Category: Ham radio

#WATwitter 2013

Thanksgiving (US) is coming up in a few weeks and we all know what that means (besides stuffing ourselves with turkey).

It’s the weekend for the 3rd annual Worked All Twitter!

Take a break from the food during the week(end) of Thanksgiving (Nov 27-Dec 1) to get on the radio and work all your ham friends on Twitter. Get those last few QSOs you need for WAS. Take a break from the lightning exchanges during the fall ham radio contest season for some nice leisurely rag chewing over the air. Share those Thanksgiving dinner stories/disasters/successes instead of the regular OM stories we always hear on the air.

As usual, all bands and all modes. For maximum participation, make use of the parts of the HF bands that are available to the most people.

Spot yourself on Twitter using the #WATwitter and #hamradio hashtags.

Have fun, get on the air and make those contacts!

SC QSO Party 2013

Saturday I played in the SC QSO party for a few hours. Started in the early afternoon and spent some time tuning around 10m, 15m and 20m listening for activity, but like the TN QSO party a couple weeks ago, the only place I was hearing any SC activity was on 40m.

Dropped down to 40m and started hearing a few stations here and there that I managed to get. Later on in the evening things started picking up and I was hearing a lot more SC stations. This QSO party marks the first time I found a frequency and called out CQ, rather than operating in seek and pounce mode (which I also did). Sitting on a frequency and calling out is a bit of a different experience. I didn’t get any pileups or anything, but did end up making 16 contacts over the course of an hour or so. It was pretty fun.

Ended up the day with 30 contacts in the log and got 11 SC counties, including AA4XX in 3 counties.

Had lots of fun playing radio over the weekend. Definitely need a more comfortable chair for the shack.

TN QSO Party 2013

As a bit of a warm up for the SC QSO Party in a couple of weeks, I spent a few hours on the air yesterday playing in the Tennessee QSO Party.Started off slow, but then it started picking up late afternoon/early evening. Made 22 contacts in S&P (seek and pounce) mode tuning around 40m, including the K4TCG bonus station. Not a whole lot but I was content with it. According to N1MM, my score should be 620.

I wandered around 15m and 20m, but the only TNQP activity that I could hear was on 40m. Picked up plenty of rag chewing and nets on the other bands, but zero TNQP activity. I thought it was kind of odd, but maybe those signals were just skipping over me.

Logging was a little easier this time around because now I have a connection between the laptop and the radio, so N1MM is able to get the actual frequency from the radio instead of me having to go back and edit the contact afterwards.

Had fun making contacts. Looking forward to participating in the SCQP on the 21st. There were apparently no QSOs from Charleston County last year, so maybe that will make me a much sought after QSO.

CQ WPX results

Got an email informing me of the log check report for my submission and final results for the CQ WPX contest I participated in back in March.

I had 82 QSOs, lost one because I either heard or entered the call sign incorrectly, so a net of 81 QSOs counted for the contest. It’s too bad. The lost call was a multiplier for me too.

Two stations copied/entered my exchange incorrectly and one station copied/entered my call sign incorrectly, so I guess I wouldn’t have counted for their scores,

Final score ended up being 17520. Good enough to rank #54 in 4-land, #262 in North America, and #967 in the world. With the Rookie overlay, I ranked #6 in 4-land, #22 in North America, and #69 in the world. Not bad for only participating in it 12 out of 48 hours.

Fun contest to operate in. Looking forward to trying it out again next year.

NAQP 2013

Saturday I spent a few hours on the radio participating in the North America QSO Party. Managed to pick up 46 QSOs mostly on 20m and 40m. Added a few new states towards my quest for WAS, including CA, WA and CO. I was just tuning around casually picking out the reasonably strong signals that didn’t require me to work too hard to interpret, as well as states that I knew I didn’t have QSOs with previously.

One thing I did decide during the course of playing radio was that the shack needs a more comfortable chair.