On Saturday, some members of our club gathered at our station at the Washtenaw Red Cross Building to work the Michigan QSO Party. The contest started at noon, but I didn’t get over there until about 3pm. When I did finally get over there, I found Thom, W8TAM; Dinesh, AB3DC; Gary, W8GMD; and Mark, W8FSA.Shortly after I got there, Mark, Dinesh, and Gary took off. (I hope it wasn’t my breath!)
Thom was at the controls, cranking out QSOs on 40m phone. After about a half hour, Thom claimed that he needed a break, so I took over.
I had brought my Kent paddle, WinKeyer, and bag of assorted adapters and cables with me, but I found that I didn’t need them. Thom had a small paddle that he uses for POTA activations and a Mortty. A Mortty is an amazingly small CW and RTTY keyer that provides all of the WinKeyer functionality necessary to run CW via N1MM contesting software. As you can see from the photo, it’s very small, and it worked like a charm.
My first stint was about an hour, and I made about 45 contacts. Then, Thom took over again and made a bunch of phone contacts. After eating some dinner, I took over again and made about 45 more contacts. Overall, I contributed about 90 CW contacts (180 QSO points) in two hours or so of operation. I’d have liked to stay longer, but wasn’t able to. The final total for the club station, W8RP, was 390 contacts and a total score of more than 47,000 points.
I made 45 contacts from my home station as well. Overall, it was a lot of fun. Maybe next year, I’ll try to find an obscure Michigan county to work from, and if I can convince some of my compatriots to join me, we can activate a rare one.
Going deep
We usually don’t get into very deep conversations on amateur radio. Sometimes, if you’ve worked a guy many times, he’ll open up to you about some personal issues. For example, I had one guy tell me about his wife’s cancer. Another told me about his own personal struggles with cancer.
Of course, this was all via CW. I think it might be easier to talk about personal matters on CW because you can’t hear the emotion in the other operator’s voice.
On Sunday, however, I got thrown for a loop. After exchanging signal reports, locations, and names, my contact asked, “SO HW DO U THINK THE WORLD IS GOING?” That was kind of out of the blue, so I asked him to repeat the question.
For the first time in a long time, I was really flummoxed. After all, we just don’t talk about those things on amateur radio, do we? Don’t we kind of frown on tackling topics like this, especially on the ham bands?
I asked myself whether this guy was just baiting me or if he was really interested in what I had to say. After considering this for a moment, I thought to myself, “What the heck?” and jumped right in. As it turns out, he was really interested in what I had to say. He had his own opinions, of course, but I believe that he did listen to mine as well.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a long time to chat at the time, so we weren’t able to solve the world’s problems in that one QSO. I’m looking forward to our next contact, though. And, next time you work me, please feel free to bring up difficult topics. I promise to listen to you if you listen to me.
The three tenets of polite conversation – no religion, politics, or sex. These subjects are all ‘live rails’, and really should be avoided, if you don’t want to start a small war.
These days, it seems there are those that believe that unless you engage in those subjects, you have nothing interesting to say. I tend to avoid folks like that, although from time to time I’ve been sucked into such conversations, much to my regret.
Nothing is ever gained by it, and much can be lost, in my opinion.
Well, I also think that there’s something to be said FOR discussing these topics, even over amateur radio. How can we work out our differences is we don’t talk about them? I think the key is to try to determine as soon as possible if you’re being trolled or not. If I’d gotten the impression that the other fellow was not actually trying to have a civil discussion, I would have pulled the plug on the QSO quickly.
It’s always touchy but if the other operator seem open to discussion, I say go for it! As long as everyone stays civil, there’re a lot of bridges that can be built – and brother, do we need some of that these days. One great thing about radio, if the other guy can’t be civil, it’s easy to spin the dial.