Amateur Radio From Loudoun County VA

MEETING LOCATION: The April 19, 2003, LARG meeting will be at 8:30 in the Leesburg Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 605 West Market Street. The church is located at the intersection of Market Street and Catoctin Circle on the west side of town. It is just east of the bypass. From the Bypass, take the Leesburg exit at the west end of town and the church is on the right just past the stoplight. Please enter through the door on the east side of the building where you will see both steps and a ramp by the door.

April Club Meeting Plans - We will hear a final recommendation from Dave, KG4KZZ, and the LARG Repeater Committee concerning putting a club 2-meter repeater on the air. Our Field Day Chairman, Buddy, K4CBJ, will tell us about the plans for this year's event. FD Station Captains and others will visit the FD site at Gary's, NC4S, QTH after the meeting to discuss logistics. If there is enough interest, we may take orders for the official ARRL FD shirts and pins at the meeting. Rumors are about that the Balloon Committee is considering a spring launch date; Tom, WB3AKD, will report on that possibility. John, W4AU, will present the LARG individual and club results for the Virginia QSO Party. The club total looks like it will be a new record for LARG, and we might even break a big benchmark this year! Bill, WF1L, will bring us up to date on the Technician Class that is currently being held at the Balch Library.

March Club Meeting Report - We had a lively discussion of the pros and cons of the various options for getting a club repeater on the air. Evan, KQ4CI, described his tower and system, which he made available for the club to use. Dave, KG4KZZ, brought us up to date on the clubs repeater plans for an installation at the QTH of K6PS. No decision was made, because many of our members were on the road for the VA QSO Party. John, W4AU , brought everyone up to date on the LARG participation in this year's edition of the VAQP, which started a few hours after the meeting adjourned.

Field Day 2003 - The first meeting of the Field Day Committee took place April 1. We agreed to hold this year's FD at Gary's, NC4S, QTH, Catoctin Hollow Farm, where we have had this event a few times in the past. The committee decided to set up a 5A station with five HF stations and one VHF/UHF station. Buddy, K4CJB , will give us more details of the plans at the April club meeting.

Virginia QSO Party - We are still making the final tallies of all the LARG logs, but will have our complete results in time to present at April 19 meeting. Right now we can report that LARG has set a new high score for our club; we have broken the megapoint barrier with over 1,050,000 total points this year! We also had a new record for the number of logs submitted, 33, and the number of club members participating, 34. This year LARG had three multi stations on the air at NC4S (K4LRG), N4PD, and W4AU, which gave some of those without HF equipment or privileges a chance to get on the air and fight it out with the big boys. We had five very active HF mobile stations covering many of the rarer Virginia counties; WB3AKD, WA9LAZ, KF4TJI, N3GMW, and KF4TJJ provided many of us with those valuable 3-point QSO's. Also, we had our first ever Expedition Mode station on the air with Charlie, K4LJH , operating from Middlesex and Mathews counties.

LARG operators made over 8000 good QSO's during this year's event. Congratulations to everyone who got on to make those contacts.

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