I did a lot of stuff with the radio club this year, I wrote a Year in Review about it on the club webpage. My big radio things this year were going to the FCG Contest Dinner at Hamcation, usually it’s on the same day as the club meeting. I got to meet quite a few people I knew from on the air and online only, also I won a power supply in the raffle. Hamcation is on the 2nd weekend in February for 2023 and I’ve already got my tickets to this year’s dinner. I also drove up to Dayton this year and did POTA camping on the way….
K-8348 Fort Drum Marsh State Conservation Area
Made a quick stop at K-8348 on a drive across the state to do an activation. Didn’t have tons of time, got 12 contacts then had two people call on top of each other for 5 minutes straight so that I couldn’t copy either of them and both responded to any partial call I gave, so I packed it up. Nice enough spot besides the bird poop on the table.
K-6700 SPARC in the Park
We had another SPARC in the Park event with the club. Decent turn out and lots of contacts got made.
CQ WW CW 2022 – 675 contacts!
I set out with a goal of 600 contacts, last year I got 371 and I wasn’t very focused. Ended up with 21.5 hours according to N1MM+ out of the 48. After the Saturday night I didn’t think I was going to make 600 but things got easier on Sunday and I moved right along. The only one I think I missed that I saw was UP0L in Kazakhstan, just couldn’t get through the pile.
K-4641 Tiger Bay State Forest
Stopped on my way back from a trip to Jax. Really nice brick road into the forest and the dirt road were in great shape. Unfortunately it started raining about 10 minutes after I got setup so I cut it short with only 12 contacts.
K-4625 Jennings State Forest
Stopped for some POTA today. Had a good pileup going on CW and someone kept sending “ID” and I was like why does this guy want me to treat Idaho special. Then I thought maybe that was part of his callsign so I sent it back to him. Then I finally realized I hadn’t sent my call in awhile so I sent it. Need to remember to do it more in CW, I do it by habit in SSB. I was losing my CW focus so I switched to SSB and had a good run but then it started to rain and I wasn’t under cover so I packed it…
Some QSLs
First time getting an eyeball QSL card in the mail. This from the MVARA bus I checked out in Dayton this year.
MARCIfest 2022 – Bradenton, FL
Went to the 2nd Annual Manatee Amateur Radio Club MARCIfest in Bradenton over the weekend. This was a small hamfest with a few vendors. I saw a few SPARC members there. Pretty easy to get to just south on the highway about 20 mins.
Museum Ships Weekend certificate
Received the certificate for making contacts from the American Victory Ship in Tampa Bay, W4AVM back in June. Forgot to post photos when I went there. Here’s some:
SPARC tour of WRMI commercial shortwave station
SPARC members took a field trip down to the WRMI commercial station near Okeechobee in Florida. This station runs 15 transmitters at 100k watts each for 1.5 million watts of RF power!