The other day I had a QSO with Glen, W1ND. We have worked before, but this time, he mentioned that he had started a blog: the W1ND QRP Blog. Check it out. He has some interesting posts on his end-fed, random wire antennas. He’s had much more success with these than I have.
He also mentioned that he may start RVing soon. I told him that there should be plenty of blog fodder there. So, look for blog posts covering RV hamming.
Talking about blogging, got me to thinking about this blog. I published my first blog post on November 1, 2002, so I’m now in my 20th year. And, there are more than 4,200 posts.
Winter Field Day
As I often do, I get sucked into contests, if only for an hour or two. This weekend, it was Winter Field Day. I didn’t go out and freeze my you-know-what off, but I did operate from a relatively cool basement. (Sometimes, I have to put a cap on down there to stay warm enough.) I only operated for about 55 minutes, but because propagation was so good on 40 meters, I managed to make 50 contacts.
Some observations:
- The vast majority of stations operating were category 1H, meaning that they were operating from their home shacks. I was 1H myself, so I can’ t really complain about that. Maybe if I do it next year, I’ll consider driving out to a park or something and operating from my car at least.
- I operated all CW, and the speeds were far lower than during the summer Field Day.
- Many of the stations calling were off-frequency. This made it harder to determine if they were calling me or maybe someone else who was near my frequency. My advice: Get closer to the calling station when searching and pouncing.
Slow Speed Test, 1/30/22
Tonight, I worked my third K1USN Slow Speed Test (SST). I made 30 contacts in about 45 minutes of work. Not great, but not bad. Unlike my first attempt, I don’t think I worked any first timers, but I did make a couple of memorable contacts.
The first one was with W5QLF. Now, if you’ve worked CW for any length of time, you’ll know that we say that someone is QLF when someone’s keying is so bad it sounds like they’re sending with their left foot. At first, I thought someone was just using a bogus call sign, but W5QLF is actually the guy’s call. Check out his QRZ.Com page.
My last QSO tonight was with Greg, W0GAS. I’m hoping to add his QSL to my collection of QSLs from stations whose call signs spell words. He sent me a nice email after the SST, noting that he’s interested in doing more rag chewing, so I’m looking forward to longer QSOs with Greg in the future.
Rob W4ZNG says
Like you, I too ended up as 1H because the weather was just too cold, at least colder than I have gear to camp in. Contacts… 60% were Home, 23% were Outdoor, the remainder Indoor. It seems that a lot of people stayed home this year.
I used it as a chance to measure battery draw on my home station, and to see how much it takes to refill the laptop’s battery. Also, it it was an opportunity to fully wring out what my apartment antenna can do on 80m, because with so many people on the air I was finally able to log some contacts there. Always something to learn. I’m still amazed at getting in two 15m contacts. The band opened for just about 5 minutes, and boom, there they were!