Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hctc.coop. NS
Answer
hctc.coop. 5 NS ns1.hctc.net.
hctc.coop. 5 NS ns2.hctc.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.hctc.net. 5 A 69.4.62.75
ns2.hctc.net. 5 A 69.4.50.244
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0