If you read the previous blog entry, you know that I worked some of the DX contest this weekend. Well, after the Saturday afternoon session, I was kind of burned out on CW, so I thought, that I’d tune up the band and see what was happening on SSB.
Now, you have to realize what a big step this was for me. Up to this point, I’ve made probably less than 100 SSB contacts in my entire ham career. The main reason for this is that I’ve always operated barefoot, and since my antennas have always been less than stellar, my signal is usually one of the weakest on the band. Even so, I thought I’d give SSB a shot.
Since I cut my ground plane antenna for the CW portion of the band, I wasn’t sure what the SWR would be in the SSB portion. That being the case, I decided to stick down below 14.250. After tuning around for just a few minutes, I heard a very strong station from MA calling CQ. I answered the call–and what do you know–he came right back to me.
Of course, I was weaker than he was–he was 59+, while my report was only 57–but we had a nice, although short, chat. I faded out on him before long.
My second contact was a DX contact! After ending the QSO with the MA station, I tuned down towards 14.200 and heard S51CK calling CQ. Again, he came back to me on the first call! (S5, by the way is the prefix for Slovenia.)
Today, after dinner, I wandered down to the shack and again started looking around for SSB contacts. This time, I made contact with a station in Lawrence, KS. Again, he was stronger, as he was running a Drake transceiver putting out 200W, while my Icom IC735 is rated at only 100W. Even so, conditions were decent, and we had a nice long QSO before the band dropped out on us.
Does this mean I’m going to abandon CW? Hardly. Does it mean I’ll look to get on SSB more than once every 15 years? Probably. SSB is yet another fun thing to do with ham radio.
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