March 2012
53 posts
February 2012
54 posts
Book download (link above) Thanks to Jeff Davis KE9V for sharing this.
A ‘sister’ to the NE4040 (40 dollar, 40 meter transceiver) and predecessor to the Dave Benson SWL series of radios. I may put building one of these on my ‘to do’ list for this year. Click the link above for more details and mods.
Got this message several times this morning when trying to log in to LOTW:
Fatal error: initializeLOTWDB: -9807 - Too many users (task limit):
General database error [initializeLOTWDB: -9807 - Too many users (task limit)]
This past weekend I had the excitement of making a (albeit marginal) QRP (5W & a wire) contact with DP1POL in Antarctica. A new country for me. This is a prime example of one aspect of ham radio that is really neat - the post-contact investigation. It used to be that you would have a QSO, exchange some info, and then wait….and wait… for the visual - a QSL card that may or may not come. There’s still something special about getting a physical card - it’s something tangible. Just like there’s something special about a nice hardcover book on the shelf, as opposed to an e-book.
Still, it’s wonderful that these days, we are able to hop on over to QRZ.com and instantly dig deeper into the hams we contact across the country and around the globe. Check out Felix’s QRZ page and hit the link for the Neumayer Station. This was truly a fascinating contact with a fascinating place and people doing fascinating work. What a fascinating hobby we have….
Click the link above to go to the calculator.
OK, so here’s what I ended up with for my few hours of sporadic operation during the contest this weekend:
Single op, fixed QRP
66 contacts with 61 different stations, 40 country prefixes.
40m - 7
20m - 19
15m - 26
10m - 10
Mult 53
Score 9699
Highlight contacts: 4U1ITU, DP1POL, 5C5W, PZ5RO, TO5X, VP2MMM, V25AA, PJ2T, CR2X, VP5OU, CQ3B, PJ4X, TF3W, 6V7S
This was my first time operating this contest, albeit only for short stints in the shack. While I mainly cherry-picked, I was happy with the contacts I made and adding some new countries to my QRP DXCC list. Perhaps someday I’ll have the time to operate the contest in earnest.
Spent some sporadic hours operating the ARRL CW DX Contest yesterday and today at outputs from 1 to 5W. It proved quite fruitful, with a few new countries for my QRP DXCC tally. Among the highlights was one of my last QSO’s with DP1POL. I’ve been trying to snag Antarctica for quite a while now. Thanks to Felix for his patience. It took quite a number of tries, but he finally got my call and info. Thankfully, he was quite lonely in between lots of big gun contest stations, so I had little competition calling him. Other highlight QSO’s were: Madeira, Azores, Morocco, Curacao, Suriname, Bonaire, Belize, French Guyana, Montserrat, Senegal, Antigua, Martinique and 4U1ITU The Int’l Telecommunications Union in Geneva.
