A couple of weeks ago, I heard a guy call CQ. What made this signal memorable was the severe chirp. Since I knew the guy, I decided to answer the CQ and tell him how badly he was chirping.
As it turns out, he was using a tube transmitter that he had just cobbled together, and he knew he was chirping. This didn’t bother me one bit, as I knew the guy, and he was just having fun with ham radio.
This didn’t sit so well with one operator, though. Several times I heard this other guy send “LID.” Of course, he didn’t identify, which I think makes him more of a lid than the first fellow.
Drifting into QRM
Speaking of drifting, I was chatting with a guy the other day when another station popped up less than a kHz away. This wasn’t a big deal. Even though I could see the signal on my panadapter, the filters in the radio are so good, that it wasn’t interfering at all with my QSO.
That is until the other guy started drifting down towards the station. After a couple of exchanges, the guy I was in contact with said, “QRM now, so will sign on this one.” I don’t think that he realized that it was his drifting that actually caused the QRM.
Make someone’s day
A couple of months ago, I worked someone in Louisiana. I looked them up on QRZ.Com, and saw that even though they were licensed in July 2018, they had very few QRZ.Com lookups. Well, wanting to welcome them to ham radio, I sent them a QSL card.
Yesterday, I received a card back. It read:
Thanks for the QSL card. First that I have received! Finally got mine ordered. Hope to work again on CW.
How cool is that? I don’t send out QSL cards for every single contact, but when I have a nice chat with someone, or I think it could be their first QSL card, I’ll send one of mine. You never know when you’ll make someone’s day