Sunday Mar 31 7:08PM - Hope you all had a Happy Easter. I did here, a nice quiet one, all to myself except for a little time spent with Bruce, Jeff, and Roscoe. That's the way I like it. I'm not one for big crowds of people. I think the ideal relationship among people is a simple one on one contact. Maybe that's why I like CW so much. It lends itself very well to one/one contacts. That is unless you like nets or roundtable QSOs, which I don't at all.
I also went for a little under a mile walk today in the nice weather before a week of rain comes starting tonight. A stop at Family Dollar was included to pick up a couple things.
Other than that, I've been following March Madness. There's an upset in the making with 3:45 left and NC State over Duke trying to become (I believe) the 6th #11 seed to make it to the final four and maybe repeat in a way their championship of 1983 with coach Jim Valvano. I still remember that championship game like it was yesterday. The Derek Wittenberg missed shot (he claimed it was a pass) that Lorenzo Charles grabbed and dunked to win the game 54-52 and sent Valvano all over the court to find someone to hug. A great moment in basketball (sports of any kind?) history. Under two minutes now and NC State up by 12.
Don't think I'll do a full effort in the SST tonight. A bit tired (mentally) from a busy day. -30-
Saturday Mar 30 6:67PM - Once again, I'm thinking of doing a full effort in the SST Sprint tomorrow night. Whether I'll make it or not is still up in the air. I did get a little encouragement from watching Mike do the Friday SST from my station. Whether that will last or not, we'll see tomorrow evening.
Not a lot going on today. I just finished my laundry a few minutes ago. It rained a lot today and ruined my desire to get in a mile walk. So I just did some inside work with some stats on March Madness and ham radio. It's supposed to be a rainy week here which isn't a good thing for doing much outside. -30-
Friday Mar 29 7:40PM - Mike just left after another good day together. He arrived around 3:15PM or so and we chatted for a while and watched some "buzzer beater" highlights from the NCAA tournaments and some high school basketball. We went to the shack a little before 4PM so Mike could get on the SST from my rig. He made 12 QSOs, all on 20M, I believe. When the SST ended, we headed to the fire hall for the fish dinner. We got there at a good time with no waiting in line at all. I guess next year we'll have to remember to leave here a couple minutes after 5PM. Or maybe the good fortune today had to do with it being Good Friday. I don't know, but it was nice not to stand in line. Back home again and we played some computer games until Mike headed home just a few minutes before the time stamp on this entry. Now in a few more minutes I'll head to the shack for the streak QSO. The bands were good earlier in the day. Not as good as yesterday, but I did hear some DX on the higher bands and worked SM5CAK easily on 10 meters. -30-
Thursday Mar 28 7:01PM - March Madness is about to start up again, so I thought I'd get my diary entry taken care of now. The bands were good today for a change. A lot of EU DX on 15 thru 10 in the afternoon and good rag chewing on 30 later in the afternoon. I worked IZ3NYG, S53V, IZ0AEZ, AND SP2XF ON 10. Then SP73VOT on 15 for a new prefix. Later the rag chews were with KB4MNG in NC, then AG4EA in SC. I think it was AG4EA who was using the K4, and I mentioned that my friend Tom WB3FAE had a K4 and I had used it and thought it was a nice rig although overkill for my CW/QRP operating. Of course that made me think of Tom and coincidentally when I was out walking Roscoe a little later who pulled up in their car but Tom and wife Debbie and we chatted a few minutes. They were just driving around town while their relative was working at the YMCA here in town, then heading back home to Chicora.
It was a nice day otherwise also. I went for a mile walk outside in the low 50s degree weather under bright sunshine.
OK, now that's it. I'm going to follow MM now. -30-
Wednesday Mar 27 9:02PM - I really love rag chewing and I had a 41 minute one tonight with Rick KC4KNN on 30M. 30 has provided a lot of good solid rag chews of late. There seems to be very little QSB on that band no matter the time of day. The only negative thing, and I'm not complaining in the least, just stating facts, is that these long rag chews kind of mess up my late evening schedule, especially those that come in the streak hour. So I'm going to have to cut this entry short again.
