Archives: February 2019
February 26, 2019

Activated Caladesi Island State Park K-1844 today. It's no longer an island after a hurricane closed the pass years ago. There's two ways to get there, either on a ferry from Honeymoon Island or walking in from Clearwater. I picked up a cart at Dicks Sporting Goods a few weeks back so I figured…
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February 24, 2019

This is a new contest record for me. Also I think the most time I put into a contest. I took a couple half hour breaks and an extended dinner and cigar break, operated about 9 hours total. I turned the volume down on the RTTY tones so they didn't stick with me quite as long as the last couple times…
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February 24, 2019

Yesterday I upgraded the balun on my 80m Off Center Fed Dipole from a 4:1 MFJ to a Balun Designs 4:1. The new one is designed to work in compromised environments, such as over a house like mine is. Since I was already on the roof and had put up an extra pully on the thrust bearing under the hexbeam…
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February 22, 2019

Some new QSL cards came. I made the contact with R7MA and looked at his QRZ page, he has some impressive antennas and a cool card so I sent my QSL. I liked the stamps too, so I kept them. St Helena Island is here: There's a couple hams on St Helena Island, this was my 2nd contact.
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February 18, 2019
I did a little bit of this contest Friday, then a little before I went out on Saturday and then a little on Sunday. This one is fun because it's all DX. It's 48 hours though, which is a long time to do the whole thing. I joined the Florida Contest Group a couple weeks ago and Wolf NN7CW is a…
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February 17, 2019

This was a really fun one. I went right after the Brooksville Hamfest. The state forest is pretty big, I went to the Croom Lake section. I've been to Croom a few times before for the mountain bike trails, so I was familiar with the area. I went with the gf, we found a car trail back into the woods…
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February 17, 2019

Went to the Brooksville Hamfest today. Meh. If it were free maybe but for $5 there wasn't much to it. It was at a Scout Reservation. This would be a cool place to be a scout.
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February 11, 2019
Map of contacts locations I participated a little bit in the 48 hours CQ WPX RTTY contest. I ended up with 143 contacts, broke down like so: 80: 3 40: 84 20: 56 Total: 143 Prefixes: 109 Total Score = 37,387 I turned down the volume a lot this time so the RTTY sound didn't stay with me too long this…
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February 11, 2019

I went to Hamcation in Orlando on Saturday. Went with Norm KA1IJA from the SPARC club. We met up with some other guys from the club as well. The setup at the convention was pretty much identical to last year, right down to the booth location. I picked up a LiFePO4 15Ah battery for my portable work…
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February 11, 2019
Received QSL cards from KM1CC and HV0A. I had to hold off sending my to KM1CC because the Cape Code National Seashore was closed during the gov'ment shutdown.
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