K4G, this year's third "Chasing Cornwallis Challenge" event follows last month's K4B Battle of Moores Creek Bridge successful event. Shown above is the K4G QSL Card which will continue to be offered, as with all K4x Special Events, at no cost to Participating Hams. How can we afford to offer this? Answer: Donations from those who believe what we are doing is important and have an appreciation for our unique policy to never demand money when telling stories of personal sacrifice. And we have a new sponsor that will be detailed at the bottom of this message. K4G will offer (3) activation sites of the (3) days to include: - POTA Activations operating near the National Park in Greensboro, NC - CW Activations - SSB Activations The K4G QRZ page is ready for your review containing information about the Battle as well as a "revolutionary" timeline that presents the entire Revolutionary War within the context of two halves of a sporting event with a halftime and 2 minute warning. As written on the K4G QRZ page regarding the content, it has taken me 40+ years studying the war, 5 hours to compose the page, to earn just 5 minutes of your time to read it, deal? My invitation to suggest anything you feel should be added or corrected is sincere in the spirit of a great quote to live by: “It’s not to be right…but to get it right!” Guilford Courthouse was a messy battle that depending on who you read, was either an American or British victory - it was the latter by virtue of American Commander Nathanael Greene's abandoning the battlefield. And the numbers are revealing...Greene who commanded 4,400 men, nearly twice as many as British Commander Lord Cornwallis forces. Greene suffered 1,310 casualties, nearly 2.5x more men lost compared to the British side. Vocabulary Building - Word: Pyrrhic Yet, Guilford Courthouse was a Pyrrhic victory for the British. What does that mean, you may ask? Wikipedia offers a nice definition: "Pyrrhic describes a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress." Pyrrhic due to Cornwallis enduring yet another defeat following Kings Mountain and Cowpens that would send his disheveled army racing across North Carolina seeking refuge in the port city of Wilmington, NC and eventually ending up in the Virginia tidewater region site of the final conflict fought at Yorktown which will be celebrated in late October as K4Y. Similar to prior Special Events, the K4G QRZ page will display a flashing ON AIR sign detailing each activation's frequency/mode/location. The DX Summit cluster will additionally report activation detail. Participants logged into the QRZ Logbook for each K4x Special Event shall qualify for the year-end "Cornwallis Challenge" Certificate of Achievement to be offered at no-cost. The number of QSL Card requests and enclosures re: both K4C and K4B event has been astonishing, especially the touching hand-written notes - thank you. On behalf of the K4x Volunteers, we eagerly anticipate your Check-in during the K4G Battle of Guilford Courthouse Special Event. Continued thanks to QRZ for the homepage K4x thumbnails, the ability to customize individual K4x pages, the free to use Logbook supporting multiple Volunteer logs, XML integration, and on and on. Questions, comments, and/or suggestions are encouraged. And Volunteers...we need to recruit two more SSB and at least one CW Op. Finally we have an event that starts on a Friday and spans both Saturday and Sunday. Then we take a break until the Launch Edition of K4A - Kilo 4 America - this July celebrating America's Sestercentennial 250th Anniversary of Independence...some exciting conversations are going on to make that event fun - stay tuned! HUZZA!!!, Marc - W4OVT Greensboro, NC * - As an additional donation incentive, Friends of the Overmountain Victory Trail, an IRS 501 (c)(3) Non-Profit is on board, which means your donation may be tax deductible. What is the Overmountain Victory Trail you may ask? It is a 330-mile National Park that travels through (4) four states, Virgina, Tennessee, North and South Carolina. This route celebrates the Patriot Militia who defeated the British as the Battle of Kings Mountain.
No worries - it was a good question! The flag as shown above and on the K4G page is known as the Guilford Battle Flag. The original version survived the war and is on display at the NC Museum of History. Some claim there was a version with 14 stars which, if true, could have been a placeholder for Nova Scotia. There was discussion about claiming Nova Scotia as the 14th Colony which Canada likely would have ceded. Why? Because a majority of Canadians were Loyalists and therefore fought against the Continental Army. Canada's story is an interesting one to be such a large land mass with rich natural resources, yet, has never fought a successful War of Independence...in fact, Canada very slowly over almost two centuries weaned themselves from British control and influence finally becoming sovereign in 1982 via the Canada Act. HUZZA!!!
