Went to the Tampa Bay Ham Fest. Picked up a 24V transformer for a non-ham radio project. The prices weren’t good on cable or connectors, which were the other things I was looking for.
Tampa Bay Ham Fest 2018
Activated POTA K-1909 Oscar Sherer State Park
I’ve got some sick days I need to use so I took one today and activated K-1909 Oscar Sherer State Park outside Sarasota. About a 50 minute drive to get to this one. Super nice day. This park seems like it’s mostly a rest area for the old rail line bike path. I setup inside a pavilion. It wasn’t non-stop contacts but pretty close. I got a few in California and one from Portugal. Plus a part to park contact.
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,…
Rwanda 9X0T QSL card
I received this QSL card today. Also put in an order for more of my own cards.
Completed Worked All States
I finally got Hawaii confirmed on LoTW in the CQ WW CW contest last weekend to complete the Worked All States. I’ve gotten 3 contacts with Hawaii before this but none of them use LoTW unfortunately. My count for the triple play is 13 CW, 48 Phone and 47 Digital. Gives me something to shoot for next year.
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…
Ghana QSL card
Received a QSL response from Ghana today
ARRL Sweepstakes
I did the ARRL Sweepstakes this Sunday for a few hours. Managed 92 contacts in 57 out of 83 sections. The goal is to “sweep” all 83 sections. This is another fun one I’d like to do better in next year. This exchange includes year first licensed. I made a quick graph of the distribution of years from my 92 contacts. I am an outlier.
Hit 100 DXCC confirmed on LOTW!
Today I hit 100 confirmed DXCC entities, with Iceland being my last one. I almost had Iceland before with FT8, only got half the QSO with a guy named Odin before it faded. I’ve picked up the last few on 17m FT8. Now I just need someone to confirm Hawaii on LOTW and I’ll have Worked All States as well. I have a QSL card from Hawaii but the guy doesn’t use LOTW.
POTA Bronze Activator!
Received my Parks on the Air Bronze Activator certificate for activating 10 different parks today.