Saturday, January 07, 2012

A few QSOs

But not nearly enough time spent on the radio today, there were just too many things to do.

I had hoped to participate in the Polar Bear Moonlight Madness Event by putting together a portable station using my Buddistick in conjunction with my magmount, using the Jeep as a groundplane.  W3BBO has been doing this, using his Buddistick on a mount on his car instead of a normal Hamstick radiator, and has been getting great results, including working Fiji the other day!

The weather would have been great for this, too.  A high of 60F (15C) and sunshine. It felt more like April than January.  If Winter keeps up like this, I will not be sad; but sooner or later, you just know we'll have to  "pay the piper" for this.

So I ended up just operating from the shack in between chores.  Fortunately, I dd make two Polar Bear contacts - Scotty N0AZN on 15 Meters and Ken WA8REI on 20 Meters who had an absolutley MONSTER signal due to his new Mosely Yagi that went up yesterday.  599 +++++++ into New Jersey, Ken!

In between the two of them, I also managed to work WT5RZ who was running a SOTA (Summits on the Air) station.  The signal was weak here - 339 at best.

I would like to take advantage of 40 Meters for a rag chew tonight as the neighborhood QRN is not bad tonight.  The folks with the plasma TV must be at the movies. Hi!  But the RTTY Roundup has digital signals all the way down to 7.030 MHz.

Switching on down to 80 Meters yielded a QSO with Bob W1IS from Stow, MA, near Boston, who was pumping 100 mW into the aether with a homebrew rig. Good enough for a 559C signal into NJ.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very

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