Here are a few random notes about my operations over the past week or so:
- 9G logged. Mark, W8MP, is a friend of mine who has appeared in this blog in the past. He’s a Delta airlines pilot, and he’s begun flying to Accra, Ghana, of all places. Since service to and from Accra isn’t like service to and from Chicago (or even Walla Walla, WA, for that matter), once he flies there, he’s stuck there for a couple of days. So, on a previous trip there, he looked into getting a Ghanaian ham license and was issued the call 9G5MP. This last trip, he actually took some ham gear and set up operations. We worked him from WA2HOM last Saturday. We have some other ideas about encouraging ham radio in Ghana, but we’ll talk about that in future blog posts.
- Canadian AM on 7.115 MHz? I forget why exactly I was tuning around 7.115 MHz, but the other day, I heard a couple of Canadians working each other on AM. It’s certainly legal for them to be there, but I still thought it was kind of strange.
- Watch those band limits! Speaking of 7.115 MHz, on Monday morning, I happened to be in the shack, and I heard a U.S. station talking to a Canadian on 7.115 MHz LSB. Again, it was perfectly legal for the Canadian to be there, but not the American. I e-mailed the American and politely suggested that he shouldn’t be working LSB so far down the band.
- I’m not really a band cop, but…. Tuesday evening, sometime after midnight–which I guess would actually make it very early Wednesday morning, I hear a CW beacon on 7.02825. The beacon repeatedly sent the stations callsign, power (200 mW), and the operator’s e-mail address. Again, I emailed the guy and politely suggested that he might not want to operate that beacon on such a popular CW frequency. He emailed me back and asked for a signal report. I didn’t hear him this evening, so maybe my polite suggestion worked.
- AGE HR IS 90. In the last couple of days, I’ve worked two guys who were 90 years old, K2MV and W0LCI. Both of them were clipping right along at 23-25 wpm. I hope I’m still that good when I get to be their age.
- Who says kids aren’t into ham radio? Yesterday, I got a card from W0W, the Kid’s Day special event station of the Boulder Amateur Radio Club Juniors. The QSL was printed on 8.5 x 11 card stock and included several pictures of kids having fun with ham radio. This evening, I talked to Phillip, KD8RFR, a 19-year-old, who got his ticket less than two weeks ago.
Chris@Apple Roof Cleaning Tampa says
Wow, 90 years OLD ! God Bless those senior hams !