Kansas City DX Club
Nihiles Ante Unum!
(Zeroes before Ones!)
Home of the Annual Dayton CW Pileup Competition
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Welcome
The Kansas City DX Club is an ARRL-affiliated amateur
radio club open to anyone interested in DX or contesting. Our club callsign is W0CW. Many of our club members are from the Kansas City metropolitan area, on both sides of the Missouri/Kansas state line, but our roster also includes members from all over the United States. The Club meets on the last Monday of each month at the Johnson County Library, 9875 W. 87th St. (87th & Farley) Overland Park, KS.
Be sure to visit the Meetings page to check out the program and agenda!
The July meeting will be held on Monday , 7/27/2009...6:30
- 8:30PM, followed by a gathering after the meeting at Perkins
Restaurant for pie and coffee. See you there!
Dayton 2009 Hospitality Suite
and
29th Annual
CW Pileup Competition Huge Success!
Lots of preparation and hard work paid off again as the dedicated members of the Kansas City DX Club hosted the finest in the amateur radio DX and Radiosport community to a fun evening of fellowship and competition.
The CW Pileup Competition attracted 111 participants this year - as well as the one non-human allowed to participate - the VE3NEA Skimmer software. Skimmer copied 61 calls, but the prizes were reserved for the living and breathing hams who sweated out the tough five minutes bombarded by more than 100 callsigns.
Yuri, VE3DZ, copied 51 calls correctly and topped them all for his second 1st place finish. He walked away with a new Acom 1010 Linear Amplifier first prize! Doug, W9WI, who has more 1st place finishes than anyone else in the history of this competition, finished 2nd this year with a score of 49, and was presented with a QSK Master from WX0B and Array Solutions. The next ten top scorers also received an excellent assortment of prizes from our generous sponsors.
This year's participants helped usher in a new digital era for this 29 year old contest. Tom, 
N0SS, created a really challenging pileup file (from a list prepared by Russ, K0VXU, as ususal) for the event. The club supplied a network of six laptop PCs (replacing the time-honored use of pencil and paper!) and software provided by Alex, VE3NEA, to support a fully computer-judged setup developed especially for this event. Many member-hours of correcting were eliminated, and no one could question the accuracy of the results! A new ART406 Headphone Audio Amplifier replaced WK0G's trusty and dusty old boatanchor amp which served the club well for years beyond its time.
Alex, KU1CW, Bill, K0VBU, and Duncan, KU0DM (the 14-year old QST Youth Editor enjoying his first time at the Hamvention) presented the tests, while Judy, N0NUT, filled out certificates for each entrant. Meanwhile, Brian, KC0BS, held the masses at bay just outside the door to the pileup room, giving some preliminary instructions and lining up contestants in groups of six.
The new system worked well, and, although it took a little longer than usual to run each group throgh the test (more time for instruction in the use of the new software was necessary), everyone was quite happy with the leap into computerized logging! Some fine tuning will result in faster turnaround in 2010.
Out in the crowded main room of the suite, other club members worked hard to provide our tradional Kansas City hospitality. Rick, N0RB, Jim, KB0X, Mike, AB0X, Bob (Dr. Smoke), N0EUH, Larry, K0RWL, Lee, K0LW and others spent the evening pouring liquid refreshments and making sure the suite ran well until beyond 1:00 a.m.
Our thanks go out to all who pitched in to make the evening a success, including Anatoly, KS0AA, and his cousin visiting from Russia, who both helped with the setup and tear-down
and trips to the beverage store (not for antenna wire.) And we appreciate the hundreds of DXers, Contesters and others who joined us for another memorable event.
RESULTS ARE IN FOR 2009!
See you all there in 2010!
* May Newsletter is Here.....
Full of Dayton info and pictures! *
(See the CW Pileup Competition tab for results since 1995, tips,
practice files and prizes.)
Message from your President
My fellow Kansas City DX Club members,
Dayton 2009 is behind us and was a good one despite economic concerns. Even though attendance was down and a few booths were empty, the the KCDXC PileUp had its 4th largest participation since we have kept records. The electronic pileup logging with PC’s was a total success and received great approval from the participants. Judging the pileup was the easiest eve,r and most objective as well. Thanks to everyone who put club matters above other business and helped. You will see an article about the KCDXC very soon in CQ magazine.
Congrats to the winners and BIG Thanks to the generous sponsors. This year’s first prize ACOM1010 was above all expectations! Begali, WX0B, CQ, ARRL, HEIL, Associated Radio, DX Publishing and Elecraft were among other sponsors.
The main two goals of 2009-10 for the club are to promote technology in our hobby and bring more energetic youth into it. Our oal is to have 5 members below age 20 by mid 2010.
Next year is the 30th anniversary of the KCDXC PileUp and it will be BIG in every aspect, I guarantee it! Join in and ask how you can help with it and with current club activities.
We are sponsoring two new highly noticeable plaques - one in CQ WPX and one in the CQ DX contest.We will look into some DXpeditions as well. I was glad to see quite a few new faces at the club meetings and I'm looking for new steps to make club activities more interesting.
Bring in more members and energy. Let’s work together to make our hobby more interesting
Thank you all.
Alex, KU1CW-KCDXC President.