Posts

Showing posts from October, 2010

Illinois QSO party

I had a great time last weekend working the Illinois QSO party. I wound up with about 375 contacts, and a good number of multipliers, so I should end up with a respectable final score. But what's more important, I had a great time doing it. Everything seemed to work -- I spent most of my time running frequencies (calling CQ and having people call me) on 40 and 20 cw, and when things were slow, I moved up to 40 SSB and did about 120 contacts, and picked up a bunch of new multipliers in counties that just weren't on CW. One of the highlights was having a European station call me on 40 cw at 3:30 in the afternoon. Working Europe at night on 40 is no big deal, but I've never worked Europe on 40 that time of day. In the end, I worked about 10 different Europeans on 20 and 40, which was nice and gave me six additional multipliers. The Illinois QSO party is always about three weeks before cw Sweepstakes, and gives me a good warm-up for it. I'm ready.

Radio for sale

Image
My trusy Icom 765 is for sale on eham.net. Here's a better photo than you can see there.

Contest season is back

Contest season is starting up, so I'll be more active, and share more here on the blog. I added the Elecraft P3 Panadapter a couple weeks ago, and I've been happy with it. This weekend was the California QSO party, so I used it as a good chance to see if I have all the software and radios working together. So far, it is. I can even run the P3 Panadapter and the LP-Pan Panadapter on the computer at the same time, so I have band scope both on the computer and on the screen next to the radio. The attached video gives a quick demo.