K9OZ ham radio blog

I thought it was jut me, but last month in both CQ and QST magazines, there were articles about how bad the bands have been this winter. Ok, that's my excuse for not getting on enough and not blogging. Actually, I've just grown lazy on the blogging. I was on last weekend and had three very nice CW rag chews. They were Bruce, K6ZB, in Thousand Oaks, CA; Tony, N2ATB, in Chrerry Hill, NJ: and Bill, KA1RVM in Hollison, MA. All three were nice conversational contacts, where we talked about a wide range of things clipping along at 25 wpm or so. That's when CW is really fun for me. Contest season is about over. I tried to get on the the 160 meter phone contest last weekend, but my dipole antenna blew down a couple weeks ago. Instead of a dipole at 50 feet, I now have a dipole at 50 feet on one end and 10 feet on the other. It still gets out ok on 80, but I could tell the difference on 160. Oh well, spring will be here soon and I'll get a new rope up to the top of that tree an

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