Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked Wink, WA8KOQ, 20 times. and every single time, he’s been using his gutter antenna. I always get a kick out of working him. Now, he’s got a picture of his antenna on his QRZ.Com page.
Since he’s been using it so long, I asked him during our last QSO a couple of days ago if he’s had to do any special maintenance on it. He replied that no, he hasn’t really done any maintenance on it in all the years he’s been using it.
RAC Winter Contest
As you all know, I’m a very casual contester. Well, last night, I got sucked into the RAC Winter Contest. It was a blast. I made 64 contacts in about an hour and 20 minutes and spent a bit of time actually “running” a frequency. They key, of course, is that you can make contacts with anyone, anywhere in this contest.
One thing that occurred to me while I was letting the N1MM contest logging software call CQ is that I probably could do SO2R (single operator, two radios) operation with a little practice. I could see where I could spend the time spent calling CQ on one band making a contact on the other. That might be something to play around with on Field Day, but maybe the rules don’t allow SO2R on Field Day.
LOTW Update
In July, after uploading to Logbook of the World, I checked my DXCC totals. At that point, I had 159 total DXCC entities confirmed. After uploading to LOTW a couple of days ago, I checked again. Now, I’m up to 161 total confirmed and 160 on CW.
That, of course, begs the question, what is the one DXCC entity that I have on phone (or digital, I guess) that I haven’t worked on CW? And, which two entities were confirmed since July? I don’t recall working any new ones since July.
Finally, as a point of comparison, I search this blog for any previous LOTW reports. Back in November 2012, I noted that I had confirmed a total of 108 entities, with 73 on 30m CW. Now, I’m up to 125 on 30m. Overall, I’ve uploaded 22,320 QSOs, with 6,392 of them being confirmed.
WINK says
Thanks for the kind words on my antenna Dan. It does pretty well and surprises
a lot of hams. Some don’t believe it. About all I have done is re-solder the feedline
once or twice just for preventive maintenance. Did add some radials few years ago, and
that’s about it. 73 cu agn
WINK WA8KOQ
Dave New, N8SBE says
My LOTW statistics: Uploaded 13,966 QSLs 8,075
Seems a much higher QSL-to-Upload ratio. Perhaps because the vast majority of them are contest QSLs. Maybe contesters, both domestic and foreign, are much more active on LOTW?
Dan KB6NU says
I think that’s it exactly.
KI4VKV/Casey says
Was very thrilled to read this blog and the comments. WA8KOQ was my father, he passed away on 9/8/21. He will be very missed. A silent key but he is for sure working on a way to put up a gutter antenna in heaven.
Dan KB6NU says
I’m very sorry to hear that. I worked him many times, and we always had a nice chat.