April 15, 2020

All bands open!

Brief update: I’ve mostly been practicing CW during this stay-at-home order. We did the club meeting via 2m this month, that went ok. The weather’s been really nice, it’s a shame all the state parks are closed. Yesterday my cheapo web hosting server crashed and that was the last straw with them so I’ve switched to a more reputable host (that costs twice as much, $10/mo). The site should be much quicker to load from now on. Band conditions have been in and out but when they’re on it’s been good. On Sunday I saw Fiji pop up on the DX cluster on 12m during the evening. I’ve had good…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in DX

March 17, 2020

SPARC in the Park 2020

We had 15 people show up for the SPARC in the Park event. I brought my Wolf River Coil and setup the KX2 and FT-891. I mostly played with the KX2 CW paddle as I hadn’t tested it out yet. It will take some getting used to. I made a POTA contact and one contact with Billy KN4LUZ in the parking lot. Tom NY4I made a few satellite contacts using the Icom 9700. I spent about 5 hours here, it was a fun time.

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Club, Parks on the Air

March 6, 2020

4 POTA activations in one day!

I planned on doing one activation, seeing how I felt and then maybe doing another. My first planned activation was K-6310, the Holey Land Wildlife Management Area. A bunch of new Wildlife Management Areas were recently added to the POTA list of parks in Florida. This was the first activation of K-6310. Holey Land is located about 6 miles down a nice paved road off US-27 which is an alternate route I sometimes take back from Miami instead of Alligator Alley. Shortly before the entrance to this area there’s a nice boat launch that I thought was the spot. Looking at the map I needed to go a little further…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

March 5, 2020

K-3618 Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park

This is a big park right next to K-4634 that I activated previously. This park is 120 square miles and has basically one road going through it, James Scenic Drive. This is the road I thought I could get to from K-4634. Quite a few cars drove (maybe 6) while I was activating. I’m not sure what the other people are up to. One guy stopped and shut off his truck to ask what I was doing, I think he was expecting something else because he left almost immediately after I explained it. I started on CW and made 10 contacts then switched to SSB. Sideband was almost instant pileup,…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

March 1, 2020

Completed CW Academy Intermediate course!

I’ve completed my 3rd CW Academy course and signed up for their final “Advanced” class that will start in a month. These classes use the online video conference program Zoom. We had 5 students, 1 instructor and 2 associate instructors. Everybody made it through this one which is good, it’s a hard skill to learn and at least one person dropped out of my previous classes. One of the differences in this class and the previous ones was the emphasis on getting on the air. Each week we set Get On The Air goals. This definitely improved my ability and has gotten me to start doing my Parks on the…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in CW

March 1, 2020

North American QSO Party RTTY February 2020 – 142 Contacts!

I made a decent amount of contacts in the 5 hours I operated this contest. 2 contacts with Hawaii. I had a conference earlier in the day so I made a late start. 40m had a lot of QSB so I’m hopeful I was able to complete some of the contacts as I lost contact before getting the Thank You (TU) message from some of them. I’d really like a bigger antenna. I googled around for them after the contest, the one I like is 80ft long and would need a large tower to hold it. Someday.

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

February 18, 2020

VP6R QSL Card

Got a new QSL card from the VP6R DXpedition. I made so many contacts with them it required 2 cards. First time that’s happened.

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in DX, QSL

February 17, 2020

K-3624 Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail

This was my first activation where I got the required 10 QSO’s using CW. I was sitting on a bench so I wasn’t the most comfortable working the key but I got it done. I seem to have an issue sending CQ POTN instead of CQ POTA. I’ll figure that out eventually. This part of the trail I went seemed to be abandoned. I saw a couple people ride by on bikes, two of them just as I was pulling up, luckily I was going slow. I liked this spot, it was peaceful and quiet, good spot for activating. But I have a thing for abandoned places. We had lunch…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in CW, Parks on the Air

February 16, 2020

ARRL DX CW 2020 – 121 contacts

I did this one remotely since I’m attending a wedding in Jacksonville this weekend. I brought along my old Windows laptop so I could run N1MM and Smart SDR for the Flex Radio. It worked really well remotely from the AirBnB. The only issue I had was I setup the “FL FL” macro for repeating my exchange on F11 and there’s a WiFi on/off button right next to it and I disconnected myself during transmission, hopefully they got my exchange. I don’t have remote rotator control setup so I had a little trouble with some of the South American stations since I have the antenna pointed towards Europe. My rates…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Contests, CW

February 15, 2020

K-3638 Majorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park

This park is a popular boat launch site. It was drizzling a little when I arrive so I turned on the lightning detector. It didn’t give any warnings and the rain cleared up. I was trying for an all CW activation for my second time. I got 9 over more than an hour, mostly out west, then I woke W4MMY in the car for some FM contacts to finish it off. I’ll try another one on Monday. I’ll also be in the ARRL DX CW Contest this weekend.

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in CW, Parks on the Air