The First Class CW Operators’ Club President & Treasurer Internet Services Don Field, G3XTT 105 Shiplake Bottom Ray Goff, G4FON Peppard Common 2 St. Leonard’s Road, Henley on Thames, Oxon RG9 5HJ, Headington, Oxford OX3 8AA, UK UK Tel: +44 (0) 788 418 3580 Tel: +44 (0) 118 972 4192 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Chairman Committee Rob Ferguson, GM3YTS Wes Spence, AC5K 19 Leighton Avenue, Dunblane, 465 Creekwood Street Perthshire FK15 0EB, UK Lumberton, TX 77657, USA Tel: +44 (0) 1786 824 199 Tel: +1 409 755 4753 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Committee Secretary Committee Nick Henwood, G3RWF Confers House Roger Western, G3SXW Church Road, Littlebourne 7 Field Close, Chessington, Canterbury, CT3 1UA, UK Surrey KT9 2QD, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1227 721791 Tel: +44 (0) 208 397 3319 E-mail: E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Membership Secretary Committee Fred Handscombe, G4BWP Tyler Barnett, N4TY Sandholm, Bridge End Road 213 Camelot Court Red Lodge Georgetown, KY 40324, USA Bury St Edmunds IP28 8LQ, UK Tel: +1 859 221 9266 Tel: +44 ( 0) 1638 552 080 E-mail: E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Webmaster Committee Ed Tobias, KR3E Iain Kelly, MØPCB 13110 Coastal Highway, Apt. 713 261 Bodiam Avenue Ocean City, MD 21842, USA Tuffley, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, GL4 0XW, UK Tel: +1 410 250 7357 Tel: +44 (0) 7949 383 194 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Non Committee Duties • Accounts Examiner G4HZV • Subscriptions (non-web) • WAFOC Award Manager G4HZV UK & Overseas G3XTT • Windle Award W4PM N. & S. America K2VUI • FOC WAS Award W4CK • Activity Co-Ordinator G3VTT • Webmasters N4TY • Marathon F5VHY G7VJR • FOC QSO Party KZ5D • FOCUS & News Sheet Editor S57WJ • FOCUS Mailing G3LHJ • News Sheet Members’ News WB2YQH • FOCUS Mailing NA WB2YQH • Call Book Editor N4TY FOCUS 102 Contents From Your President Don Field, G3XTT 4 From Your Editor Gabor Szekeres, S57WJ 4 FOC Marathon 2015 Dennis Andrews, F5VHY 5 2015 W5FOC Lafayette, LA Bill Eckenrode, W5SG 20 FOC Report of Dayton 2015 Don Karvonen, K8MFO 21 FOC Condin in Paderborn Gerd Sapper, DJ4KW 22 Keying Legacy Radios David Johnstone, GM4EVS 23 Alpha 9500 Relay Conversion John DePrimo, K1JD 26 The E.F. Johnson Ranger Transmitter Fabio Bonucci, IKØIXI 28 The Australian Simplex Auto semi-automatic Key Steve Ireland, VK6VZ 31 The nanoKeyer, Professional Contest Keying for Paul Rollin, G4AFU 32 Anyone The W5IAH Iambic Paddle Cliff Moore, K6KII 34 Obituary of Paul Darwactor, W8ZD Don Karvonen, K8MFO 35 Obituary of Louis van de Nadort, PAØLOU Din Hoogma, PAØDIN 36 Stories of the Past Mort Mortimer, G2JL 38 Why is There Confusion? Dave Jaksa, WØVX & 39 Dennis Sokol, WØJX Tradutori Traditori Daniel Yari, 4X1FC 40 Welcome to New Members Tyler Barnett, N4TY 42 Contesting Patrick Barkey, N9RV 46 FOC QP in March 2015 Breaks Previous Record Art Suberbielle, KZ5D 48 Front cover: Introduction of Doug, K1DG to CQ Contest Hall of Fame at Hamvention in Dayton, OH. Photo N6TV) Inside Back Cover: Photographs from W5FOC Weekend. Check page 50. Back Cover-top left: Michael, G7VJR tied the knot with Samantha, M6VJS on 1st May in Cambridge. Back Cover-top right: Riki, K7NJ and Rich, W2VT had a very pleasant and totally unexpected meeting at the International Wireless Communications Expo in Las Vegas, on 18th March. Back cover-bottom: Photographs from Condin. Check page 50. FOCUS is the quarterly magazine of FOC which is published four times annually in January, April, July and October. It is distributed to all members. Articles and contributions for FOCUS are always welcome and should be submitted to the Editor by mail or email <[email protected]>, CD, disk, typed or hand written. Drawings can be re-drawn if necessary and original photographs returned after scanning. © First Class CW Operators’ Club Articles may be re-published from FOCUS with permission from the Editor and with the usual credit given. FOCUS 102 From Your From Your President, G3XTT Editor, S57WJ I haven’t been out As you know I took and about quite so much over editing of the as last year but I did get News Sheet in May. It to the IRTS AGM is not a one man effort weekend in Kilkenny, but a joint venture with Ireland where there were a supporting team. a few FOC members, not Bob, WB2YQH is gathering the Members’ least Paul, EI5DI who was kind enough to collect me from the airport and drive me News items and those items should be to the event. sent to dedicated e-mail: In May, I managed to get to my first <[email protected]>. ConDin, held this year in Paderborn, I get the material (Committee report, Germany, a lovey town. It was a very Nominations list, Windle score update etc) convivial weekend and we had some at the end of the month and edit the News interesting visits in addition to the meals. sheet. I also thank Joe, V31JP for his work I’m sure you’ll be reading about it during his years as News Sheet Editor. elsewhere. My thanks to Baldur, DJ6SI and As you might have read in the June Gerd, DJ4KW for their organisational News Sheet I had a leading role of efforts. Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s drama There has been quite a response to the “Waiting for Godot”. Acting is my second Committee’s missive about the FOC Ethos hobby which was on ‘stand by’ for 15 and it will take a while for the replies to be years. digested. It’s great that members have such strong feelings about the club. We So far the weather is quite good don’t all agree on what the fundamentals compared with last year when we had should be and, of course, FOC has changed almost constant rain. Therefore I hope over the years along with the hobby as a that I will find time to finish some antenna whole. I do worry about some of the projects that I planned although spare nominations in recent years, for example time these days with present lifestyle is of people who are simply “collecting” CW rather limited. club memberships or of competent CW At this point as I write this the editing operators but who have no command of of Summer FOCUS is a bit delayed. You English. At the end of the day, we are a will read the printed edition with a little UK-centric club, promoting CW but with a delay but the PDF version will be on time. strong social element. I hope those I used almost all the articles that I had aspects, in particular, can be preserved in stock so please send me your but let’s see what comes out of the contributions for the Autumn issue. current consultation. 161! Don, G3XTT 161! Gabor, S57WJ FOCUS 102 4 FOC Marathon 2015 By Dennis Andrews, F5VHY It was the 68th FOC Marathon in 2015. The weekend event has seen many changes since 1947. In that year, it began on 1st October – the winner eventually being the first member to work 95% of the membership. At that time, the Club had just 70 members with the majority UK based. Even so, it took the eventual winner, G4FN, four months to log the necessary 66 members! To match the changes in the hobby and the development of wider mix within the membership, the rules have changed many times. By and large, the current structure seems to be acceptable to the majority of participants and there are few calls for any significant change. Unfortunately, with the geographic distribution of members being dominated by Europe and North America, the minority of members in Africa and Oceania are always going to be at some disadvantage. This year again hit a weekend of good conditions with the solar flux maintaining around 150. Signal levels of trans-Atlantic contacts were, at times, almost unbelievable. These favourable conditions provided the potential for lots of five-banders although related absorption affected 160m and reduced the chances for six-banders. Unfortunately not everyone managed to take advantage of the conditions. VK/ZL reported selective propagation and difficulty in breaking through to Europe. Up north, auroral conditions made things difficult for members in places such as Sweden and Alaska. A February event always faces the possibility of bad weather in the Northern Hemisphere and many of our friends in New England reported having to contend with up to three feet of snow. Analysis of received logs shows that 409 of our members were active at some point during the weekend with 295 logs received. This is very much in line with recent years and reflects continuing interest in the Marathon amongst a high proportion of the membership. It is good to see a good level of activity from recently joined members. There are, of course, a range of motivations for Marathon activity. Some approach it in a true competitive spirit with a list-topping objective. Many regard it as an enjoyable operating event choosing to devote a moderate number of hours. Others see it as just a good opportunity to renew the friendships that are a central part of FOC. This mix seems to have changed in recent years with less emphasis on the competitive aspect. This means that the potential QSO availability has dropped from a peak around 2003 by an estimated 10%. So the record 1602 QSO total of N3RS in 2004 is unlikely to be exceeded. In recent years, we have found ourselves more and more under pressure from the demands of other band users – particularly DXpeditions and clashing contest dates.