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…

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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.

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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…

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

February 9, 2020

Hamcation 2020

This was my 3rd Hamcation and the most crowded one. Took almost 30 minutes just to get into the parking lot. I went to the contest forum first. There were 4 presentations, first about DXpedition for the CQ WW CW contest from 3B8M, then one about doing QSO parties mobile, one about emcom in the Virgin Islands after the hurricanes and then Claudio I4VEQ gave presentation on WRTC 2022. I’m looking to go over to Italy for that and volunteer for their antenna teams. I picked up another Spiderbeam 12m mast to use to setup multiple antennas for my Parks on the Air work, also got a WRTC 2022 shirt….

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written by AA0O - Posted in Hamfests

February 9, 2020

Club tower damaged in tornado

The club tower was bent badly during a storm that came through on Thursday night which had a tornado. The club weather station clocked the wind at 65mph. It’s bent at the first extension so we can’t lower it. We’re working on what to do next to get it down. Local news article on the storm: https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2020/02/07/storm-damage–reports-of-a-tornado–downed-trees–damaged-homes

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas, Club

February 5, 2020

QSL cards from DL0ESA European Space Agency and TX7T Marquesas Island

I received a nice package from DL0ESA, the European Space Agency, for a contact way back in April 2018. I remember I was pretty happy to get this contact as they had a huge pile up going. They also sent some bookmarks and stickers which was nice. I also received a card from TX7T, the DXpedition to Marquesas Island. This was the most contacts I’ve made with a DXpedition (11) at the time. With the current HU1DL DXpedition I’ve broken this record, more on that when I get their card. Marquesas Islands

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written by AA0O - Posted in QSL

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.

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

January 12, 2020

NAQP CW January 2020 – 79 contacts

I’ve started the CW Academy intermediate class and my advisors have asked us to set weekly goals and then report on them. For my first week I set a goal of 50 QSO’s in the NAQP CW contest. I was able to get 79 QSOs. I found that I’m getting pretty good at copying callsigns, even the fast ones. I’m not too bad with states but I’m not good at all at copying names. Names like Al, Ed, Tom or Bob are pretty easy but ones like Bryant, Niz or Tree threw me off a lot. It was a fun way to practice my CW. I sent my name as…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

December 21, 2019

QSL Package from the Zero Bureau arrived

Today I received a 10 pack of QSL cards from the Zero Bureau, this is the first batch I’ve received since getting a ‘0’ callsign. Also got my first Shortwave Listener(SWL) card, oddly it was from FT8, I don’t quite understand why you would listen and not work me. Most of the cards were from the CW contests and one from a POTA contact. I like getting cards.

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written by AA0O - Posted in QSL