Author: Eugene

Shack is QRT

The shack is QRT.

With the move coming up at the end of December, the next few weeks are pretty busy and there probably isn’t going to be much time for any significant radio for a while.

Brought the antenna down this afternoon. After being in the trees for almost three years, it still looks in pretty good condition.

ZS6BKW antenna ready for packing
ZS6BKW antenna ready for packing

Didn’t see any significant wearing on the wire insulation anywhere. A good spraying off and it would probably look just like new aside from the label on the center insulator fading a bit.

ZS6BKW antenna center
ZS6BKW antenna center

It’s not likely I’ll be able to set up an antenna or shack while we’re in the apartment, so playing serious radio will have to wait until we get things set up again at the new house. Might put the radio in the car and try to do some mobile work, or find a nice tree to throw some wire into and play radio out in the field between now and then.

CQWW 2015

Spent a few hours playing in the 2015 CQ WW contest. Didn’t play nearly as long as I did a couple years ago.

10m was pretty active, and that’s where I ended up spending most of my time tuning around. 10m was good for getting to EU early in the day, and then into South America mid to late afternoon. Late afternoon/early evening when 10m started fading out was when I started hearing stations across the Pacific. Grabbed a few contacts on 20m when 10m died out, and snagged a contact on 40m toward the end of the contest just to cover that end of the spectrum.

Even though the number of QSOs and my score didn’t match what I did in 2013, still had a few good highlights this year.

  • JA7OWD (Japan) on 10m
  • VK2GGC (Australia) on 10m
  • KL7RA (Alaska) on 20m
  • TF2LL (Iceland) on 20m
  • KG4EM (Guantanamo Bay) on 20m

109 QSOs across 3 bands this year. I’m happy with that.

 Band     QSOs     Pts  ZN    Cty
     7       1       3    1    1
    14      24      60   13   18
    28      84     221   16   39
 Total     109     284   30   58
Score: 24,992

2015 ARRL Auction

It’s preview time for the 2015 ARRL Auction. Quite a few items up for auction this year, especially in the Vintage books section. As usual, there are copies of ARRL Handbooks from decades past. There are also a lot of books from the 1910/1920 period, which is different from previous auctions I’ve seen. I’m pretty intrigued by those items.

Also interesting this year are 5 mystery boxes filled with goodies from the ARRL Lab.

So what’s in the box? We don’t know–exactly (more about that below). But Lab Engineers do because they personally put these boxes together and they’ve promised extra surprises in honor of the ARRL On-Line Auction’s 10th anniversary.

Now keep in mind, what they see as treasures may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we did sneak a forbidden peek and think that, if you’re a winner, you’ll be happily surprised once this mystery is unwrapped.

It will be interesting to see what some of the auction items will go for this year. There are a few books that I’ll be bidding on, maybe some of the gear, and at least one of the mystery boxes.

Kansas QSO Party 2015

Got on the radio for the first time in quite a while (since Field Day I think) to play in the Kansas QSO Party for the first time. The KS QP is one of those two day contests, Saturday and Sunday. Rain and thunderstorms here on Sunday meant that I only got to play radio on Saturday.

One of the fun things the organizers did this year was have a bunch of 1×1 stations participating, which would spell KANSAS SUNFLOWER QSOPARTY if you worked enough of them. I managed to work enough stations to spell KANSAS, and was short only an R station to spell SUNFLOWER.

Managed to make 22 contacts on 20m and 40m. Strangely enough, with the exception of two stations, the only stations I was able to hear were the 1×1 stations. Maybe if I had played for a few more hours I might have found some other stations.

Fun QSO party to play in. Hope to be able to participate in it again next year.