The other day, I worked a guy who said that he was using a (tr)usdx at 200 W! As it turns out, he had connected his little, 5 W radio (see right) to a linear amplifer.
Our QSO has encouraged me to get mine built. I’m hoping to get strarted on that this weekend.
One thing that he warned me about is to make sure to take ESD precautions. Indeed, several of the members of our club who have built these have had ESD failures. I do all my assembly work on a conductive mat, and for this build, I’ll also make sure to use the ESD wrist strap. The elevated humidity in my basement should help mitigate the problem as well.
Dead last in the MS QP
Last Saturday, I got an email from W5XX. Attached, were the results of 2022 MS QSO Party. Turns out, that with only 5 CW QSOs and 10 points, I was dead last from the state of Michigan. There were a few other participants that scored lower than me, but only a few.
A 30 wpm ragchew
I recently had a contact with Jeff, KA9s. He was going pretty fast (30 wpm), but I decided that since his signal was pretty strong, and his fist was pretty good, that I could hang with him. So, I cranked my keyer up to 30 wpm and called him.
Over the first couple of exchanges, I discovered that I could indeed hang with him and settled in for a ragchew. Jeff was a great ragchewer. The conversation never lagged as he asked question after question. An hour later, I realized that I had to QRT.
I have noticed that I’ve been getting faster lately, and this QSO just confirmed this. Today, I looked up Jeff on QRZ.Com and realized why he’s such a speedy operator. His last name is Goodspeed!