I love this history. The Revolutionary War is a favorite for a couple of reasons; our independence and my ancestor served in the Carolina Militia.
Maybe I missed it but I didn't see any details of the mentioned new sponsor?. Also might be helpful if you could include a clickable link to the K4G page at the bottom of your post above so that folks can click right to it .
Glen W5WOC - Glad you are enjoying the K4x Series and awesome you have genealogical connection to the Carolina Militia - do you have the full name or just the surname of the Patriot? I will look him up in my roster rolls. Darrell K7LZR - The direct link to the K4G QRZ page is: https://www.qrz.com/db/K4G - good suggestion to include that in future K4x announcements but too late now as the ability to edit a post, even for the thread creator, expires after 30 minutes. Regarding the additional sponsor - Friends of the Overmountain Victory Trail - I did not initially expand on what that means and why it matters but am happy to do so in response to your question. A donation-only method of offsetting the costs of an organization, usually a Non-Profit, who may only do one event or, as is the case with K4x, multiple events during the year, will accrue costs. Some person/persons/organizations will seek to cover expenses with revenues and some will seek to make a profit - we are the former where a perfect year. would be to breakeven and that is easy to do so long as the revenues are there which can be done either through donation of some sort of fixed fee e.g. a Membership Fee or in the case of a Ham Radio Special Event, a fixed cost for a QSL Card or Certificate. There is a movement within the Non-Profit space to move away from fixed fee engagement. Think of, by analogy, the concept of paying for your drive-thru meal AFTER you are satisfied with the quality instead of paying first and then getting your food. Our Group decided last year that we no longer assigned required funds related to anything we do - QSL Cards, Certificates, Patches, Bookmarks, and other swag. So it comes down to the fundamental question: "Do you think what we are doing is important?" If so, please donate what you can and that donation can be in multiple forms - either time, talents and/or treasures. But then another question arises which speaks directly to why I did not previously expand on the new sponsor topic, which is: "how much is too much when addressing the money issue?" Too many times and stakeholders begin to suspect "aha, this is just a money grab masquerading as a <fill in the blank.> Having run Non-Profits and conducted Grant Seeking Seminars I suggest to Board Members/Attendees to disclose their donation-only structure in every major event announcement but not within every message else the unwanted "give it a break...always talking about money" response. Then let the stakeholders affirm with their wallets to determine 1) is there demand for what you are doing and 2) is your offering of value? If the answer is "Yes" and "Yes" the organization should have no issues at least covering costs and will hopefully generate profits remembering a Non-Profit does not infer No-Profits. It is what the Non-Profit does with those profits that generates more ways to advance the org's mission/vision while inviting scrutiny. Any organization you give to, or are considering giving to that takes in more than $50K annually is required to submit an IRS Form 990 which you can register a free account at Candid.org (formally Guidestar) to scrutinize their financial performance via the published 990's. https://candid.org/ I encourage any Ham who is, or considering to be an ARRL Member for example to conduct this research and I'll leave it there resisting commentary. Ok, so with all of that background, why the new Non-Profit sponsor? Because an IRS Approved Non-Profit opens up an entirely new world of individual donors and those wonderful private/public Foundations to donate/grant funds which are tax deductible - for individuals this assumes the donor has enough Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) to itemize deductions and receive an AGI deduction lowering their tax basis (the amount of money that is taxed.) And about those wonderful Foundations - they are required to issue around 5% of their assets annually so they are hunting for places to give as what is called a Grantor - the recipients, or Grantees, simply have to make the case that their cause deserves funding, or as I used to coach Grantees "your challenge is to lead the Grantor to reach the inescapable conclusion that your project simply must be funded." A great example of this I usually would