I spent a lot of time on the air this weekend.
While waiting for my wife to get ready to go to Home Depot, I worked 40m CW for about an hour and a half. The first wo were slow-speed contacts, and enjoyable, though short. I sometimes find that the slower guys are working so hard at a contact that they’ll cut it short and take a break. I know I did this two years ago when I was just getting back on the air.
The third was a higher-speed QSO with Mario, N2AK. Mario’s an interesting guy who’s done a lot of interesting things in ham radio and is fun to talk to. Our QSO lasted nearly a half hour at 22-24 wpm. Mario had a good strong signal, and there was very little noise or interference, so I took off the headphones.
After the contact, I went upstairs to check on my wife, and she said she’d been listening in. She said it was kind of mesmerizing. I guess it is, too. When you’re copying CW that fast you get into a zone and sort of block everything else out.
Later that evening, 40m was really congested with all the contest activitiy, so I got on 30m CW. Band conditions were again good, and I worked a couple of Europeans, an SV2 and a 9A2.
On Sunday, I participated in the Tennessee QSO Party. This is a quickie, seven-hour event lasting from 2 pm EDT to 9 pm EDT. I operated near three hours total, racking up 34 Qs (as the high power contesters say) and 29 multipliers. Not too bad, I don’t think.
About a week ago, I’d worked Jim KY4L in Oak Ridge, TN, and he’d mentioned that he was going to be operating as a rover in the contest. And in fact, he was my third contact. All in all, I worked Jim six times from six different counties. Thanks, Jim, and all the other rovers for making the TN QP a lot of fun.
Finally, I have a bit of a confession to make. I’ve started working a little phone. One of the reasons for this is that it’s so easy for me to switch modes with the IC-746PPRO that I’ve been using lately. As long as your antenna’s SWR is less than 3:1, the rig’s built-in internal antenna tuner will automagically match it to the rig. So, even though my dipole’s tuned for the CW portion of the band, it also works like a champ on phone, without my having to twiddle any knobs on an antenna tuner.
I still don’t work a lot of phone, but I have had a couple of fun contacts. One night, I was tuning around and happened on a couple of guys talking about vertical antennas. After they’d finished their contact, I called the guy in Wisconsin and chatted with him for a bit. He was using a trio of full quarter wave verticals, fed with a single coax on 40, 20, and 15. One thing I found interesting is that he made them out of electrical conduit, and they’re entirely self-supporting. I would have imagined that you’d need to guy the 40m vertical at least. I told him about my idea to make the verticals from copper pipe, and he thought that would be a good idea as the copper pipe would have less skin resistance than the galvanized steel conduit. All in all, it was a very nice contact.
Last night, after working the contest for nearly two hours, I tuned around the phone bands again and heard Neal, W1FT in MA. He was an interesting guy to talk to as well. I was able to inform him that not only did the University of Michigan football team hold the record for the most wins ever, but that the football stadium here is the largest in the country. Go Blue!
At any rate, my point is that it’s all fun, and if you have the ability to operate a certain mode, than why not? Hmmmmm. Maybe I actually will get on PSK31 or RTTY one of these days.
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