Yogi Berra is purported to have said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” Well, I Yogi had been an amateur radio operator, he might have said, “You can hear a lot by just listening.” The first and third notes below are examples of this…..Dan
Gray line to the rescue
A couple of evenings ago, I was banging out CQs on 10115 kHz. The band didn’t seem particularly good, but you never know what might happen, so I continued to hit the CQ key on my keyer. After a while, I got distracted by some thread on Twitter (I’m @kb6nu there. Follow me.) and had neglected to send CQ for about five minutes. In the meantime, I noticed that it had gotten dark outside.
I was thinking of QSYing to 40m, when all of a sudden, I hear OA4DX call CQ right on the frequency that I’d been using. Of course, I called him immediately.
I’d like to say that signals were 599 both ways, but honestly he was having a bit of trouble copying my call. After a couple of repetitions, however, he got it.
Right after the contact, I looked at a gray line map (see below), and sure enough, both of us were just to the dark side of the gray line. Pretty cool, I’d say.
I work the guy that wrote the book
Yesterday evening, I got on 40m, and after tuning up, I tuned around and heard a few European stations. Hopeful of working some DX, I started calling CQ on 7028 kHz. After two calls, John, ON4UN (author of ON4UN’s Low-Band DXing replied.
He was a solid 599 here. Well, of course he was. A quick check of his QRZ.Com page shows that he has a three-element Yagi for 40m at 30 m in height. See below for a shot of his antenna farm.
You never know who you’re going to run into on the ham bands
Sometime after working ON4UN, I QSYed to 80 m, and was puttering around the shack, and for whatever reason had the rig tuned to 3532 kHz. Right at 0100Z, I hear the call, “SNAIL NET de KU1N QNI? K.”
At first, I thought that this was perhaps a slow-speed traffic net. When I Googled, SNAIL NET, though, I found their web page. According to the web page,
For several years a group of FCARC members have been holding an informal slow speed CW practice net on the 80 meter band. We call ourselves the Snail Net. Some of us never had to take a Morse Code test to get our licenses, others had not used code for a while, felt rusty, and wanted to rebuild the skill.
I thought, what the heck, signals are good, so why not check in? The net control station surprised me by saying “HI DAN” when he recognized my check-in. As it turns out, we’d worked a couple of times before, and like me, he must have been using a computer logging program.
There were five check-ins total (including the net control station), and we all got a chance to make a transmission. The net lasted about 20 minutes and was quite fun. I know I’ll be checking in again. If you’d like to check in as well, look for them on Sunday and Wednesday evenings between 3530 and 3535 kHz at 8 pm Eastern Time (0100Z or 0000Z during the summer).
Peter K3SSS says
What a great idea. Will try to look for them soon, and/or try to start a similar group with my own club North East Maryland Amateur Radio Club. I was first licensed 40 years ago, but ham radio got pushed aside by what you’d expect (beer and girls). Was doing about 25wpm at that time. Now I can keep up with the ARRL 7.5 wpm practice broadcast, but need something more interactive to get back up to 20wpm. Thanks for the post.