4,260 total contacts this year (10,476 lifetime total QSOs) Finished CW Academy and got my CW Ops number, #2626 11 Parks on the Air activations, 1st time doing CW activation, 264 POTA activation QSOs, 17 hunter QSOs Became VE Liaison to the ARRL VEC, 11 new Technicians so far Moved and got a new antenna, Zerofive 10-80m ground plane vertical Confirmed LOTW totals: 6,692 QSLs 171 DXCC Mixed 97 DXCC CW 117 DXCC Phone 141 DXCC Digital just need Idaho SSB for Worked All States Triple play Submitted logs for 25 contests Participated in 75 CWT mini contests, 64 over 10 contacts, 34 QSO high score(huge improvement this year) AA3B…
Weather satellite SDR back online
I used the old tripod for the hexbeam to put the QFH weather antenna up on some military camo poles. It’s at about 12ft. I secured the tripod with some concrete garden blocks for now. I expected to get much cleaner images than when I had it in the attic at the old house but all I was getting was interference: I’m using a Raspberry Pi 4 as the collector and I have loaded OpenWebSDR on it so I tuned it to the 137.9MHz frequency that the satellites use and found that I was receiving a broadcast station on that frequency. I had purchased an FM radio block filter but…
USA Coach ham fest
This weekend was the USA Coach Ham Fest and Rod Run. There was another more established hot rod show at the Quaker Steak and Lube restaurant down the road so there were only 2 hot rods from members there. This event took place when the cancelled SPARCfest would’ve been. It was a beautiful day and a shame we couldn’t do the SPARCfest. I ran a VE session with Lisa KC1YL and Jack N9GKO, we had two people pass the technician exam. I met Wesley KO4EGH, the club’s youngest member(a 9 year old General). There was a decent number of vendors but I didn’t find a remote tuner I was looking…
Back on the air!
I received my Zero Five 80m Ground Plane antenna today. It’s a 43ft vertical with 6 10ft radials at the bottom. I’ve installed it on a pole 9ft up so the radials clear my fruit trees. I’ve been playing around with it a little and it’s got great reception, I might have to do some work on the cabling to get the transmit to work a little better but I see I got to Japan with FT8 at +14db. Hearing lots of Japan stations on 17m. Here’s some pics: I “Called before you dig” and got a clear from all 5 utilities with buried stuff in my area. I think…
ARRL Sweepstakes CW 2020, 72 qso’s, also my 10,000th QSO!
8 contacts into the ARRL Sweepstakes CW contest I hit my 10,000th contact ever. It was with N4ZZ, I’ll send him a card. I’m still in the process of getting my old house ready as a rental so my shack is mostly still in boxes. I pulled out the bare minimum of stuff to get my Flexradio hooked up. I have a Zero-Five 10-80m Ground Plane Vertical on order and Tom said it should ship tomorrow. In preparation for it’s arrival I purchased a 21ft water pipe which I had cut down to 13ft and set it up in my yard in 4 ft of concrete. For the sweepstakes I…
Morning CWT from my new garden, POTA style
I brought my POTA setup to my new QTH and setup in the sweet fruit tree garden I now own. It was a rare brisk morning in Florida (68F) so the weather was perfect. Very little RF noise on 40m, much quieter than the S7 or higher noise I have at my old place, lots of AF noise with people mowing their lawns though. The wire vertical worked well, I might have to look into setting up a vertical since it’ll be cheaper and easier than putting in a tower but we’ll see how it goes. Been painting all week, moving this weekend and then I’ll work on the shack.
AAØO off the air, moving the QTH
Took the antenna down today after the afternoon CWT. Made some DX CW contacts with Sweden and Croatia before shutting it down. Didn’t have any issue taking down the antenna or taking it apart. The hexbeam fit nicely in the box my hammock frame came in. It’s amazing how small it all packed up to. I left the tripod on the roof now, I’ll go back up a little later and fix the roof. I’m planning to use the OCF dipole on some camo poles until I decide on a tower setup at the new place. Be back on the air soon!
New bureau cards
Got some cards from the Bureau in the mail. VE6SH is the IARU president, also got 5X2S from the Uganda DXpedition, also HA7TM, a guy who’s always on a radio. On a side note, at last nights VE session there was an older gentleman and lady who didn’t know each other. While we were grading their tests (they both passed Technician), he got her number and then they left together.
13 Colonies event 2020, All CW
I received the 13 Colonies Event QSL today. I got the “All CW” endorsement, along with getting the “Clean Sweep”.
NAQP CW August 2020 – 209 contacts!
I put in 6.5 hours on the North American QSO Party CW contest over the weekend. I had similar problems with QSB during the day with signals faded out. Hopefully they didn’t have the issue on their end and I got in the log. I made two contacts with Dr. Ted Rappaport N9NB who did the speech at the Dayton contest dinner last year. I sent him my QSL card and told him I really enjoyed the speech. 5 of us from SPARC formed the Aardvarks team again, we only had one team for this one. The NAQP SSB contest is coming up, I might skip that on if I…