Local Club, The Glorious Society of the Wormhole, held their annual hamfest this Saturday. It was very well attended. I ran a couple tables for SPARC and we made out pretty well. Also picked up an antenna for my handheld. This is the same location we do SPARCfest, we’ve already got the permit for November.
I’ve been kind of neglecting the POTA activations. Had my first business trip in 14 months so I stopped on the way back from Miami for an activation. This is nearby a couple other Wildlife Management Areas that I’ve already done. It was hot and muggy so I only made 14 CW contacts. My signal wasn’t great, mostly 559’s and a 229. I forgot my table so I had the key on the car bumper, I’m not used to CW in those conditions so my sending fell apart pretty quick and I called it after 30 minutes. I see they’ve added more parks in FL and one is in town…
Had some unexpected guests for the weekend so I didn’t get to put in as much time as I would’ve liked, still managed 205 contacts in the little time I was on.
Since I moved I’ve had my WX satellite receiver antenna on the old tripod from the hexbeam and it was kind of in the way in the garden. A club member gave me a push up pole they weren’t using and I finally got the parts I needed to set it up. From the top down, 2m antenna, FlightAware ADS-B 1090MHz Antenna and the QFH weather satellite antenna. Previously I was using the QFH to receive the ADS-B signals. I like to look up the planes that fly over while I’m sitting in the garden. I would get a peak of 17 planes at a time typically, with a range…
Been awhile since I’ve received a card and today I got 11, one from a shortwave listener
I joined up with Corey N4FQ again for the FLS POTA Event. We activated Terra Ceia Preserve State Park K-3663 on Saturday which is pretty close to my house. I had activated this one before but we went further in this time. We found a good spot and wound up with 169 contacts. N4FQ invited some students from his EE classes and I think they enjoyed it, hopefully we’ll get a few new hams. Sunday we activated Hillsborough River State Park northeast of Tampa. This park is very simple but very popular. I forgot to take any photos but we made a few contacts. This park is all wooded so…
I was able to pick up Idaho on SSB during the Idaho QSO Party this weekend which finished off my Worked All States triple play award. That is a contact with every state in SSB(Voice), CW(Morse code) and Digital modes. I’ve just needed that Idaho contact for over a year. I paid for the award plaque, I’ll put up a photo of that when it arrives. I’m real close to working all states on a few other modes and bands but I mostly need North Dakota and there’s like only 2 hams up there.
Worked on the ground crew for install Dee’s new antenna. His antenna was damaged in the same storm that damaged the club tower. He had insurance on his so he got a replacement of the same antenna but the newer model. Quite a few club members attended and the install went very smoothly.
We finally got back to meeting in person. We met outside the church at our normal location. Had 36 people attend, everyone seemed very comfortable. I’ve done more meetings on Zoom than I’ve done in person so I’m still getting the hang of running official meetings. Club secretary Charles W4BPP gave a presentation on Superheterodyne receivers.
