K9OZ ham radio blog

 On May 21 I achieved my long-term goal of reaching 1,000 points, making me a Mountain Goat in the world of Summits on the Air.  I was within 18 points so I went through different scenarios in my head to make my "goat day" special -- do some new summits, do some hard summits or do some easy ones.  After a week or going between the three options, I chose the easy path for Friday, May 21. The weather forecast was for a change of occasional showers, so I wasn't too worried as I left home at 8 a.m. headed for Rich Mountain, just north of Mena and about 2.5 hours west.  I figured I could work between the showers, if needed.   As I went west it got wetter and wetter, and by the time I reached Mena it was a torrential downpour.  Checking the radar, it looked like rain would pass by noon, so I headed up the road to the Talimena highway, which starts at Rich Mountain and winds its way into Oklahoma with multiple summits along the way.  Of course as I drove...

This weekend was the ARRL 160 meter contest, which is always one of my favorites. I operated for a few hours Friday night, had a couple of long runs going, and ran for a few hours in the early evening on Saturday. The result was over 600 contests, and I had a great time. Next weekend is the ARRL 10 meter contest, which is really almost the opposite as far a propogation and hours of operation goes. With the low sunspot numbers, I'm not expecting much, but I'll be on. I am learning more and more on contesting. My lesson from this one is, "If you're running a frequency and getting a high rate of hourly contacts, don't quit to go watch a football game or something. When you come back, the contest and conditions will have changed, so don't expect to pick up where you left off. I've read that advice before, but I saw it first-hand Saturday night. If I'd kept operating Saturday night, I could have added another 200 contacts or so, but I went to watch Nebraska...

Friday night at about 11 p.m. I realized I'd forgotten about the 160 meter CW contest this weekend. I tuned around the band, heard some stations, but it was dark, cold and snowy outside and I didn't want to go out and reconfigure the antenna. So I went to bed. Saturday I went outside while the sun was out, it was still cold and snowy, and reconfigured the antenna so I could operate Saturday night. I have a 80 meter off-center-fed dipole fed with ladder line up about 50 feet. For 160, I tie the two sides of the antenna together and feed it from the long wire connection on the Dentron MT-3000A tuner. On 80 meters, I've been running coax to a balun just outside the shack, and feeding the open wire from there to reduce RF in the shack. Hence the need to go outside to reconfigure antennas. Saturday night I got on 160 about 5 p.m. as the band opened to the East Coast. I took a couple breaks in the evening to eat dinner and go somewhere with my wife, but by 11 p.m. I'd broken ...