January 28, 2020

Winter Field Day 2020

Once again we had Winter Field Day at the Clearwater Fire Training Facility. It’s a great location and they give us the run of the training areas. We setup a beam, a rotating dipole, 2 slopers and an off center fed dipole. We ended up with over 1200 contacts and covered every US section. It was a really nice day but rather cold once it got dark. I worked almost exclusively on the CW station and found I was able to keep up with the slow field day sending speeds. I think it was a success and everyone had a good time.

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas, Club, Contests, CW

November 25, 2019

CQ WW CW 2019 – 110 contacts, no decoder, all head copy!

I’ve been working hard on my CW skills. I took the level 2 prep class in the CW Academy and we’ve been meeting every week in the time between sessions. I’ve been putting a lot of time into and it’s coming together. I figured I’d try this contest without the decoder and see how I did. I was able to copy one call, then another, and so I just kept going. Last year I made 176 contacts, with the decoder, this year 110 without. I had to listen over and over to many of them, but some I got on the first try. In this contest contacts from your own…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Contests, CW

November 30, 2018

One year as a ham

A year ago today my original callsign(KX4HL) appeared in the FCC database after 9 long days of waiting.  It’s been quite a year, as of this morning I have 2411 QSOs. Here’s some of my QSO cards:   I’ve moved from just a wire antenna to a hex beam on the roof, put up a 2m antenna, built a AMSAT antenna.  I’ve done 11 Parks on the Air activations (and doing another today at K-1909 Oscar Sherrer State Park, look for me around 14.287).   I participated in winter and summer field day with the St Pete Amateur Radio Club (SPARC), there’s a meeting tonight also.  Been to 9 ham fests,…

Read more

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

November 26, 2018

CQ WW CW Contest 2018 – 175 contacts!

I’m still not fast enough to decode contest callsigns in CW on the fly but I read an article about some guys who didn’t know any CW and participated in a CW contest using a decoder.  The contest logging program I use, N1MM+ Logger has links to one so I tried it out.  CW contests are super fun.  It’s probably the fastest contacts you can make.  I made 175 contacts.  I definitely improved my CW skills and more importantly it’s invigorated me to keep working on it.   I checked cqcontest.net where people post their live contact logs.  The claimed winner, LZ5R, had 8170 contacts.  This is a contest club out…

Read more

written by AA0O - Posted in Contests, CW, DX

June 2, 2018

First CW Contact!

I made my first CW contact.  It was with my instructor Pete from the CW Academy.  I think it went well, it was a little nerve-wracking in the class sending morse code with 4 guys watching you, it’s a different kind of pressure when its going out over the air.  It’s like you can almost feel the power of the key once you hit the BK-IN button to go from practice mode to transmit mode.   I talked with a guy, NN7CW, at Hamcation in Orlando after he was done taking the CW speed test and he suggested once I know the code to try to do at least once…

Read more

written by KX4HL - Posted in CW

June 1, 2018

Completed CW Academy Level 1!

I made it through the CW Academy level one Skype course.  4 of us met with the instructor twice a week for 8 weeks via Skype, typically for 45 minutes or so.  It’s not easy but I definitely feel like I have a better handle on the code now.  I studied between 30 minutes to an hour each day.  I like that the class keeps you accountable as there’s some pressure to perform well in front of the other guys, you need to do the homework.  They felt it too and that helped build a good sense of camaraderie between us.   It’s a good mix of sending and receiving building…

Read more

written by KX4HL - Posted in CW