There were two state QSO parties this weekend, the Louisiana QSO Party and the Mississippi QSO Party. The good news is that operations allowed me to qualify my participation for the State QSO Party Challenge, although just barely. The bad news is that there didn’t seem to be much activity from those states.
I made eight MS contacts, but only two LA contacts. I’m not sure if it was band conditions or maybe my antenna orientation, but there just didn’t seem to be that much activity.
Having said that, I hope that you will all consider operating the MI QSO Party, which is coming up in less than two weeks, on Saturday, April 17, from 1600Z – 0400Z. I’m still hoping to activate one of Michigan’s more sparsely-populated counties, but my plans aren’t settled yet.
A25RU in the log
When A25RU, the Russian DXpedition to Botswana, first got on the air, they created some pretty big pileups, big enough that I knew that I’d be calling for a long time with no guarantee of success. As I’ve noted before, I don’t really have the patience for that, so I passed on it.
A couple of days ago, though, I heard them on 40m CW. There didn’t seem to be a big pileup, so I joined the fray. Zooming in the panadapter on my Flex 6400, I could see where there were open spots in the pileup, and could see the stations that A25RU was replying to. This made it easy to find a frequency to call on, and I worked him on the tenth call. Wayyy before I lost patience.
Ohms, Amperes, and Voltas
After working the contests last night, I settled in for a little ragchewing. One of the hams I worked happened to have the surname Ohm. How appropriate I thought.
That got me curious as to how many Ohms are amateur radio operators. Searching the QRZ.Com database, I counted 18 Ohms. Next, it occurred to me to count the Amperes and the Voltas. I could find a single Ampere, but there were 45 Voltas!
The next name that came to mind was Marconi. There are lots of Marconi clubs and Marconi special event stations. In among all those call signs, I spotted 45 hams with the surname Marconi.
Leave a Reply