attend the WVU football game.  Boy, Hal, you would have had more fun here!  Those sharp-eyed among you will notice two calls for hams who have never attended a WVDXA gathering before.  Don, W8UZ, from Woodburn, INDIANA, and Harry, N4HT, from Lexington, KENTUCKY, made quite a long trip to attend!  Both have joined the WVDXA as our newest members and everyone at the meeting was pleased they came.  Their presence enhanced the camaraderie of the meeting immensely. You can see their photo on the right.  [Click on any photo for a larger image.]  And, one WVDXA member who lives in Delaware, telephoned and spoke with some of the group to tell us how he wished he could attend.  Phil, W8UV, your presence was indeed missed but we are SO glad you made a brief appearance anyway!

Discussions Abounded

W8TN, N8RR, and KD8BZY gave a PowerPoint presentation on "Small Station EME."  It is interesting to note that those three are the only known EME operators currently active from West Virginia and all three belong to the WVDXA.  DX is DX!  After the presentation there were many questions from several of those attending.

Karl, K8KT, collected donations for the upcoming W8S, Swains Island DX'pedition.  And, Dave, WA8WV, checked QSL Cards for the ARRL.

On the right is a photo taken by Garry, W8OI, of part of the multiple discussions which lasted all afternoon.  Even the rain did not dampen anyone's enthusiasm.

Now sometime in the near future, possibly January 2020, we will have a really exciting presentation.  Hal, W8UC, will be there to show us and tell us all about his recent DX'pedition to VP6R, Pitcairn Island.  That will be a real "barn burner" for sure!  DO NOT MISS this next meeting.  If you notice in the group photo at the top of this post, you will see Dave, WA8WV, was already sporting his VP6R tee-shirt.  Way to go, DAVE!

April 2019 WVDXA Meeting

This Post is a "tad" late but still I wanted to report a bit on our April 20, 2019, meeting.  The meeting was held at Golden Corral in Cross Lanes, WV.  I made arrangements with Golden Corral a couple of weeks before the meeting to secure their "Meeting Room" and told them we expected about 20 to 25 people to attend.  Well, it seems that a week before our meeting date, another group asked for (and received) permission to use the same room for a birthday party for a 90-year old gentleman!  So, we "shared" the meeting room for both events.  I think the WVDXA behaved admirably under these circumstances although there was some grumbling overheard from the other group who apparently expected to have the venue all to themselves.

We actually had 22 persons attending: W8TN, W8TN's XYL (Evelyn Stewart), K8JQ, WB8CQV, WB8CQV's XYL (Janice Jones), WB8CQV's son (Jonathan Jones), WV8RC, WV8FV, WA8WV, W8JA, W8JA's mom (Oleta Aeiker), Oleta's Caretaker (Brenda Thornton), N8RR, KD8VNN, K4JWA, W8OI, WW8RT, W8HC, K8RRT, KE8LSK, WA8ZDL and W8OP.

W8TN gave a PowerPoint presentation on "QSL'ing Tips & Tricks." And the new WVDXA.com web page was presented "live" on the Internet.  Also, from the Internet, W8TN presented a brief view and description of the ARRL's Logbook of the World (LoTW) web site and how that system can be used to confirm QSO's without the need for a physical QSL card.  Finally, a brief view of the WVDXA's new Chat Page on Slack.com was presented.  Note: you can click on any photo here to see a larger image.

W8JA's mom, Oleta, and W8JA

Since we were "sharing" the Meeting Room, the Birthday Group asked for us to be quiet for a bit as they recognized their family member on his 90th birthday.  Everyone (including the WVDXA members) sang "Happy Birthday" to him.  The honoree was so thankful to the Lord for letting him live so long that he got up, asked for quiet in the room, made a few remarks and then unhurriedly sang two verses of a hymn of praise.  It was an unexpected special moment that we applauded. Of course, the WVDXA remained silent about the fact that W8JA's mom, Oleta, who was in our group, will celebrate her 95th birthday in just 5 months!

