K9OZ ham radio blog

Here's me and my Mini cooper http://www.miniusa.com/crm/ecard_holiday_2008/MyCard?pid=1016765&check=BMPVGK3QQT6ITLBN

Gus the cat likes ham radio, or at least chewing on the cords.

I ran about an hour and a half of the NA Sprint last night -- a very fast-paced contest -- and wound up with about 60 contacts. Nothing to write home about, but I had fun. The good news is the line noise that is generated by the electrical system in this neighborhood disappeared last night, about the same time the snow melted. It had been steady s5 noise since December. It's great to hear a quiet band again. This morning I was down enjoying the quiet band, and had three great contacts. They were Joe, N4YG in Huntsvuille, AL, who I've talked to a couple times before; John, K3MD, who I've worked in many contests but never had a long contact with; and Mike, VE3GFN, in Toronto who had a new K3 and we talked K3s for a while. Good morning on the air.

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 ...

This weekend I spent several hours Saturday in the North American QSO party. This is a quick contest -- it only lasts 12 hours, and I operated about six of them. I wound up with around 240 contacts, but spent a lot of time battling my high noise levels. I could tell people were calling me, but I couldn't pull them out of the noise. Noise has been an intermittent problem at my location, but it's gotten worse this winter. Hopefully, it will pass and I'll start hearing things again. If not, maybe I need that cabin in Arkansas with a remote station set up.

Every year on New Year's eve and New Year's day there is an event called Straight Key Night, when cw operators get out the old straight keys and pound out a few contacts. I made eight this eyar, and it was enough to remember how much work is is to send with a straight key. Today we all use electronic keyers, much faster and much easier, but maybe not as much romance. I'm always surprised my fist -- that's how well you send cw -- isn't that bad with a striaght key. I used two different keys, a Vibroplex I picked up at a hamfest a few years ago and an old miltary key -- it says WEP 1940 --on the bottom

This morning it's -5 F, the wind is blowing hard out of the west and snow is drifting across the driveway. I'd say it's a good day to go in the basement and play radio, but between poor band conditions and my high line noise, I'm not having much luck. Over the weekend I did manage to squeeze out a few nice contacts. Here they are. This morning I talked to Vic, WA6MCL, in Riverside, CA. Vic was running an old Heathkit SB-102 and SB-200 amplifier. These were kit radios built in the early '70s. They were considered very nice radios back in their day. It's always nice to talk to someone on vintage gear, and we had a nice talk about running old gear. A few years ago I ran a lot of old Drake gear, but sold it all and am sticking to the modern gear -- for now. Last night I talked to w3ANX, Geo, in Apollo, PA. It was our second or third contact this year, and we compared notes on weather, Christmas plans, and updates to our stations. A nice, high-speed cw QSO. Earlier I...

It suddenly dawned on me I hadn't posted in weeks. Sorry. That reflects a little on my radio acitivity -- it hasn't been that high. Two weeks ago I spent a little time running the CQ WorldWide DX contest. The first day I was plagued by high noise level and poor conditions, so did very little. The second day my noise disappeared and I could hear Europe and Asia on 40 and 80 meters, so I spent some time running both bands. Not a huge effort, but that was fun. Last weekend was one of my favorite contests, the ARLL 160 meter. But I was travelling last weekend, so never got on the air. After all, this is just a hobby, so you do miss some contests. This weekend is the ARRL 10 meter contest, but so far I've heard two signals on 10 meters. Hopefully it will pick up this afternoon and I can work a few stations. On 10 meters, you are entirely at the mercy of propogation -- the radio gods. It doesn't matter how good your station, etc, if the band is dead, it's dead. In the mea...

With all my recent posts on the run-up to Sweepstakes and SS itself, it's easy to overlook how I spend most of my time on the radio -- with casual random contacts with other hams. Today -- Sunday -- was a good example of a day of radio for me. This morning I had a couple short contacts, then got in a long conversation with W3ANX, Geo, in Pensylvania. We quickly we discovered we had a common passion -- radios -- and spent about an hour talking about different radios, pluses and minuses of each, etc. etc. It's like when a bunch of car guys get together, they can talk about cars for hours. We can do it on radios, but we do it via radio and with Morse code. This afternoon I was doing something else when I heard a loud CQ on 80 meters from K5HZ. I answered, and started talking to Ron in Autrian, MI, in Michigan's Upper Penninsula. As we talked, I discovered he lived on a lake I've driven by several times, always thinking that a home along that lake would be ideal. Now I'...

With over 500 contacts I only managed 79 sections, one short of the coveted clean sweep. On Sunday morning I only had four to go, ND, and NLI in the US. and NWT and NL (Newfoundland) in Canada. I got them all but NL. Oh well, that gives me a goal for next year, to finally get that clean sweep. In the end, I had fun. That's all that matters.