Saturday, May 02, 2009

Good night on the radio

Actually a good afternoon and a good night. 20 Meters, 40 Meters and 80 Meters were all in decent shape.

In the afternoon, I worked a bunch of Italian stations and a few Lithuanians in some kind of contest that's seems to be going on in Europe. It was nice to see QRP making the hop with little difficulty. Of course, I didn't believe any of the 599s that I received as signal reports. As a veteran QRPer, though, you develop a sense on how your signal is making it. If you don't get asked to repeat your call or any of the exchange then your signal is probably at least a 449 or better. If you constantly get asked for repeats, then more than likely you're really way down in the mud.

Then 40 Meters in the evening was long; and I was handing out QSOs to participants in the 7 Land QSO Party. Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and Washington were all coming in strong. A push of the band button on the K2 brought me over to 80 Meters for the New England QSO Party as well as the Indiana QSO Party. I handed out several QSOs in both. The New Englanders, just by their close proximity to me, were blowing the headphones off my ears. I even managed to hand out a few points to some veteran QRPers who immediately came up as "worked before" on the computer log.

All this while melting solder on the MRX40 which is now completed. All I have to do tomorrow is hook up a battery, headphones and antenna to it, to make sure it works. I was going to give it a shot tonight; but I'm a bit tired and want to head upstairs to bed.

73 de Larry W2LJ

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