The stars just didn’t align this week, and as a result, I only managed to make four contacts Monday through Thursday. The two main contributors to this were poor band conditions and a full schedule, which kept me out of the house in the evenings. The 2019-2020 bowling season has started (Monday nights), our amateur radio club meeting was on Wednesday, and yesterday, we went to the movies with some friends.
I think this weekend is going to be more productive, though. Already this evening, I’ve made four contacts, and the Texas QSO Party and the Alabama QSO Party are this weekend. That should allow me to get up to par.
Last Sunday, I worked Bill, KB4PPE. When I looked him up on QRZ.Com, I found this wonderful, home-built shack:
Bill writes, “The shack is powered by an off-the-grid electric system consisting of (2) 100 watt photovoltaic modules, which, through a charge control, are connected to (6) deep cycle golf cart batteries (2×3 for 12 volts). Also online is a 1,500 watt sine wave inverter used for intermittent AC loads such as tools. All radios, lighting, fan, and so on use 12 VDC.”
Finally, Steve, K8QKY, gave us this contesting tip during his talk to the club Wednesday evening. To help him remember what the function keys do while running the N1MM contesting software during a contest, he puts a strip of cloth tape just above the keys on his laptop and writes a mnemonic just above each key. For example, above F4, he might write “K8QKY.”
While it’s kind of difficult to forget what F4 is for, that’s not the case with the lesser-used function keys. Labelling them like this is bound to help you use them more, especially if you’re only an occasional contester, like I am.
Rob W4ZNG says
Every wizard needs an operating tower from which to cast aether-bending spells. Bill KB4PPE has a very fine one indeed.