play at the beginning of the seminar was, of all people, Fred Rogers, yep, Mr. Rogers, who went before arguably the meanest, ill-tempered Senator from Rhode Island, Senator John Pastore, in 1969 seeking $20m to fund the Public Broadcasting System. Rogers conducts a masterclass on the "ask" combining all of the persuasive principles of ethos, pathos and logos. Enjoy here: https://youtu.be/E6wSjINly88?si=NF8SAAzllgSXJf3x Watch Rogers when the gruff Senator discloses his "goosebumps" - like a hawk swooping down to swipe his prey, Rogers does not miss a beat, not even the glint of a hitch, he does in for the kill...indeed, he led the Senator to reach that prized inescapable conclusion...very, very well done on so many levels. Back to Foundations, a great example of one within Ham Radio is the Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) Private Foundation here: https://www.ardc.net/ For any Ham Radio Club needing funding, look no further than the ARDC who is doing IMO a fantastic job funding a myriad of Amateur Radio endeavors - and yes, I plan to approach them regarding K4x as soon as the "ask" is ready. The ARDC offers something which is extremely rare in the Grantor space which is to list, not only the awards, but the APPLICATION of the Grantees - they are essentially dropping bread crumbs for other Grantees to follow - see here: https://www.ardc.net/apply/grants/2023-grants/ Foundations can give to individuals but typically give to established Non-Profits - now you see the reasoning for the FOVT sponsorship. Will also mention that many Grants have a "match" requirement which means they will grant a 2x match requiring the Grantee to raise money the old fashioned way, to earn it via Stakeholders, and then they will double that amount. The safety valve here for the Grantor is to avoid issuing a grant to a dud endeavor using the logic "if they can't raise their own money then how will they be successful with ours?" Money fixes a lot of problems but it can't fix bad messaging or a cause the public is ignoring. So in the works of Paul Havey, now you have "the rest of the story" which I hope not only answers your question but enjoyingly expanded your understanding. Feel free to email direct or if you feel additional questions would be beneficial for general consumption, reply here. And to everyone, how do you feel we are doing with the ratio of delivered content compared to money talk? Too much, too little, just about right? Email direct mailto:marc@w4ovt.org And finally, several requests for PayPal, CashApp, Venmo, and/or Zelle have been received and we are almost ready to support all of those options to avoid sending cash through the mail - that "should" be completed before K4G starts 03/15 0Z which given the time change will be Thursday evening @8PM EDT. 73, Marc - W4OVT PS - I used to get paid good money to share the above - no charge to you...although donation(s) are welcome - ha! PPS - Got a good chuckle re: your "busy hands" comment on your Z'd page - lol
It's almost go-time which means it's time to learn something new about The Battle of Guilford Courthouse you likely were never taught, until now. There was a Battle before the Battle - The Battle of New Garden Meetinghouse on the morning before the afternoon Battle at Guilford Courthouse. The New Garden engagement had the despised British Officer Banastre Tarleton opposing the Captain of the Virginia "Sharpshooter" Militia of William Campbell who would be the first to engage the British in the morning, and the last to leave the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield all occurring on March 15th, 1781. In the morning battle, Lt. Col. Henry Lee would flee the Battlefield to prepare General Nathanael Greene's left flank leaving Campbell and his Militia to defend against the entirety of Tarleton's Dragoons and Infantry - Campbell suffered significantly greater losses facing the fire than Lee's fleeing Continentals. This would repeat later that afternoon at the end of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse where both Greene and Lee fled the battlefield with Campbell and his reliable, brave Patriot Militia, yet again, facing the fire and last to disperse. Greene failed to provision enough men to wipe out Tarleton at New Garden and Lee failed to get the job done. While history records New Garden as an American Victory it would be far more accurate to label the engagement as a Patriot Militia Victory for the American side with a footnote acknowledging token support from Lee before fleeing the fight...something that Greene would do hours later handing victory to the British at Guilford Courthouse. Indeed, Continental Commanders fleeing the Battlefield in the Southern Campaign of the was became fashionable following General Gate's humiliating and cowardly escape at the Battle of Camden abandoning his men for certain capture by the British. Even with Greene tucking tail and running, Guilford Courthouse proved to be a (vocabulary time) "pyrrhic" victory meaning a "success that brings such significant harm to the victor that it differs little from defeat." (Britannia) Cornwallis's Army was so devastatingly depleted at the Battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens much like a punch-drunk heavyweight fight in the final round ready to fall. If only Greene had deployed the necessary tactical plan, if only he ordered as Campbell did to his Militia, to stay in the fight, it is conceivable that Greene could have wiped out Cornwallis leaving Sir Henry Clinton to singularly face the French infantry and warships without Cornwallis's southern reinforcements making it to Virginia. Perhaps Greene's Quaker upbringing softened his resolve as he soon witnessed he was part of one of the bloodiest battles of his command, that is, until Greene would blunder again at The Battle of Eutaw Springs enacting an identical losing strategy as he did at Guilford Courthouse, once again, ordering the Patriot Militia to face the first fire from the British. For a Commander so many write as the greatest tactician in the Revolutionary War, he sure did wear out the rewind/play button and, despite his degraded oratory for the Patriot Militia, he sure did rely on them a lot. A note about both Washington and Greene's Militia disparagements, they would write and state the Militia too often "went missing" after the Battles and therefore made casualty and wounded estimates imprecise. Why was this? Because these men were Militia meaning they lived in the region - THEY RETURNED TO THEIR FAMILIES! Additionally, what was there to celebrate from the likes of Greene, Lee, and Gates - Commanders who insulted them and worse abandoned them in the heat of battle...and for no pay and most would never earn a pension as compared to the enlisted Continental Infantry. A parting comment regarding The Battle of New Garden, British Commander Banastre Tarleton suffered a severe hand wound during the morning fighting, likely from Campbell's sharpshooters, with their highly accurate Deckert Rifles. These were the same men who, at nearly 100 yards, delivered a center mass kill shot British Commander Patrick Ferguson at the Battle of Kings Mountain knocking him from his saddle only to have one foot caught in the stirrup. His white stallion spooked, running a full gallop, came to a stop revealing these Militia marksmen had added (8) eight more lead shot into the lifeless partisan Ferguson. Impressive marksmanship, at distance, to strike a fast moving, bouncing target. Sources: https://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/battles/810315-newgarden-meetinghouse/ https://www.ncpedia.org/new-garden-battle
K4G Activation Plan Similar to K4B, the K4G Activations will focus on SSB with some CW mixed in. Most of the SSB Activations will be close to the actual Battlefield location in Greensboro, NC. SSB will start this evening, Thursday 03/14 which is 0Z 03/15 or 8PM ET on/near 7.195MHz. 03-15 - 03-17 Friday, Saturday and Sunday AM will offer SSB Activations on/near 14.287MHz. 03-15 - 03-17 Friday, Saturday and Sunday PM will offer SSB Activations on/near 7.195MHz. The event ends at 0Z Sunday evening. Most SSB Activations will have a Netlogger Session available as an alternative method of Check-in. Please ONLY sign into Netlogger IF the Net Control station is well heard AND you are ready to Check-in meaning you are tuned up and ready to XMIT. Per usual, when Activations "go-live" an update will appear on the K4G QRZ page under the flashing ON-AIR sign -and- a DX Summit spot will be posted. All that's left is the need for good propagation and YOUR Check-in! 73, K4x Volunteers
Marc, Wow, thank you for the lovely special events station K4G as well as all the rich history that we have in this state and country. God bless you. God bless America ! 73s David WB1FDW
Marc, Very informative special event. I look forward to the next challenge in July. I appreciate your research and perspective on the battles. 73 Ken WA8VES
Guilford County is about 90 miles north of where I am. I am from here and never heard of it. I hope the secret that there was a big Revolutionary War battle there 270 years ago doesn't get out. There will be leftists tearing down statues and rioting for the news media cameras everywhere. It's racist, ya know.
