November 9, 2020

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…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas, Contests, CW

October 1, 2020

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.

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in CW

June 6, 2020

CW Ops #2626

Today I was honored to join the CW Ops as member #2626. To join you have to be nominated by a member and then sponsored by 3 other members that have at least 2 contacts with you at 25 Words Per Minute(WPM). I wouldn’t be able to do that if it weren’t for the CW Academy. I highly recommend the CWA for learning morse code. I’ve taken all four levels of it and it helps immensely (as long as you practice everyday). Thanks to all my instructors, Level 1 Pete AG3R, Level 2 Prep Phil W2OZB, Glenn W4YES & Mark KD8EDC, Intermediate John AJ1DM & Tony VE2KM, and Advanced Joe…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in CW

May 29, 2020

Graduated CW Academy!

Last night I completed the CW Academy Advanced class, which is the 4th CW Academy class I’ve taken. I highly recommend the CW Academy for learning morse code. The reason it worked for me is the accountability. There’s 4-5 other guys in the class, and it’s a video chat so they can see you, and it definitely shows if you don’t practice during the week. This makes a nice feedback loop where everyone pushes everyone else to get better. I’m able to send at 26 words per minute and my copying speed is higher, though I still get a little lost during longer raw chew sentences at higher speed. Big…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in CW

April 29, 2020

Over 400 QSO’s in the Florida QSO Party!

I had a great time with the Florida QSO Party over the weekend. Normally a bunch of us do the contest from the club station, and we won Top Florida Club the last two years. With the antenna damage and the virus we weren’t able to do that this year so I used my home station. I ended up with 403 contacts with 367 of them in CW. This contest is everyone trying to contact all the counties in Florida. Since I’m in Florida I got all of the CW contacts from calling CQ. The CW Academy classes are really paying off. At one point I got 91 contacts in…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Contests, CW

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

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

February 13, 2020

K-4632 Myakka State Forest – first CW activation

I’ve been setting more and more challenging goals for my Get On The Air goals for my CW Academy Intermediate class I’m taking. This weeks goals is to do some POTA activations using CW. I made 4 contacts with CW on this activation. I was going for 10 but I stopped getting responses to my CQ’s so I switched to SSB to finish the activation with 17 QSO’s. I was a bit delayed in getting out due to meeting up with the club about tomorrow’s antenna project. I planned to arrive at the park before the CWT started but ended up doing my activation during it. The CWT is a…

Read more

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