WA4USN Rookie Roundup 2015

CARS has set up an operating day at the club station, WA4USN, on board the USS Yorktown for this year’s ARRL Rookie Roundup (SSB). For Rookie Roundup purposes, a Rookie is someone who was licensed in the current year, or within the past 2 years (2013, 2014, or 2015). If you’re a rookie or new ham and want to experience the HF side of amateur radio or just want to operate from the club station (it’s a pretty neat place to play radio from), this is your chance!

The club room will be open starting at 1PM, April 19. Rookie Roundup starts at 2PM EDT and goes to 759PM EDT (1800 – 2359 UTC). If you’re interested, drop me a note and I’ll put you in touch with the proper people.

AJ4UQ at one of the WA4USN radios
AJ4UQ at one of the WA4USN radios

Georgia QSO Party 2015

Spent some time playing in the Georgia QSO party this weekend. Band conditions were pretty terrible this weekend and I only worked a handful of stations on Saturday. I couldn’t even hear WWV on any of its frequencies, which is really unusual. Normally I can always hear the 10MHz WWV signal, but this weekend it wasn’t anywhere to be heard. Later in the evening the 15MHz WWV signal popped up, but that was it.

Spent most of Sunday at the radio tuning around 40m looking for more GA stations. Did a little better and ended up the weekend with 42 QSOs and 34 counties.

Highlights included:

  • 2 AB4 stations.
  • Worked KK4UBQ again. Worked her last year in the 2014 QP when she was signing as KK4UBQ/AG.
  • More QSOs, more counties than last year (although that wasn’t hard to beat).

Had a good time tuning around the bands, even though propagation was down in the dumps.

 Band     QSOs     Pts  Mul
     7      42      42   34
 Total      42      42   34
Score: 1,428
1 Mult = 1.2 Q's

NC QSO Party 2015

Spent the afternoon yesterday playing in the North Carolina QSO Party and finished up with 49 contacts (including 2 bonus stations and 1 bonus county) and 40 multipliers. Like last year, it was all on 40m. There were a few very faint stations that I could hear on 20m, but none clear enough to work.

Haven’t worked out my final score yet (over 4000 according to N1MM+), but it easily topped last year’s total. Had a lot of fun playing in the contest and it was nice getting back to the radio.

Cards from the buro

Got my first QSL cards from the incoming QSL card bureau!

I had received an email from the SPARC QSL Bureau a few months ago saying I had a bunch of cards waiting for me, and to send a SASE if I wanted to receive them. Sent off an envelope with postage attached, and today they arrived in the mail! So cool!

Cards from the buro!
Cards from the buro!

Now I have 17 cards to respond to. I’ll have to figure out how to use the QSL bureaus first.

Ham radio goal list 2015

Well, I didn’t get a whole lot of my 2014 goals crossed off the list, but I did manage to get a few crossed off.

For 2015, I’ll carry over most of the 2014 goals.

  • Earn skill levels in CW
  • Get the 2m radio working in the shack
  • Build the SoftRock RXTX kit
  • Get on the radio more
  • Build 2m/70cm Yagi antennas
  • More homebrew projects
  • Worked All States (Digital)

I’ll add more to the list as I (hopefully) cross these off the list.