September/October 2000 NCJ

WRTC MemoriesJim George, N3BB/5It has taken me a couple of weekssince returning from Slovenia to absorbmy experiences of the WRTC and to putmy thoughts on paper. My wife, Diana,and I remained in Europe after the end ofthe competition and played tourist untilthat Friday. We rented a car and droveinto Austria on Wednesday, and thenover into eastern Slovenia and Croatiaon Thursday.Those travels, coupled with a minibustour we took to Venice on Tuesday,enabled us to enjoy some new experiencesand to visit several places for thefirst time. The whole WRTC Slovenianexperience was terrific, and I’ll neverforget it.The contest week really began for meat the Frankfurt airport when John,K4BAI; Bob, K4UEE; and I met for theflight to Ljubjana.We were impressed with the efficiencyof the military pick up support at theLjubjana Aerodrome, and it was excitingto see the banners and promotional signsfor the WRTC as we approached Bled.Diana and I had been in Athens,Greece the week before on a businesstrip that had come up at the last minute,and I had missed the announcement ofthe results of the station location drawsthe week before. Alan, N3AD, and I hadreceived e-mails from Ducan, S52DG,one of our four station hosts, welcomingus to their station.The WRTC headquarters office at theHotel Astoria was well organized, andthe dispersal of the bags with the informationand tee shirts, maps and additionalmaterials was efficient. Alan andhis wife, Gloria, showed up at the headquartersabout the same time I did—oneday earlier than originally planned—witha rental car that was packed to the gills.We were all there.The initial gatherings around beers atthe outside hotel tables were high energyand charged with excitement, and itwas nice to see many old friends and tomeet many, many new ones.Bled is such a pretty location that ittook my breath away. The lake, the island,the castle and the mountains remindedme of my boyhood home in theAppalachian Mountains in southern WestVirginia.The week was well planned, and thecompetitors’ meeting was very interesting.It was clear that people had thoughtof a wide range of questions regardingthings we had not considered. TheSlovenian Contest Club handled thingswell, and their judgement call about off-times policy was well received.Later, Alan and I set up his radio in hishotel room and soon discovered that theCW keying cable did not key the radio.The internal wiring had broken and wasin bad shape. I hadn’t brought my extracable. The pressure was on.Jeff, N5TJ, and Dan, K1TO, gave usan extra resistor and NPN transistor sothat we could make another one ifneeded, but we didn’t have the wiringdiagram. Fortunately, John, VE3EJ, hadan extra CW keying cable. Needless tosay, we certainly appreciated everyone’sgenerosity!We had several small things to resolderand repair, and having the 220 V to 110V transformer we brought along to runthe soldering iron off of sure came inhandy, even if it did weigh 12 kg!One particularly exciting moment occurredwhen we plugged in my six-positionac power strip. It had oversurgeprotection MOVs in it, and they apparentlydidn’t like 50 Hz power! They explodedwith a tremendous bang, blowingthe circuit breaker and shutting downthe power to the room. It took four hoursfor the electrician to arrive. He was aham, and he secretly explained to uswhere the breaker box was so that wecould reset the breakers if we trippedthem again.Luckily, Alan’s ac power strip workedfine, so at least we would have oneworking strip for the gear. While we werewaiting for the electrician, we had set upthe station on a table out in the 4 th floorcorridor of the Park Hotel. We receivedquite a few strange looks from the otherhotel guests that passed by.When Alan’s wife Gloria returned totheir hotel room, she nearly fainted whenshe saw it totally covered from one sideto the other with radios, supporting gear,a laptop, cables, a monitor, solderingequipment and the big transformer.Another unsettling moment for us waswhen we discovered that we had forgottento bring an adapter for connecting anexternal keyboard to the laptop. Thanksto S53R and S59AA for helping us findnot just one, but two of them! All-in-all,that day was unnerving!The Pileup Tape Competition was heldin the Bled Festival Center, a very nicefacility. The process for conducting thecompetition was well done. Nervousenergy was in the air by then for sure.When Alan and I had the chance tomeet the host group and our judge in anearby ice rink over beers and a meal, itwas really exciting. Our judge was thewell-known Montenegrin contester,Ranko, YT6A. The hosts were two brothers,S52DG and S52LD, and their twogood friends, S52QM and S52MW.On Thursday, the opening ceremonieswere quite impressive to us all, andeveryone enjoyed the procession, thespeeches, the dancers and the wholeaffair. Later, at dinner that night, theatmosphere turned a bit more serious asthe week was moving on, and the time todrive to the stations was approachingthe next day.Our hosts had built a station on an850-meter hilltop close to a very smallvillage named Golica (pronouncedGo-leech-ah), about 10 km fromZelezniki. That 10 km does take awhile to drive however! It’s nearlystraight up, and the narrow road soonbecomes gravel.There is an electrical power line to thestation—the ten houses that make upthe town of Golica are only a kilometeraway—so no generators are needed.The station was well designed with goodelectrical grounds and a terrific view ofthe valley below and beyond to the Austrianalps about 40 km away. There is aclear shot to the northwest (USA andEurope) and to the east.One of the several stunning churcheslocated in Slovenia is on a nearby hilltopabout 100 meters higher than thestation’s position, and the carillon bellslate at night and early in the morning aresurreal sounding due to their clarity andloudness in the high mountain air.The station is located in a containerbuilding about two or three meters wideby five or six meters long. A Slovenianarmy tent had been erected 30 metersaway for us to sleep in. We were excitedand ready to set up the station, butDucan (pronounced Dushan), S52DG,politely requested that we first take adrive to meet the parents. “It will justtake a few minutes,” he said.The meetings were terrific, with eachof the three stops featuring a nice spreadof white wine and some varieties of fruitjuice, usually homemade, plus somekiller good pastries and cookies. All ofthe parents were really nice and wouldnot consider “no” a reasonable responsewhen they offered their specialties. Noone spoke a word of English, but therewas a lot of serious smiling, grinning,gesturing and laughing, and things wentswimmingly.We got a chance to visit the homestations of the four hosts, as the hilltopstation was fairly new, and all had main-9