by N2APB

Hey Gang -

I'm sitting here at 35K feet on the way back from the NorCal-sponsored QRP forum at Pacificon this weekend, and still have a glow from listening yesterday to the *fabulous* lineup of speakers and topics. I've never before seen such a powerful and relevant agenda of topics for the QRP community -- Doug Hendricks is truly an unbelievable, motivating and activating force for all of us and this time he has even outdone his prior accomplishments in arranging this whole event for NorCal. Hard to imagine, but very true.

Many of you already know about the major components of the Pacificon QRP Forum from the near-simultaneous NorCal website pictures and postings, as well as from those quicker to the email connection that I, but I thought I'd give a rundown of everything from my "NJ-QRP perspective".

Okay, there's a lot to cover, so let's get into it!

1) Pacificon: The Big Picture
The overall conference is 3-day event sponsored by the Mt Diablo ARC. There was a mini swap-meet, an exhibit hall for many suppliers to show their products and services, and a broad spectrum of ham-related presentations, including a presence by the ARRL. Saturday's QRP Forum, sponsored totally by NorCal, was held in a room filled to capacity with standing room only ... I estimate 150 QRPers were in attendance at each session. Jerry Parker had an electronic camera set up and connected to his computer off to the side where he was busy editing NorCal webpage updates and posting the pictures within about 5 minutes of every presenter, notable information slide and cool show 'n tell item. I hope to get a glimpse of this "near simulcast" when I plug into the Internet upon landing tonight! (If you look closely you may see me in there someplace, as there were a couple of shots of the audience during the day.) At the beginning of the forum, Doug Hendricks gave a gracious introduction of some of the celebrities in attendance and he kindly mentioned my presence "all the way from the NJ-QRP Club"! We were on our own for meals and in-between-session time, which left great opportunity for wandering the exhibit hall and chatting with fellow QRPers. The $5 admission fee to Pacificon was an absolute STEAL compared to the value obtained from attendance. Hats off to the Mt Diablo club for setting the whole thing up too, and I'll definitely try to arrange my schedule for attendance again next year.

2) Unveiling of the NorCal Secret Project: QRP Paddles
The NorCal "Secret Project" was, in addition to the fabulous lineup of speakers, THE most looked-forward to event of the QRP Forum. As I'm sure everyone now knows, the winner of the 1997 NorCal Design Contest is a QRP Iambic Paddle design by Wayne Smith K8FF. The paddles are made from 3/8" square brass stock, and are mounted on a base of steel that is 3" x 2.5" x 1/2". This design was spotted by Doug Hendricks back at Dayton, and he had to convince Wayne to submit it as a design entry, while enlisting Paul Harden to illustrate the manual, enlisting the machine shop facilities of Doug Hauff KE6RIE to actually produce the components. Over 200 paddle kits, each selling for $30, were brought to Pacificon and were sold out within several hours. For those of you who gave me your up-front orders, rest assured that I was able to get them and I'm lugging them home right now (although the airline captain has complained about an imbalance in the weight distribution in the plane, probably due to my suitcase in the overhead bin ... the bases of the paddles are very nice and heavy :-). There were several assembled and finished prototypes available for viewing and tryout ... unbelievable quality!!! These paddles put my Bencher to shame and will become a permanent fixture in both my base and portable station. For the first time we can all have an absolutely complete, quality construction homebrew station. The unassembled and partially-finished kit has a wonderfully clear assembly and alignment manual, and describes a number of ways to finish and paint the steel base and to polish the brass posts and arms. A whole variety of customization options are at our disposal, including different color bases (and painting/finishing techniques), different smoothing and rounding of corners, brass callsign plates, built-in microkeyers, plexiglass enclosures, etc. And in fact there's already a finishing option (available from kit machinist Doug Hauff) to produce a powder-baked-on finish that looks simply outstanding ... KI6DS has a bright red one of these, and boy does it look sharp with the brightly polished brass arms and posts! The sky is the limit! I'm sure we'll be seeing more about this now-revealed Secret Project on the NorCal web pages and hearing about finishing options on QRP-L, but trust me, if you operate CW or if you've even *thought* of doing it, you've GOT to get yourself one of these paddles. (BTW, we'll be trying to get an NJ-QRP meeting together in another week or two and I'll be bringing mine along as part of our show 'n tell.)

3) Great TiCK Presentation by Gary Diana and Brad Mitchell
Brad and Gary, of Embedded Research fame up in Rochester NY, gave a great 2-part presentation: the history of keyer electronics, a la the famous John(?) Curtis designs; and an in-depth look into the TiCK design utilizing the PIC microcontroller. Brad's overview of the keyer evolution really illustrated Curtis' cleverness and ingenuity leading up to the famous 8044ABM chip, which is no longer in production. (WA6GER allegedly has a few left!). Gary's "cookbook" overview to designing projects using the Microchip PIC family of components provided some great leads for hams in the audience looking to get into this exploding area of digital control for amateur radio applications.

