Sunday, January 30, 2011

Closing Out January

I have not posted in a while - 2 weeks. It does not look like I will get the K3Y/6 station as I had wanted. I had taken my rig to PA with a Buddistick Vertical and it appears totally deaf right now. I don't know if it is the snow cover, the atmospheric conditions or what but I could not hear anything. So I miss being on the air. I also missed the CW training net on Saturday mornings.

During the month long event, I have contacted 27 K3Y stations (some are duplicate) and got a bunch of region 7 at QRP power. I have contacted every region except for W6.

On 1/22 I heard WU0L calling CQ. He hails from SD so I was excited to get only my second SD contact. WU0L is vacationing in Weslaco TX so it is not to be a SD contact but a second TX contact with the same station.

On 1/22 I made a phone contact with J79XB1 - Seth Sjostrom (who hails from Sweden) from the DX entity Dominica near Guadeloupe in the Carribean Sea. On the same evening I called Peter Horvath HA8RM in Hungary also on phone. I was at QRO power levels for both at 100 watts.

I worked the NAQCC Sprint on 1/20 and was able to bag a couple more new states at QRP power AR and AL both in region 4. My exchanges were clumsy and inefficient and was only able to muster about 15 QSOs in 2 hours which is a little bit below middle of the pack after having reviewed the Sprint results. It was still a lot of fun though and was cited in the NAQCC newsletter as a first timer.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Recent Contacts

Still Only 41 DX entities now,
33/50 states worked QRP - 5 more than last update
50/50 states worked - waiting QSL from SD - 49 confirmed

SKCC has the 5th Anniversary Special Event during the month of January and 89 operators are calling from all over the country. I made 13 contacts and got 9 out of 10 calling regions. I am only missing region 6 (CA) which would make a complete sweep. I used QRP power for most of the contacts unless QRM or poor band conditions warranted. I did get some hard states QRP - Wyoming and Washington - in the process.

I plan to work more region 7 and region 0 in the coming days to fill the QRP holes and I expect to work AK, HI, CO, UT, ID, NV and of course CA.

I did not work DX the last few days as I concentrated on SKCC special event QSO's

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Recent Contacts

1/11/2011 update

Well the logbook is starting to fill out - 41 DX entities now,
28/50 states worked QRP (just sent a massive mailing of QSL cards)
50/50 states worked - waiting QSL from SD

S59A - Drago from Slovenia - only interested in low band DX - got him on 80m CW. Does not QSL unless specifically requested - think will send him one. He has an interesting QTH on a hilltop near the Austrian border. This one send either witha bug or a straight key as he really accentuates the dash in "A".

V5/DH2HD - German Michael Borsch sending from Namibia - broke into a phone pileup on 40m. he was booming in with his beam. Got so excited that he came back to me that I forgot to give him my state - just thanked him for the 59. Tried to chase him as he said he would change modes to RTTY - but could not break thru - not very experienced in RTTY and just did not have the macros to be effective. My PSK macros just would not cut it.

SV1ENG - Antonis from Greece - second contact with this station - both on 40m.

LZ2VU - Peter from Bulgaria and second Bulgarian contact, but Peter is the first on 40m.

YV5DRN - Venezuela and his name is Leandro - first CW contact with this DX 40m, the other 2 were 20m CW and 20m PSK

Worked a couple of K3Y/N special event stations for SKCC - and I got region 1 and region 7 stations - one in MA and the other in WA. There are 8 other stations for all 10 calling regions - if I can find all ten - I get an award from the SKCC.

From a couple of days ago 1/8/2011......

Z35T - Macedonia - his name is Ozren - 40m CW

IS0HQJ - Sardinia - Francesco is his name - 40m CW

EI9JF - Nicky from Ireland - 40m CW

OM1XQ - Patrik from Slovakia - 40m CW

VP9HW - Stephen from Bermuda - 40m CW

Last but not least - KB0KBJ - Steve Olson in South Dakota. This proved difficult but Steve and I were able to connect. First we tried phone - on both the 40 and 20 meter bands - no copy. We tried CW on 40 meters and after much effort we were able to hear very faint signals of each other - call signs and exchanged signal reports. SD is the last state for WAS for me.