The ARRL Centennial QSO Party wrapped up yesterday. From what I’ve read, it was a very popular event and did a lot to promote radio activity. I know I had a really good time participating in it and trying to work as many of the W1AW/p stations as I could. My enthusiasm kind of lagged towards the last few months of the year as I got distracted by other things, but it was still cool seeing people tweet about their CQP contacts and progress.
As of today, I’ve got 4325 points, 449 QSOs, and 83 contacts with W1AW/p stations. There’s supposed to be some re-scoring taking place later, so that might change once all the logs are submitted and re-scored.
Spent a few hours at the radio this weekend playing in the RAC Winter contest. Finished out the contest with 26 contacts and 3000 points, including 3 RAC stations (VO1RAC, VA2RAC, and VE4RAC). Covered 3 bands (10, 20 and 40m) with most of my contacts happening on 20m.
I was using the new N1MM+ logger for the first time, and I have to say, it’s pretty good. As a contest logger, it’s hard to beat N1MM or N1MM+ for simplicity.
It was a pretty good time on the radio and I enjoyed hunting around the bands.
Tom/AJ4UQ brought along his radio and setup for digital radio, and we spent the morning operating WX4CHS on 40m and 20m PSK as well as monitoring the local VHF repeaters. Made just under 30 PSK contacts and one repeater contact.
Tom/AJ4UQ doing some PSK for Skywarn Recognition Day 2014
This was my first time doing an event like this, and it was a lot of fun. Had a great time playing radio there, and the staff at NWS Charleston were great hosts.
I’ll be on the air from the Charleston NWS office as WX4CHS on phone and maybe digital too if it’s available. If you’re around, hope to work you on the air!
The former guest room/storage room has been painted, and stuff has been moved in and the radio connected to the antenna. Got the new shack up and running last week just in time for the 4th Annual Worked All Twitter and it’s working out pretty well. The shack also doubles as Connie’s office space, which gives her plenty of room to work.
For some reason, we ended up losing 15m with the shack move, probably from using a shorter length of coax to go from the radio to the antenna. Still have all the other bands though from 40m up to parts of 6m.
A 6 foot table provides a decent amount of room for the radio, monitor and working space. Need to craft some kind of stand to hold the radio head and hand mic. A little MFJ-108B clock provides local and UTC time. We used painters tape to attach the band plan chart temporarily until we decide on a more permanent place for it.
Radio in the new shack
The radio is tucked away underneath a stackable cube thing (nicely covered by the ARRL centennial bandanna thing).
Where the radio lives
About half of the collection of wall paper is up on the wall with several more waiting for me to put them up.
Wallpaper!
Next to the table is the shelf of ham radio books for easy reference. Now I have a whole empty shelf in my office bookshelf that I can fill.
Radio books
Connie also found this awesome mobile antenna holder (commonly marketed as a “pool cue rack”…wider appeal I guess) that was added to the shack yesterday.