4) Superb Computer-Controlled Rig Design Overview by Dave Benson NN1G
In my opinion, this was the highlight of the presentations over the entire day. Dave continued and extended the discussions of PIC-based microntrolled rig design with an actual breakdown and walk-through of a forthcoming rig from his Small Wonder Lab. Detailed information gave wonderful insight and many good design tips as to how to accomplish microcontroller-based frequency measurement, Huff 'n Puff control of a VFO, and various other aspects of rig design with a DDS chip. One of the Q&A interactions fully explained the related problems with the TenTec rig noted on QRP-L. Dave had an operational prototype of his QRP transceiver design based around these concepts ... stay tuned for news of availability later this year.

5) Roy Lewallen's Stories of Field Operation
The King of Field Operations gave a talk similar to what he had done at Dayton, and was as entertaining as ever! Roy gave us a run-down of items he carries out to his Field Day outings up in the high Oregon mountains: a keyer, the Optimized Transceiver (40m), transmatch, directional wattmeter, 1/4 dipole (with reasoning and data to show it's just about as effective as 1/2 wave versions), 1 band/spool of wire with BNC connectors for the feedpoint, notation that plastic feedpoint insulators degrade fast in sunlight, a solar cell array for daytime power and an HT 12v battery for night operation, a slingshot with 3 oz weights with 6 lb fluorescent fishing line plus nylon twine for feeding the trees, headphones, a 5W "brickette" amp, connecting cables & tools (esp. a butane soldering iron), a small spdt switch box for A/B antennas switching, log book, pencil, coat and hat .... all contained inside a small case about 12" x 5" x 6" !! Roy's stories and pictures of mountain top operation since the '60s (he had a picture of Mt St Helen *before* it blew!) was cut a bit short due to some room scheduling snafu, but it sure was great listening to the Master!

6) Dave Gauding Overview of Stealth Antennas
Dave had a nice presentation overviewing various cliff-dweller (apartment and condo) antennas and his trial-and-error methods of refinement over the years. His stories and pictures were great (again, hope there are some follow-up notes published!), and he focused on: slinky antennas; the "Aluminum Cloud" (73 Mag for '94?); an antenna by Llyle Lovell in 9/86 of 73 Mag; a stealth whip pointing out the window; a "Distributed Capacity Twisted Loop" reviewed in QRP-L Dec 27, 1995 by Bob Follett and in CQ for 9/94 and 73 for 10/94; an on-the-ground "beam" called the SGA reviewed by W4NVK in 10/69 of 73 Mag; and a 33-1/2' vertical aluminum vertical reviewed in 73 for 1/95.

BTW, Dave's St Louis QRP Club is renowned for getting out over 120 consecutive months of their newsletters!

7) "EleCraft" Formation by Wayne Burdick and Eric Swartz: Rebirth of the Heathkit Era"
Another "big" announcement/unveiling this weekend was the founding of a new company called EleCraft, by Wayne Burdick and Eric Swartz. Structured to fill the gap left by Heathkit's demise a number of years ago (12 or so?), Wayne and Eric have teamed up to extend their design collaboration beyond the successes of the Sierra, 49er, KC-1 and KC-2, et al, toward a new 9-band, high performance, CW/SSB, computer-controlled modular transceiver kit called the "K2". Some appropriate humor-filled background was provided on selection of the name (not another mountain range, but ... :-). They currently have mock-ups of the K2 and it looks quite impressive, with features that will knock your socks off! They are currently soliciting for feature/functionality input from people and plan to get some prototype available early next year (I think.) You can find more details and pictures at their website: http://www.elecraft.com.

8) NorCal's Hospitality Suite & the Construction Judging
Well, this was yet another exciting part of the entire weekend ... never before have I seen an array of so many incredible construction projects in person, under one roof. The idea was that all of us QRPers should bring our latest construction project and enter them anonymously (i.e., without distinctive labeling) for a "judging" to be done by K5FO and cohorts -- there were keyers in stapler guns, compact HF antennas, completely homebrew and modular multi-band transceivers, transmatches, packaged kits, you name it! I can't recall all the winners of this thing (boy, that sure had to be a hard job), but I entered my suite of 4 small dual-blue boxes containing my 38s, Rainbow Tuner, Galbraith Paddles and Battery Pack and won an "honorable mention".

