Things don’t always turn out the way you hope–that’s just life. Well, Saturday was one of those days for me.
A bunch of ARROW members thought it would be fun to attend the Holland “Super Swap” and Michigan Section Convention in Holland, so we made arrangements to drive out together. Even though we had to get started by 5:30 in the morning, the drive out was fun, and we enjoyed a nice conversation.
The swap was a disappointment, though. There were only tables in a smallish gym, and not even all those were occupied. A few deals were to be
had (I’m still kind of kicking myself for not buying that Johnson Matchbox for $75), but they were few and far between.
There weren’t even that many dealers there. I wanted to buy some FlexWeave antenna wire, for example, but The Wireman wasn’t there, and no one else was selling any. I also wanted to get a DB9 connect to make an Icom CI-V control cable. One guy had the connector, but didn’t have the shell, and no one else there was selling them.
I did attend the CW forum, and that was interesting. Nancy Kott, from Fists and World Radio, WZ8C, had a new code lesson CD. After her talk we all sat around and theorized about how best to learn the code and increase one’s code speed.
I gave Nancy my ARROW business card with the URL for Get On CW . She seemed interested in the idea, but who knows for sure? The response was underwhelming when I proposed it on the Fists mailling list, although I did get a good reaction from my posting on QRZ.Com. I need to promote the website a little bit more.
Not My Best Contest, Either
I got home around 5 pm, had some dinner, and thought I’d give the November Sweepstakes a try. What a mistake! I don’t know exactly why, but I just did not have it on Saturday. My sending was terrible, for one thing.
Then, I pulled out the cable to send with the computer, and for some reason, it did not want to work. When I’d command it to send, the thing would latch up and send continuously. I’d never had this problem before, but I hadn’t tried using it with the IC-746PRO before. I’m going to hook the scope up to it tonight and see if it’s switching properly with just a pullup resistor on it.
Overall, I made just 60 contacts in 3-1/2 hours. Uggghhh.
Leave a Reply