We had another SPARC in the Park event with the club. Decent turn out and lots of contacts got made.
K-6700 SPARC in the Park
CQ WW CW 2022 – 675 contacts!
I set out with a goal of 600 contacts, last year I got 371 and I wasn’t very focused. Ended up with 21.5 hours according to N1MM+ out of the 48. After the Saturday night I didn’t think I was going to make 600 but things got easier on Sunday and I moved right along. The only one I think I missed that I saw was UP0L in Kazakhstan, just couldn’t get through the pile.
K-4641 Tiger Bay State Forest
Stopped on my way back from a trip to Jax. Really nice brick road into the forest and the dirt road were in great shape. Unfortunately it started raining about 10 minutes after I got setup so I cut it short with only 12 contacts.
K-4625 Jennings State Forest
Stopped for some POTA today. Had a good pileup going on CW and someone kept sending “ID” and I was like why does this guy want me to treat Idaho special. Then I thought maybe that was part of his callsign so I sent it back to him. Then I finally realized I hadn’t sent my call in awhile so I sent it. Need to remember to do it more in CW, I do it by habit in SSB. I was losing my CW focus so I switched to SSB and had a good run but then it started to rain and I wasn’t under cover so I packed it…
Some QSLs
First time getting an eyeball QSL card in the mail. This from the MVARA bus I checked out in Dayton this year.
MARCIfest 2022 – Bradenton, FL
Went to the 2nd Annual Manatee Amateur Radio Club MARCIfest in Bradenton over the weekend. This was a small hamfest with a few vendors. I saw a few SPARC members there. Pretty easy to get to just south on the highway about 20 mins.
Museum Ships Weekend certificate
Received the certificate for making contacts from the American Victory Ship in Tampa Bay, W4AVM back in June. Forgot to post photos when I went there. Here’s some:
SPARC tour of WRMI commercial shortwave station
SPARC members took a field trip down to the WRMI commercial station near Okeechobee in Florida. This station runs 15 transmitters at 100k watts each for 1.5 million watts of RF power!
NAQP CW August 2022 – 112 Contacts
Put in a minimal effort in the NAQP CW contest. Got two contact on 10m from Hawaii though which is a new one for me I believe. My ADIF mapper is broken so I used a different one:
First Feld Hell contact
Saw that there was a Feld Hell sprint contest this weekend and I never worked that mode before so I tried it out. It sends a fax style signal with the font embedded in the waveform. I only made one contact and it was a little cumbersome as I’m not familiar with the QSO flow exactly. I feel like it could be a fun contesting mode if I can get the UI sorted out. Here’s what it looks like: