News

In an effort to provide another avenue of communication between GMCC members, we’ve set up a Discord server devoted exclusively to Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado. It’s intended to supplement, not replace, the existing groups.io mailing list and this website.

To obtain an invite to the GMCC Discord server, please send me an email.

What is Discord? Wikipedia says that it an instant messaging and VoIP social platform which allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media. Communication can be private or take place in virtual communities called “servers”.^{[note 2]} A server is a collection of persistent chat rooms and voice channels which can be accessed via invite links. Discord runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Linux, and in web browsers. As of 2024, the service has about 150 million monthly active users and 19 million weekly active servers.^[8] It is primarily used by gamers, although the share of users interested in other topics is growing.^[9] As of March 2024, Discord was the 30th most visited website in the world with 22.98% of its traffic coming from the United States.

Several other ham radio groups and software programs use Discord for communication with users, including ClubLog, Parks on the Air (POTA), GridTracker, HamRS and Ham Radio Workbench. We’ve had it going for about a week, so it’s time to go live! Please note that there are two audio/video channels which work pretty much the same way as Zoom, except that (a) they’re free and (b) you don’t need to set them up before using them.

This is 2025, so the best way to learn how to install Discord on your computer/phone/tablet is to watch a video. But you can also access it with a web browser; just click on the invite link above. There are a lot of videos on how to use Discord and its features.

If you have questions about using the service, leave a message on the “# discord-help” or “general chat” channels, or send me an email at k0guz@steveandgeorgia.net.

73’s de Steve, K0GUZ

W0MU invested a lot of time and effort into creating this website, and after I took over as the web administrator a year and a half ago, I created several posts. Neither of us got much feedback from what we’d done (in fact, I never got any), from which it’s easy to conclude that very few people read or used the website. To find out, I installed a WordPress plugin to count the number of daily visitors; it will not surprise you to learn that there are almost none:

And we have not even attracted the Russian or Nigerian troll bots which regularly scour websites like ours for vulnerabilities. Even my own website is regularly pinged by the Russians.

This website is hosted by a ham-friendly web host, https://hosting.qth.com, and the annual fee is a very reasonable $5/month. For this price, we get

• Registration of the URL name “grandmesa.org”,
• An SSL certificate that gives the website the coveted “https://” encryption and security,
• A generous storage allowance for photos,
• Up to ten permanent email boxes for officers (currently not being used or needed),
• The “Mailman” program we use for communication with officers
• Unlimited mail forwarders (like the ARRL mail forwarders; Yourcall@grandmesa.on-forge.com forwards any received email to your real email) (also not currently being implemented)
• The ability to create up to four separate Mysql databases.
• The ability to add various PHP scripts which could access the databases.

The annual hosting fee ($60) is due in mid-February, 2025, so we need to decide whether we should keep it active. If we don’t, then if history is any guide, a bot from China will immediately snatch the grandmesa.org name and insert either gibberish or porn for a couple of years.

The truth is that static websites like this one are diminishing in popularity and usefulness. We use the groups.io mail list function regularly to keep in touch with other GMCC members. Many other ham radio clubs and organizations, including Parks on the Air (POTA), Gridtracker and the Hamrs POTA logging software, have migrated to Discord, which offers a smorgasbord of features for clubs and groups, including email lists, conversation topics, audio and video chats (think Zoom) and file storage. The structure and maintenance is handled by them, the content is uploaded by those who join. Although you can read a lot about Discord, they have a short video aimed at my grandson’s generation which explains it. A basic version with limited features is free; enhanced plans cost $5 and $10/month.

If we decide to keep this website, then someone needs to create content which will make it useful and make GMCC members want to access it on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I don’t have the expertise or knowledge to add content to the website. I know how WordPress works, but things like extracting contest results from 3830scores.com for making our own contest chart, or adding other features is way above my level of expertise.

As you can tell, I think Discord would be a very viable option for us to explore, but please add your comments and suggestions either in the comment section below, on the groups.io mailing list, or by contacting one of the club officers. If no decision is reached by mid-February, I’ll go ahead and advance the $60 to renew the website hosting package.

Thanks and good contesting!

Steve, KØGUZ

This is the easy way to find out how your fellow GMCCers have reportedly done in recent contests. It is quoted from an email from Bob, K0NR:

Go here: https://www.3830scores.com/contests.php

Select the ARRL 10 meter contest (or whatever contest you care about).

Select 2024 Scores

then use the menu selections to choose what you are interested in. I chose GMCC scores, which shows all of the club entries sorted by category.

Bob

Bob Witte K0NR

If you’re interested in participating in the bleeding edge of FT4 contesting, the Northern California Contest Club is sponsoring an HF sprint on Thursday evenings.  The exchange is different than you may be used to, but the theoretical maximum QSO rate can be up to 480 QSOs per hour!  If you get the National Contest Journal, there’s a good article explaining this technique starting on Page 27 of the Sep-Oct 2023 issue.  If you get QST or other ARRL publications online, the link is: https://edition.pagesuite.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pnum=29&edid=a6b6079a-6a5a-4b18-becb-10217068a65b&isshared=true.

There’s also a brief introduction here:  https://www.ncccsprint.com/ft4ns.html

Steve, K0GUZ

Here are a couple of ideas that may help you if you’re not receiving all of the groups.io digests or can’t post.  In both cases, you need to log into the web interface for groups.io then look at the GMCC group (if you subscribe to more than one group).  Click on your account (upper right corner drop down box). 

1.  Click on the “Bounces” option on the left.  This will give you a report of the number of times that your email has been bounced.  After a certain number of times that your email system has rejected incoming mail from groups.io, they’ll give up and assume that the email is invalid.  Check to make sure that your email is correct.  Also, sometimes groups.io is identified by one of the automated spam filters (like spambot) and all email from it is blocked by your email server.  This is usually fixed within hours, but if a GMCC digest was sent during that time, you’ll never see it, even in the “junk” folder.

2.  If you send something to the group using your email program, check the “login” tab at the left top.  Again, check to make sure that the email address is correct.  If you sometimes use a different address (such as k0guz@arrl.net) on your email, click on the “advanced settings for email” at the bottom of the groups.io login page and enter that alias.  If you don’t, and you send an email from “xyzabc@gmail.com” but have a return address of “xyzabc@arrl.net” then groups.io may assume you’re trying to spam the system and block your input.

3.  The @arrl.net forwarding service usually works but I’m sure that they have some pretty good filters to get rid of spam email; to make sure that it doesn’t discard your GMCC digests, use your real email, not @arrl.net.

4.  Finally, if all else fails, you can use the web interface to groups.io to send your message to the group.

Hope this helps.

72’s de Steve, K0GUZ

We are fortunate to have many skilled and talented members in our ranks.  It’s my hope that we can tap into their expertise with presentations of interest to all Colorado contesters.

First up is Alan Higbie,  K0AV, with a polished presentation on  HUNTING RFI.  Alan’s QTH is a typical urban lot,  with above ground power lines, neighbors with solar panels, and all kinds of potential noise sources both in his house and the surrounding area.

Instead of abandoning HF contesting,  Alan chose to become skilled at playing “wack a mole” and an expert at tracking down nagging RFI sources one by one.   His disciplined approach has led to success finding and curing his RFI.    

Please log in to this premier ZOOM presentation Thursday evening and hear Alan’s success story.    

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85800055185?pwd=eG9NNzhnV2JZdkxKSzdOUGJ5ekdBZz09

The meeting will start with brief introductions and move quickly to Alan’s presentation.   There are no business items on the agenda but there will be time to ask questions and share member activities after the presentation.

This chart was downloaded from contests.arrl.org, and it shows the official results of those who submitted logs and were a member of a GMCC team. As before, you can sort this list by any of the criteria – contest, year, callsign, score…. Or you can use the “search” function to bring up only the results tabulated by ARRL for your callsign. Enjoy!

[table “6” not found /]

This is a list, from the 3830scores.com database, of those who submitted contest scores to 3830 AND identified themselves as members of GMCC. It shows the results of for the prior year (and was created on July 20, 2023). It does not include any other data. The link to your callsign in this list is broken. I’m working on a fix.

There are over 1,200 entries, and you can sort the list by any of the criteria. If you have any issues with this list, check first with 3830scores.com to see if maybe you didn’t submit your scores. Then contact me.

[table “5” not found /]

https://wwff-kff.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/parksontheair/?hc_location=ufi

If you are looking for something to do when there are no contests, check out POTA and the WWFF programs. These programs are very similar to the NPOTA ARRL event that just ended.  POTA includes State Parks and National parks which makes many of these parks much more convenient to activate.

I have volunteered to assist with uploading activator logs for W6 and KH6/pacific and handling adding additional parks to the list.

The awards are FREE. You may already qualify for some awards. No QSLing is necessary and award confirmations are based off the uploaded logs of the activators.

W0MU