It was a beautiful day today with sun and a high in the mid 60s. I took about a mile and a quarter walk with a stop at Family Dollar. Then after I got home, I sat with Roscoe on the swing for over a half an hour. It is really nice to have this early spring this year, and last year also.
Mike and I are going to the last Lenten Fish Dinner this year on Friday. Then we'll be doing something for the solar eclipse on April 8 depending on the weather. Climatological records show only around a 20% chance of clear to partly cloudy skies anywhere around here, so the outlook isn't all that good as of right now. Here in Kittanning, the eclipse will be about 97% full. That prediction can be taken to the bank. HI -30-
Tuesday Mar 26 7:44PM - I've decided on a plan of action for my "Most Memorable QSOs" story. I'm going to post it here as it stands as of now. Then I'll continue to work on it and make a regular web site page of it, probably to post in the QRP section of the site. That will be some time in the future, hopefully before the end of 2024. Just how soon depends on time available here and interest shown in the story by you, my readers.
OK, here goes:
First QSOs on a new band are always memorable for that reason. I am going to simply list them all here in two sections. The first section my overall first QSO, some of which came with a different definition of QRP power (<100 watts input power to the final) or a local QSO here in Kittanning (or both). The second section the first non-local QSO with the current definition of QRP as 5 watts output power. All QSOs in both sections were with simple wire antennas.
160 - See next section
80 - Oct 20, 1963 - W2KAK - NJ - 75W
60 - Feb 08, 2013 - WY3H - PA - Kittanning
40 - Apr 08, 1963 - KN3WWW - PA - Kittanning
30 - Nov 09, 1982 - KW8J - OH - 12W
20 - Oct 06, 1963 - VE7BMW - BC - 75W
17 - See next section
15 - Aug 03, 1963 - KZ5EHN - CNZ - 75W
12 - See next section
10 - Dec 28, 1994 - KB3BFQ - PA - Next door neighbor
6 - Jun 28, 2008 - VE2008VQ - QC - TS480 accidentally set to 100W
160 - Feb 15, 1995 - K3KLC - MD
80 - Sep 04, 1964 - WA8HDU - OH
60 - Feb 09, 2013 - K8JD - MI
40 - Sep 04, 1963 - K9FZU - IN
30 - Feb 18, 1993 - KA8WOG - MI
20 - Mar 26, 1993 - AB4HA - FL
17 - Apr 22, 1994 - HK3DDD - COL
12 - Jun 28, 1995 - K0OSW - MN
10 - Apr 23, 1995 - KN4Y - FL
6 - Jun 29, 2008 - W0GKP - MN
The following two sections need editing and merging, but I'm leaving them as they are for now.
May 9, 1963 - W9RQF - First QSO with someone who devoted himself to helping Novices as I was then.
Jul 18, 1963 - VP7ACF - First DX QSO.
Dec 14, 1963 - K4HSB/KH6 - First Hawaii QSO and a very excited KN3WWP.
Mar 14, 1964 - W9KSE - First of many memorable QSOs with Sue W9KSE.
Jun 2, 1964 - ZL1HY - Answered my 40 meters CQ followed by a 23 minute rag chew.
Jul 5, 1994 - 4Z4DX - First Asian to complete WAC.
Jul 30, 1995 - RW0A -First ever Asiatic Russian QSO.
May 10, 1996 - VK6HQ - from Perth answered my 30M QSO from about as far from Kittanning as it gets on Earth.
Jun 12, 1996 - W4HG - We worked on all bands 10 through 80. 160 too noisy.
Nov 24, 1996 - JA3ZOH - First JA station after failing many times before. Now near 300 QSOs with Japan.
Sep 1, 1999 - KO1C - First ever QSO with a commercial xmtr (xcvr), TS570D.
Nov 28, 1999 - VQ9IO - A QSO from a very remote part of the world.
Apr 28, 2000 - VK0MM - Another QSO from a rare country in a remote part of the world.
Dec 29, 2000 - TA3D - Answered my 30 meters CQ to my surprise.
Nov 30, 2003 - SU9NC - First Egypt worked portable from my late cousin's house.
