This weekend was the Fists Spring Sprint, but I had to miss it. Silvia, my wife, and I took Friday and Saturday off to drive over to Holland, MI, on the west side of the state to go to the Tulip Festival.
I did get back home in time to work some of the Mid-Atlantic QSO Party. This contest was fun in that there were quite a few stations on as the states participating in the contest included NY, NJ, PA, MD, VA, and WV. The downside is that not only do those stations have to give you their counties, but their states as well. Fortunately, my logging software had a nice list of county/state codes.
The contest continued into Sunday, but band conditions were horrendous today, and I was only able to manage two contacts today. Overall, I made 26 QSOs, scoring about 950 points.
Sunday morning, I headed out to Manchester to help the Chelsea ARC work the Manchester Canoe Race. For this public service event, I was able to drag along seven other ARROW members. We were positioned all along the 3.5-mile route. It was fun, but the weather was not the best. At least it didn’t rain.
K9TRV (at the mike) and KB6NU (supervising) at the Manchester Canoe Race.
Photo courtesy Mark Mueller, KD8AOM.
This evening, as I mentioned, band conditions were really bad. There must have been some kind of solar flare or something. I did manage to make contact with Jozef, WB2MIC, but after the first set of transmissions, we couldn’t copy one another.
I sent him an e-mail apologizing for losing him, and he replied with a nice note. He said,
The band just went dead. I called CQ about 5 time afterwards and nothing. Tuned around and nothing. Looks like the absorption is now at a max. We’ll do it gain. I was telling you about the Monster Xmatch I built.
This is a very cool project. He not only built the circuit, but built the variable capacitors as well. Click on the link above to read more about how he built the tuner and the capacitors. The page also has links to other articles online that describes how to build your own air variable capacitors.
In a second e-mail, Jozef says,
All the materials to not only make the caps but the coil, standoff insulators, including a nice pair of circular sheer cutters came out to be less than the cost of one Ten Tec variable capacitor “kit”. Total tuner parts was a tad over $40.00. Now what kind of MFJ can you buy for that? There are two links on my Monster Xmatch page that go to where I got the main construction plans and ideas. Let me know what kind of interest there is in my project. I’ll be glad to answer any questions.
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