9) SweepStakes Contesting Tutorial by K5FO and KU7Y
Chuck Adams and Monte Stark hosted a real informative session after the Construction Judging wherein they demonstrated some basic and good contesting practices with some almost-live" equipment. Chuck emphasized and amplified many of these practices and cautions in preparation for the powerhouse SweepStakes contest coming up on the weekend of Nov 1. During SS, there will be 24 hours of operating (with a 30 hour window) with lots of fast ops. We'll sure have a run for it in the Q (QRP) category, and Monte & Chuck gave us all sorts of pointers (who calls whom, use of a computer with logger software, pacing oneself, etc.) The two guys played caller/callee several times to illustrate their points. Pretty good stuff.

10) California "Ham(s) of the Year" Awarded to Doug Hendricks and Jim Cates!
This news was an even better-held secret than that of the NorCal project! Chuck Adams had approached the ARRL during their solicitation for this award earlier in the year, and found more than ample evidence substantiating the recommendation. Doug and Jim were both surprised and honored to the point of embarrassment ... certainly no two better recipients of such an award. I believe the official announcement/presentation will happen soon from ARRL.

11) Wonderful Dinner Spent with the AZ ScQRPions
I had an informal dinner with a group of ScQRPions Saturday night . Perhaps my hungry, drawn and conspicuously out-of-place east coast paleness caught their sympathy and they graciously invited me along. Actually Dave Benson was also along for the dinner so perhaps the east coast aura was detected there too. I'm now proud to say that I'm an honorary ScQRPion since that dinner. (No, they didn't make me pick up the bill, although Joe Gervais tried desperately to do something like that.) They sure have a great group and are modeled somewhat along the lines of our own NJ-QRP ... nothing too official, just getting together primarily for operating -- and what operating they do! I heard all sorts of stories upon which we'll have to model our own outings.

12) Informal Discussions with KI6DS, KI6SN, KE6RIE and KA5DVS/6
Doug Hendricks was kind enough to spend some serious time with me offline and over dinner and brews, discussing many different aspects of club operation, club projects, event synchronization and the like. I know I don't have to tell you all this, but he is one grand individual. Besides giving Joe and me all sorts of advice for the kitting of the Rainbow Tuner project, he continues to help guide some of our future-looking projects and activities we have planned. There's going to be lots of good stuff coming along guys, and we can thank Doug so much for the mentoring he's providing us here in the NJ-QRP Club.

I also met up with Richard Fisher KI6SN, famous column editor of World Radio (did a *great* review for our Rainbow Tuner in last July's issue) and board member for ARCI. We had some very pleasant discussions of backgrounds (found out we have overlapping geographic pasts here in NJ ... Morristown) and discussion of his wonderfully-done Z-Match Tuner he submitted for Saturday night's judging. IMHO he should've taken one of the awards that evening. Hope to get some pictures of it to put alongside Dave Maliniak's version on our website.

I spent more than a few minutes chatting with Doug Hauff, KE6RIE about the forthcoming Rainbow Tuner enclosures he's doing for the QRP community. You'll recall that he's the excellent machinist and company called San Louis Machining who provided the bullet proof anodized enclosures for the 38s (you can still get those too. Visit and drool at: http://www.fix.net/~slmachco/), AND the guy who's responsible for providing the machining for the new NorCal paddles project. This is one busy guy who deserves TONS of thanks from our QRP circles. Doug is excited about the Rainbow enclosures coming along soon, especially because he received some pretty big billing in the recent Dave Ingram article in this month's CQ magazine ... right alongside the NJ-QRP Club with Joe's Rainbow design!! (Check out the article, great stuff!)

AND guess who also showed up at Pacificon? .... James Bennett KA5DVS/6 and his wife Kathy! James & I sat together for several sessions and had a great lunch with them both at a "gourmet enchilada" place. (Really! My stomach is still recovering.) They're both doing real well, and are about ready to move into a house they found, so their official "residency" is just now starting. James tells me that antenna positioning is important (obviously!). Kathy is looking at a teaching position just down the street at the local university, and James is enjoying bicycling to work. He was able to locate 200 hard-to-find capacitors for our Rainbow Tuner kit, and I was able to bring them home too. More weight for the luggage!! Now the tuner kits can continue on for yet another manufacturing run, as it surely will be needed after Dave Ingram's CQ article and Doug Hauff's enclosure availability. James sends us all his best and says that he'll shortly be back in action on our club listserver.

That's All Folks!
Well, that's about it from me about Pacificon. Sorry for the length of this but I thought you all would enjoy hearing about my perspective on things. I was treated with overwhelming hospitality by everyone I encountered this weekend, being one of the few QRP "emissaries" from back east. I was able to put some new faces to the names and calls only previously encountered on the air or on email, and was able to make a few new friendships I hope will last for a long time to come.