Last night was a fun one on 80m, even though the only antenna I still have for this band is a low, 85-ft. random wire.
My first contact of the evening was with K4ZDH. The call was vaguely familiar to me, but when I typed it into my logging program, it didn’t find any previous QSOs.
Only when he said his name was Riley, and his QTH Gettysburg, PA, did it strike me. This was Riley Hollingsworth, the former head of amateur radio enforcement for the FCC! (Gettysburg has long been the home of the FCC, at least it’s amateur radio operations.) We had only a short QSO, but I was able to tell him that I’d enjoyed hearing him speak and to thank him for his service with the FCC.
A little bit later, I worked Steve, WA1HUD. Steve is the chief engineer and holder of license for WNE Coast Radio and president of the New England Historical Radio Society. WNE is currently under construction and wil be a CW maritime station designed to help preserve marine CW.
As you can imagine, building a station like this isn’t for the faint-hearted. As an example, just take a look at the pictures of the loading-coil construction project. WNE will operate on 500 kHz, meaning that the antennas will be very big. The loading coil will be pretty big, too.
I couldn’t find a way to join the NEHRS on their site, but if you have a couple extra bucks, I’d bet they would appreciate the donation. I plan to become a “member” one way or another.
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