Steve, WW8RT, collected donations for the upcoming T3ØGC - West Kiribati DX'pedition.  Then W8TN noted that the WVDXA has supplied $20,556 to 32 various DX'peditions plus $498 to ClubLog.

Great fellowship and camaraderie were had by all and the joining of our meeting with the Birthday Party made our gathering truly memorable!

Have You Worked UA4WHX?

In the last few days, Vladimir Bykov, UA4WHX, has been operating from Mayotte as FH/UA4WHX.  You can see some photos from his current operation by visiting this DX-World page (https://dx-world.net/fh-ua4whx-mayotte/). FH, Mayotte, is only No. 103 on the Club Log Needed List.  However, I'm sure Vlad is filling in MANY Band/Slots for a lot of folks and even handing out the occasional ATNO!

Do you realize just how prolific this single DX'peditioner has been over the years?  He has operated from dozens and dozens of countries giving New Ones to thousands of DX'ers.  Just during the last month he has operated from the following places.  Click on the callsign to link to the DX-World page describing the operation with photos.  S70VB - Seychelles, 3B8VB - Mauritius, 3B9VB - Rodrigues Island, FR/UA4WHX - Reunion Island, and currently FH/UA4WHX - Mayotte.  Particularly note the write-up on the 3B9VB operation regarding Cyclone Gelena passing right by Rodrigues Island while Vlad was there.

He is a one-man operation running just 100-watts to wire antennas.  Check out his innovative antenna set-up on his QRZ web page.  Note that he also holds a U.S. Amateur Extra Class license - AC4LN.

Unfortunately, Vlad does NOT use LoTW so you will need to QSL him directly.  He has detailed instructions on his QRZ web page about sending for a QSL.  He does accept QSL requests via PayPal so that should speed up the process for sure.

I have scoured the Internet for an exhaustive list of calls for UA4WHX's operations but can not find such a list.  So, I used a few sources to put together the following list.  I plan to check this list against my own log to see if I have some gems just waiting for a QSL from Vlad.  You can see the actual QSL's for many of the calls below at this web site.  Also on that web site is a link to a 2009 audio interview with Vlad by OE1WHC.  You can gain some very interesting insights into Vlad himself and what it is like to operate from these DX locations by listening to this 14 minute interview.

Here is the list of callsigns which I have found were UA4WHX operations:  3B8VB  -  3B9VB  - 3D2VB  -  3DA0VB  -  4K0VB  -  4LOB  -  4O7VB  -  4S7VG  -  4W0VB  -  5H3VMB  -  5H3VNS  -  5R8VB  -  5T5TI  -  5T9VB  -  5W0VB  -  5X1VB  -  5Z4/UA4WHX  -  6W/UA4WHX/P  -  6Y5/AC4LN  -  7P8VB  -  7Q7VB  -  7V7V  -  8P9/AC4LN  -  8Q7VB  -  8R1/AC4LN  -  9A8VB  -  9H3WHX  -  9J2VB  -  9U0VB  -  9X0VB  -  9Y4/AC4LN  -  A25VB  -  A35VB  -  C50VB  -  C91VB  -  CE/UA4WHX  -  CE0/UA4WHX  -  CE0Z/UA4WHX  -  CE7/UA4WHX  -  CE8/UA4WHX  -  CE9/UA4WHX  -  CN2VB  -  CP/UA4WHX  -  CP4WHX  -  AC4LN/CT1  -  CT8/UA4WHX  -  CT9/UA4WHX  -  D20VB  -  D44TVB  -  D60VB  -  E40VB  -  E7/UA4WHX  -  EA8/UA4WHX  -  EA9/UA4WHX  -  ER0VP-UT/UA4WHX  -  ES0VB  -  EX/UA4WHX  -  EY8/UA4WHX  -  F0/AC4LN  -  FH/UA4WHX  -  FK/AC4LN  -  FR/UA4WHX  -  FW/AC4LN  -  H40VB  -  H44VV  -  H7/AC4LN  -  HB0/AC4LN  -  HB9/AC4LN  -  HC2/UA4WHX  -  HC8ART  -  HH2/AC4LN  -  HI8/AC4LN  -  HK0/UA4WHX  -  HK3/UA4WHX  -  HP1/AC4LN  -  HP8/AC4LN  -  HR1/AC4LN  -  HR2/AC4LN  -  IT9/UA4WHX  -  J20VB  -  J3/AC4LN  -  J73/AC4LN  -  J8/AC4LN  -  JT1FDC  -  JY8VB  -  KD4DZH  -  KH0/AC4LN etc.  -  KH6/AC4LN  -  LU/UA4WHX  -  UA4WHX/CX  -  LY/UA4WHX  -  O19VB  -  OA7/UA4WHX  -  OD5/UA4WHX  -  OJ0/UA4WHX  -  ON9VB  -  P29VVB  -  PY/UA4WHX  -  PY0/UA4WHX  -  PY8/UA4WHX  -  PZ5VB  -  R/AC4LN  -  R00BVB  -  R00KVB  -  R00QVB  -  R11PVB  -  RI0BV  -  RI0BV/P  -  RI0KV  -  RI0POL  -  RI0QV  -  RI0QV/P  -  RI44ANT  -  S70VB  -  ST2VB  -  SU9VB  -  T10VB  -  T20VB  -  T30VB  -  T88VV  -  TG4/AC4LN  -  TI1/AC4LN  -  UA4WHX/2  -  UK/UA4WHX  -  UN8/UA4WHX  -  V31BV  -  V51VV  -  V63MB  -  V73VV  -  VK8VB  -  YJ0VB  -  YL/UA4WHX  -  YS1/AC4LN  -  YU9VB  -  YV5/AC4LN  -  Z2/UA4WHX  -  Z38VB  -  ZA/UA4WHX  -  ZK1/AC4LN  -  ZK2VB  -  ZP9/UA4WHX

Exporting WSJT-X logs to LOGic & other logging programs

My logging program, LOGic, has been promising for many months to add a fix that will allow WSJT-X QSOs to automatically become a part of my LOGic log.  I have been logging those QSOs on paper and then later typing them into the LOGic program.  But I finally got tired of waiting for the fix and decided to learn how to export my FT8 and other QSOs out of WSJT-X and into LOGic. 

I thought that would be simple.  I was wrong.  It took many hours for me (not the most computer literate guy in the world) to finally make these transfers work quickly and smoothly.

WVDXA President Clark Stewart W8TN suggested I put a "how-to" into writing in case others have been having similar problems with their logging programs.  I won't go through all the other methods I used, all of them taking several steps and wasting time before QSOs would finally get into my logging program's log, but here is the explanation of what I finally did.

First, in order to import into LOGic I must click on an "import" tab and then an "ADIF" dropdown tab.  That brings up a window that allows me to browse for a file's location.  I can then browse to most places; like desktop, documents, downloads, etc.  However it will not find the directory where wsjtx_log.adi is located.  Specifically it will not browse me to C:\Users\Garry\AppData\Local\WSJT-X\wsjtx_log.adi.  Even when I typed all that into Logic's window, it would not take me there.  It just kept telling me the file was not found and instructing me to check spelling and try again.  I must have done this 50 times over the past few days.

However, I finally discovered a way to get LOGic to the right location.

I remembered that LOGic's export window always opens at the last place that it found and used an export file.  I figured that LOGic's import window would do the same.  If I could only get it to the right location in the first place, it ought to automatically go there the next time.  So, I went into the WSJT-X program and put my cursor on the wsjtx_log.adi file and right clicked.  That took me to a "send to" button where a dropdown allowed me to send a shortcut to the desktop.  LOGic's import window went there without problem and did the import, and now (voila) every time I call up LOGic's import window it takes me to C:\Users\Garry\AppData\Local\WSJT-X\wsjtx_log.adi automatically.  Eureka!

Whew.  What a struggle.  Now the process is simple as long as I remember to erase the log file in WSJT-X after each export.  That way only the new contacts are added to my log each time I import in LOGic.  Otherwise the QSOs that were transferred before will be transferred again putting duplicate QSOs into my log.