Feb 21, 2004 - D4B - Worked on 80 through 10 meters in the ARRL DX Contest.
Aug 25, 2006 - WA8REI - First worked Ken exactly 40 years earlier on Aug 25, 1966.
Feb 22, 2009 - KH6MB KH6LC - First ever Hawaii on 80 with 5 watts. (K4HSB/KH6 was 50 watts or so back in 1963).
Jul 26, 2009 - VK6DXI - Wkd on 40 meters before sunset here.
Nov 26, 2011 - WL7E - Alaska completes WAS with QRPp mW power.
May 30, 2014 WA4FAT - Similar to WA8REI above, but 50 years earlier on May 30, 1964.
Aug 27, 2014 - W1AW/1 - Completed the W1AW Centennial WAS with Maine.
Feb 9, 2015 - K1N - Completed all 50 NA entities.
Nov 28, 1999 - There have been several common DX entities that it took me a lot longer to work than it should have. To mention a couple, Japan, both European and Asiatic Russia, South Africa. Finally I did work them with South Africa coming on November 28, 1999 in the CQWW DX Contest when I very easily worked Chris ZS6EZ. I wrote somewhere about how easy the QSO was. Almost too easy as I said. Apparently Chris read the comments and when I got his QSL card, he had written on it something like "Apologies, next time I won't make it so easy. HI"
Jan 01, 2000 - I've had many QSOs (182 + some with special VE prefixes) with Dave VE3BMR (92) / VA3RJ (90). So at the turn of the Century, I thought it appropriate that he would be my first QSO of the new Millenium. We arranged for a sked at 0000Z on January 1, 2000 on 80 meters, and pulled it off easily. Dave was VA3RJ then. We had our first QSO when he was VE3BMR back on June 4, 1968. We had many other interests in common so there was always something to talk about. Although we contact each other hardly at all lately, we are still good friends. Dave also maintains a web site as I do. Check it out via a Bing search for VA3RJ. I'm sure you will find it very interesting.
Feb 12, 2015 - Worked S01WS for a somewhat rare African country on 30M. Later worked also on 80, 40, and 15 so not as rare as I thought. It was country 223 worked.
May 28, 2016 - Two for one memorable QSOs. I always like working those island countries in the Pacific. This evening in the WPX contest I got 5W1SA and KH8/KC0W within 11 minutes of each other on 15 meters for countries 224 and 225 worked.
Apr 8, 2022 - Mike and I decided to pay a visit to Tom WB3FAE whom we hadn't seen in a while to touch base with him. Also to see his new Elecraft K4 he had been telling us about. When we got there and talked a while, it was off to see the K4. Activity was good that day with a lot of stations being received to show us the features of the rig. Wait a minute though. Wasn't that a C3 call I heard. That would be Andorra for the last European mainstream country I needed. We made sure the rig was set to 5 watts and hooked to a simple wire antenna, and I went after C31CT. It took a little while, but I got him for an overall new entity.
Jul 29, 2023 - After working C31CT as described above, I had 3 European entities left to work, Market Reef, Monk Apollo, and The Sovreign Military Order of Malta. Mike texted me and said Malta was on 30 meters. I thought it was a 9H station and wasn't too excited as I had several of them worked, but I tuned in anyway and located a pileup I felt might be for Malta. After listening a bit, I made out that it was not a 9H station, but the SMOM station 1A0C. That peaked my interest and I set up determined to work a very rare entity. It took numerous calls until I heard 1A0C come back with K3?. Oh boy, I hope that's me. It was as he got K3W? and eventually K3WWP and I had one of my few overall new countries in the past few years.
Sep 9, 2023 - K4A as my first QSO with my new ICOM IC705 rig.
Nov 5, 2023 - It's always a thrill to complete a WAS, WAC, DXCC in some different way. On this date I worked W3ASW in DE to finish a WAS with my new ICOM IC705. This was accompanied 5 days later with a completed WAC as described in the next memorable QSO below.
