I had hoped to work the New Jersey QSO Party this weekend. With my 40m dipole, I usually do pretty well in New Jersey, so I had hopes of adding another certificate to my collection.
Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be much activity. I turned on the rig just after 4 pm and didn’t hear a single CW station around the suggested frequency of 7035 kHz. I tuned up to 7235, and did work a phone station, but he was the only one I heard. A bit later, I did find a couple of CW stations, but overall, it was a bust.
Perhaps the date is the problem. People do go on vacation at this time of year, and on top of that, the SSB portion of the North American QSO Party, was going on as well.
Last night, the Flying Pigs held their monthly Run For The Bacon spring from 9 pm to 11 pm. There were quite a few stations on last night, but conditions were less than optimal. Propagation was pretty good, but the bands were very noisy. I gave up after about 45 minutes. I made ten contacts and scored a total of 224 points.
This morning (OK, it’s not the weekend, but it’s close), a crew of men came to trim the trees in my yard away from the power lines. It’s a good thing I was home. They snagged my antennas a couple of times. I’m afraid that if I hadn’t been home, I’d have found them in a pile on the lawn.
After pointing out the antennas to the crew, they were more careful, though, and I even got them to cut down a small tree that I wanted to get rid of. So, all’s well that ends well.
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