A good radio weekend

Saturday morning is probably my most consistent time to get on the air. I usually get up early, the wife is still in bed, and I head for the basement to play with the radios for a a couple hours. For some reason, the dogs have gotten in this habit, and wait for me by the basement stairs on Saturday and Sunday morning and are upset if I'm not heading downstairs by 7 or so.

Here's a quick wrap-up of this weekend's contacts -- all on 40 meters and CW.

K4UY, Ron in Madison, AL. This was our third contact in the last year. We talked about where he lives, the Huntsville area, and how nice it is. I travel a lot for work, so often know the area where my contacts live. People like to talk about where they live, so that's often good fodder for conversation.

NS9F, Gene, Lockport, IL. This is maybe 10 mile from my house. I've run into this gentleman a couple times on 40 meters, we had a nice chat.

KB5GXD, Angelo, St. Joseph, MO. I've talked toAngelo, a retired doctor, several times. Another nice chat.

Then later in the evening: YP9W -- Romania. There was some Romanian contest going on, and I heard people working this station. I gave him a call and worked him on the first call. That's my DX for this weekend.

Sunday morning we had torrential rains going on, but no lightning so I went down and got on the air. The bands were very poor and I could hear few stations. But I still managed to have several good contacts.

K3MD, John, Pittsburgh, PA. I've talked to John several times, we have similar interests and both have too many radios. We talked radios for a while, another common topic that's easy to talk to people about. Nice contact.

W4OCO, Mike, Mooresville, NC. We didn't talk long, he was having a hard time hearing me. But after we signed out, W5SG, Bill, near Houston called me. We had a long chat, again, talking mostly about radios because we had some common interests in that area.

These were all CW contacts. What I think I like about CW is that while you're operating it, you have to focus on it. I woke up this morning dreaming about work and trying to solve a work problem -- not what I want to do on Sunday morning. During my couple hours on the radio, work never crossed my mind, because I was focused on CW.

My antennas consist of a SteppIR vertical in the back yard and an 80 meter dipole fed with ladder line in the trees in my yard. The person driving by would never notice my antennas, unless they were looking hard for them.