The 2024 edition of the SC QSO Party was a pretty fun time. Had some friends over to put W4BXC on the air for the QSO party and we managed to get a few pileups going, which was a lot of fun.
Band conditions seemed pretty decent, and I was hearing a lot of DX on 10m from as far away as Czechia and Slovenia. There was even a ZS1 station that I heard (first time I’ve heard anything from that part of the world from here), but he went QRT before I was able to try for a contact.
Ended the day with 119 contacts in the log (41 more than last year) including the three bonus stations: W4CAE, WW4SF, and K4YTZ. Changes to the scoring means scores will be a lot higher this year than in previous years.
Contest: SC QSOPARTY Band QSOs Pts Mul Mt2 Pt/Q 7 95 274 47 1 2.9 14 19 76 11 0 4.0 28 5 20 2 0 4.0 Total 119 370 60 1 3.1 Score: 26,370 1 Mult = 2.0 Q's
Not sure if the N1MM+ score is accurate but going by the QSO points and multipliers it’s showing, we should have (370*60) + 850 = 23050 points. I’ll have to wait until the official scores are out in a few months.
Kudos to the bonus stations and the mobile/expedition operators who went out to activate multiple counties.
Back in August, I submitted my first amateur radio license renewal (US amateur radio licenses expire after 10 years). Getting a vanity call sign after passing the Amateur Extra test pushed the expiry date from June to November so once I was within the 90 day window of being able to renew, I went forth with renewing my license.
License renewal is easy enough to do yourself, but if you run into problems or just want to offload the paperwork to someone else, any VE team can give you a hand. Since I’m a VE with the Laurel VEC (and a few other VECs as well), this seemed like a good opportunity to learn the process.
If you do the license renewal yourself through the FCC (should be a pretty simple process), there’s no charge aside from the Congress-mandated $35 fee the FCC charges. License renewal through a VEC is also a pretty simple process (the VEC may charge an additional fee on top of the $35 FCC fee).
If you need or want to do your license renewal through a VEC, find a VE team. A local team might be easier since there will be some paperwork to sign, but it doesn’t have to be. Get in touch with them and let them know you want to do a license renewal. They may have you come in to their next exam session, or more likely just ask for your call sign. The VE will look up your call sign, generate a FCC 605 application form with all the pertinent information on it, and have you review and sign the form. If the VE team charges a fee, pay them. Then the VE team submits your paperwork and depending on the VEC they’re affiliated with, you should receive an email from the FCC with instructions on how to pay the $35 fee within a day or two, or a week at the latest (make sure to check your spam/junk folder). Pay the $35 fee (the FCC email contains all the instructions for how to pay), and by the next business day, your license should be renewed! The FCC fee needs to be paid within 10 calendar days of when the FCC sent the email or your application will be dismissed. If that happens, you’ll have to contact the VE team to ask them to resubmit the application.
Along with renewing my license, I needed to make sure my ARRL VE credential was also updated with a new expiry date. This also was a pretty easy process. From the ARRL VE page,
ARRL accreditation renewal is automatic for ARRL VEs who maintain a current address, contact phone number and/or email address on file at the VEC office and have participated at an exam session within the past 5 years.
https://www.arrl.org/become-an-arrl-ve
So you don’t really need to do anything, but you might want an updated expiry date on your ARRL VE credential badge. That’s easy enough to do by sending them an email to let them know. A few weeks later, you’ll get some stickers in the mail that you can stick on your badge. There’s even a sticker that tells you how many ARRL VE sessions you’ve participated in.
New ARRL VE expiry date stickers (personal information redacted)
The 25th edition of the ARRL Antenna Book is on the shelf now, joining the 22nd edition book I picked up when I was first licensed in 2012.
25th edition of the ARRL Antenna book
It’s a pretty big book, and the digital download weighs in at about 1 GB (~1.4 GB uncompressed). About 1GB of that is the supplemental content, software, propagation prediction, and antenna modeling files. By contrast, the CD included with the 22nd edition was just under 650 MB.
Content wise, it’s pretty similar to the 22nd edition with some expanded sections on antenna modeling and propagation. Where this version shines is in all the extra content provided in the digital download. The supplemental files for each chapter alone accounts for about half the size of the digital download (about 770 MB).
Some new amateur radio handbooks got added to the collection this week.
At a used bookstore with a much larger selection of amateur radio related books than expected, I found a hardcover 1989 ARRL Handbook in pretty good shape and decided to add it to the collection.
1989 ARRL Handbook
It’s about as hefty as the 1988 ARRL Handbook that was added to the collection a while back. I really like the 1980s and 1990s ARRL Handbooks for all the homebrew projects they have in them.
Thanks to my father-in-law, I also now have a 23rd edition of the Radio Handbook by William Orr/W6SAI, which will go along with the 17th edition Radio Handbook I was given a while back.
1997 23rd edition Radio Handbook by William Orr W6SAI
He also gave me a copy of an 8th edition of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook by A. Frederick Collins, from 1940.
1940 8th edition of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook by A. Frederick Collins
Title page of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook
Lots of good info in these books. Going to have to make some more room on the shelves to squeeze these in.
Time on the air has been pretty scant lately, mostly because of being busy with other things and partly because of not having a permanent antenna (aside from the ones in the attic).
The 10m dipole up in the attic got some use in the ARRL 10m contest a few weeks ago. I was only operating casually in between working on other things, but managed about 5 contacts or so. Seemed to work reasonably well. That, Field Day and the NC and SC QSO parties have been about the only times I’ve been on the air this year.
For 2024, I think I need to spend more time getting back on the air. To that end, I’ve decided to make learning about and developing skills for portable operations one of my 2024 ham radio goals.
While walking out to one of the mailboxes in the subdivision, I noticed one of the common areas around the mailboxes had a few trees that managed to survive the home construction. Seemed like it would make a good spot to practice setting up portable operations. No tables or chairs to sit at though unfortunately.
