This past weekend - winter storm Jonas hammered the east coast with snow and ice. I was snow bound at home for 3 days. We lost power for 6 hours on Friday. The great thing about QRP is that you can run forever on batteries and solar. I made a big dent in my QRP Challenge QSOs with propagation being good. I made a total of 26 new DXCC's for a total of 55. The past three days was equivalent to the first 23 days. Now that I am back working again, propagation has not been good on 40m with too much QRN in the evenings when I am home. Notable contacts from the weekend were Hawaii AH6V, and Alaska K3Y/KL7. I was really surprised at the Alaska station coming back to me on 17m with my measly 5 watts. Also notable was the contact with Rodriguez Island 3B9FR at over 2000 miles per watt, and Kenya 5Z4/DF3FS. The last 50 will be tough though. I have purposefully limited my mode to CW for now. We will see how far we get with that approach.
Don Wilhelm repaired my K1 and installed the K6XX tuning indicator. I should have that back by the weekend or Monday at the latest.
Dave Anderson K4SV completed his challenge and Vlad N3CZ is almost there at 93. My rotor got frozen and would not turn the hexbeam. Fortunately it was frozen towards South Sandwich for all time new one at #288. I also received my card from Mount Athos - SV2ASP/A from Monk Apollo. That was a great moment cherishing that hard fought contact. Mexico XE2B was on this evening but would not hear my small signal in the QRN - live to fight another day.
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