This page describes some of the On-the-Air activities of the Club and its members.

Dial gets together at least twice a year to operate.  The largest effort is during the ARRL's Field Day which occurs during the last full weekend of June each year.  Dial also participates as a group in the Ohio QSO Party on the last Saturday in August.  In 2015 we celebrated 'International Pi-Day' on 3/14/15.  In 2016, we celebrated our 75th anniversary of being an ARRL Affiliated Club by operating the Special Event Station W8D as a group one Saturday.  Club members also participate in operating events on an individual basis, often with a bit of competition between the Club members.  The information below tells you a bit about Field Day and the Ohio QSO Party.  There are links to the event's sponsors if you desire to know more.  There are links to info about Pi-Day and the W8D Special Event Station.

 

ARRL Field Day

Dial wins Ohio in Class 3A for Field Day 2015

In spite of some pretty severe weather during setup on Friday (trees were downed, roads were blocked and power was off to areas surrounding our Field Day site at Smith Park, Middletown, OH), we were able to set up our stations and operate for the full period.

We tried networking our logging computers using N1MM's program and wireless networking. Bad traps in our 20-10 m beam caused lots of RF on the feedline which interfered with the networking. We had to stop in the middle of operating and string up wire antennas for 20 and 15 meters.

Several members of Dial put in very long times operating and having good runs. Chris, W8OOO (now WM8MM) operated much of the period with long runs on 40m SSB and racked up the contacts. The CW guys (K8CI, KD8W, N8AA, N8HP, W8EH, W8LR) had a very good performance as usual. Mark, WD8NKJ, stopped by around Sunday noon and had a nice run of about 30 contacts on 6 m SSB. We are quite pleased with our success (or luck) and look forward to next year.

 

 

The Ohio QSO Party

Dial places 5th in Ohio and 1st in Butler County for the 2015 OH QSO Party

The Ohio QSO party runs from noon to midnight on the fourth Saturday of August.  Club members have operated two stations in the Multioperator category from a member's home.  KD8W and N8YFQ have been the most recent hosts.  One station was full time voice and the other was voice/CW operation.  We have never placed higher than fourth place, but we have always had a good time.

 


 

Special Operating Events

We have gotten together to celebrate two special events with operations - Dial being an ARRL Affiliated Club for 75 years and International Pi-Day.

 

W8D Special Event Station

We believe that Dial was started much earlier, but May 9th, 1941 is the earliest written record that persists.  It was the date of Dial becoming an ARRL Affiliated Club.  So we claim May 9, 1941 as the Club's birthday. We obtained the Special Event call W8D for two weeks - including the weekends before and after our birthday.  On Saturday May 7th, we had a group operation from the home of KD8W and made about 80 contacts in poor band conditions.  Several members operated from their home at other times and we made about 250 total contacts.  A special QSL card was designed to commemorate the event.

 

International Pi-Day activity

Dial's contest call is K8PI, so it was only natural to operate K8PI as a group activity on International Pi-Day (03/14/15).  W8EH offered his home as a site and quite a few Club members came by to participate.  We made a special QSL card that was requested by about 150 of the people that we contacted.