I made my 9th contact with YN9SU this morning from Nicaragua. I'm beginning to wonder if he is the only station in that country? He had a great signal today (599) and we quickly shook hands and moved on as usual. He's changed "keys" with the resulting different "fist" being noticeable. My guess is a new "bug" instead of his normal iambic paddle.
Today is my 37th daily DX contact!
My contacts are no longer "consecutive" now; since my interruption while traveling to the Bahamas, and in a few more days, I will be driving to North Carolina and will be off the air for a few more days. However, I'm very satisfied with my ability to make a DX contact, every day I'm on the air from here at home.
Last summer I talked to an old friend here in the valley who asked me to participate in the Kanawha Valley Amateur Radio Club "Hamfest" this year. I drove to the site yesterday with the hopes of finding a place to string an antenna and getting on the air during the activities on March 16th. I'll be taking the station I normally use when out in the field and operating from a picnic table. I'll have more to say about this later.
Yesterday evening I made an announcement about it on the local two meter net and it was well received. I'm rather amazed that more folks don't take advantage of Morse Code operations with simple wire antennas. Very few people here in the valley operate with low power, and I think it will be an "eye opener" for them when they realize how easy it is to work DX with 3 watts.
I'll be taking my small laptop and using a memory stick to show my QSL collection, and also views of my logging program and the DX cluster I use here at home. I have a few hundred cards loaded on the memory stick and 300 or so on the E-QSL site. I hope they will make interesting conversation.
4 comments:
Good morning John, sounds like a great mini trip that you have planned out. The pic of you on the deck (guessing from last year) looks very WARM compared to the snow and cold up here. Look forward to some pictures and blogging about that....but that is March! As for now have a safe trip.
Mike
Good Morning Mike,
We have a family gathering on the Outer Banks of North Carolina every year and I always take my radio along because of the "salt water" propagation. Yep...it's a lot warmer down there compared to this winter. (April)
I'm looking forward to setting up at the Charleston Hamfest on March 16th and talking about QRP radio. Perhaps I can lead a few people down the path towards low power and stealth antennas? Most have NO idea how much fun this can be, especially when used outdoors, sitting on a sunny balcony with a glass of Cabernet at hand.
I've found the advantage of a 3 amp transmitter to be very rewarding compared to the 20 amp models. I know you've arrived at the same conclusion there in Canada.
Hi John, today I made it to Tasmania (16.943 km) with 5 W JT9-1 (Similar as WSPR but JT9 is a qso mode) 73 Paul
Hello Paul,
You guys are SO lucky to live in Europe. I doubt I'll ever work Tasmania from here. I would need a lot more wire in the air. Hihi
I saw where Dick worked New Zealand a few days ago. Wish I could do the same.
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