Amateur Radio From Loudoun County VA

     The next LARG Club meeting will be on March 17, 2001, at 8:30 in the Fellowship Room (basement) of the Bethany United Methodist Church in Purcellville. This is the same location we had for the January meeting. The church is located just south of Main Street at the blinking yellow traffic light, east of Fran's Restaurant, on South 20th Street. Parking is available in the municipal lot just west of Fran's.

     February Club Meeting - Gary, NC4S, brought everyone up to date on the status of this year's Field Day plans. Gary and others brought some lap top computers and a computer projection system to give everyone a chance to see and try out the computer logging program, TRLog, that we will be using at Field Day this year. The practice session was a success and we will continue to train operators using this software after the club meetings. We will have more time slots for operators this year, and the FD committee would like to have as many people as possible sign up ahead of time.
     Norm, AI2C, discussed the upcoming Virginia QSO Party and our participation as individuals as well as doing a club entry.

     March Meeting Notes - The main topic of discussion will be the upcoming Virginia QSO Party, which starts at 1800Z (1:00 p.m. local time) on March 17, right after the club meeting. The contest runs until 0200Z on March 19 (9:00 p.m. local, Sunday evening). With all of our newly-upgraded members being able to operate in the HF bands, we stand our best chance ever of winning the club category in the QSO Party. John, W4AU, will go over the rules, and we will try to formulate some plans for mobile operations, etc., he will also have a sign-up sheet so we can get an idea of who will be participating for the Club this year. We will also have some logging sheets available for those of you not using computer logging. Remember, you should be able to increase your score from last year!

     If there is interest we will try to do some more TRLog training to get people ready for Field Day and computer logging.

     Club News - This month's Newsletter is shorter than normal; it's been a busy month, and everyone has been working hard to get their stations up to snuff for the VAQP. It looks like we will have a record number of mobile operations from LARG out cruising the state in the VAQP this year; it will be up to those of us staying at the home QTH's to make sure we can find them and work those rare county multipliers.
     Finally: A note of sadness: We send our deepest sympathies to Dennis, KF4TJI, and Carol, KF4TJJ; Denny's father passed away a few weeks ago after a long illness.

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