This time of year, it’s cold down in my basement, where my shack is located. To measure just how cold it is, I stuck a K thermocouple into my Fluke 5-1/2 digit DMM. After a fair amount of settling time, it measured 17.5°C, or 63.5°F.
It’s supposed to be 40 degrees outside today, so maybe the basement will also warm up a little.
Contesting for fun
I played around a little in last weekend’s ARRL International DX CW Contest. I operated for about two hours total, making 40 contacts in 30 different DXCC entities. This coming weekend, I plan to participate in the South Carolina QSO Party on Saturday and the North Carolina QSO Party on Sunday. For more information on upcoming state QSO parties—which are a great way to get started in contesting because they’re very low stress events—go to the State QSO Party Challenge Calendar.
WB0ISG keeping his grandfather’s call on the air
A couple of days ago, I worked Don, WB0ISG. I was pleasantly surprised when I looked him up on QRZ.Com that, despite having a call that dates back to the 1970s, he’s a relatively young guy. (These days, I’m pleasantly surprised any time I work someone on CW that’s younger than I am.)
As it turns out, WB0ISG was his grandfather’s call sign. He writes:
I started out my ham career as KG5LKO, but changed to WB0ISG once I found my grandpa’s old call. It hadn’t been used since 1985, before I was born. Nice to have it back out in the ether. If you knew my grandpa, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.
Don is also a blogger. His site, WB0ISG.Com, includes the following sections:
Check it out.
My basement gets down to 59F during the coldest days of winter, mainly because I don’t heat the area with the furnace. My basement shack is in an enclosed area about 10 x 20 ft, and I have an electric strip heater I turn on when I’m on the shack. It can warm up the area in a relatively short period of time, but I don’t leave it on when I’m not in there, to save energy. I used to have a dorm carpet to help deal with the cold concrete floor, but it got wet during the last little flood, so I pitched it.