Nov 10, 2023 - This time it was WAC with my new ICOM IC705 rig when I worked and had a short chat with JM7OLW. Not only a WAC, but always a thrill to have a chat with a DX station, especially one from Japan or Asia in general. I hear Suke often with a great signal from Japan. In this QSO I found out he uses a 9 element beam at 30 meters (98+ feet). No wonder he is so strong and able to copy me solidly in a chat style QSO.
Feb 17, 2024 - This date brought probably the easiest overall new entity I worked in a long time. It was in the ARRL DX Contest that I heard ZD7W strong and just about going begging for QSOs. I gave him one after just a couple tries and got an overall new entity. I had worked many ZD8 stations, but the few times I heard ZD7, the station eluded me, but not this time.
Feb 24, 2024 - I have worked Lloyd KH6LC 56 times, all but one in contests. That one QSO was memorable in that it was an 18 minute rag chew style one. I heard a CQ from Lloyd and answered him expecting a TU 599 style QSO. However I was surprised when Lloyd gave me a "RST next round", QTH as near Hilo, and name Lloyd. I gave him a 569, QTH PA, name John, and we were off on a very interesting exchange of info about our stations, weather, job situation (retired), age, ham career, etc. He seemed to be copying me solidly, perhaps better than I was copying him with my local QRN and a little QSB. He was running a KW to a beam at 85 feet which explains partially how he always copies me easily in ontests. I recorded the QSO on the 705 SD card and went back and listened to it to catch some things I was having trouble copying live. That's a great feature of the 705 to be able to remember memorable QSO from now on.... if I remember to start the recorder. HI. The end (for now). -30-
Monday Mar 25 8:44PM - The bands continue very poor here or at least very empty. Once I get up above 30 and 20, I hear very little lately. those two bands are providing me with most of my QSOs the past week or so. In fact all of my QSOs since I had a QSO on 80 early on the 22nd. The QSOs on 30 and 20 have provided some nice rag chews. Except for OM2VL whom I can work any time I hear him in a contest, and he must enter every contest, the last DX QSO was 9A3A back on the 21st.
It was a beautiful spring day today with a high in the mid 60s under clear skies. I took advantage with two 1+ mile walks with stops at Sprankle's and Family Dollar. It's nice to be able to walk and get my groceries without having to depend on my neighbor to take me to the stores in his van. I hope to be doing a lot more of that, but still save the heavy objects when I get a ride.
The streak tonight was handled by Bill W9VC with a short QSO on 30M. He was QRP 5 watts also when he answered my CQ. We had good copy at 2XQRP for about 10 minutes.
I'm missing my March Madness fix now for a couple days till the round of 16 Thursday and Friday. The round of 32 went according to seed for the most part. Only two upsets in the 16 games. Almost a record, but there have been rounds of 16 with the same or fewer upsets. 1995 and 2012 tied this year with 2 each. There was only one upset in 1989, 2009, 2019. Hmmm, wonder what will happen in 2029? And why didn't it happen in 1999? There were no upsets in 1991 and 1994. Some trivia for you to think about. I just thought to check the LSU Women's basketball result in their March Madness. I follow them because I've always followed Kim Mulkey, their coach since her playing days at Louisiana Tech and her subsequent coaching stints. She is the only person, male or female to have won titles as player, assistant coach, and coach. In her playing days I always felt she was the best point guard I have ever seen to this day, again male or female. Oh, LSU won to make it to the Sweet Sixteen.
It's 9PM. Better get my weather readings. 73. -30-
Sunday Mar 24 7:38PM - Not a lot going on today. I did have a couple outdoor walks just around 1 mile each with a stop at Sprankle's. The bands were pretty quiet, but I did have a nice rag chew with W0SA on 20M. March Madness games today have gone pretty much according to seeding with no upsets in the first 3 games, but 5 games still to come and an upset is brewing in the Clemson-Baylor game. I was thinking of putting in a good effort in the SST tonight, but I'm kind of backing away from that now. I just don't enjoy contesting like I used to except for some big DX contests. -30-
Saturday Mar 23 7:35PM - I just started my laundry a couple minutes ago. I almost forgot about it with March Madness and some other things going on today.
It was a cold day today with a low wind chill that may have been in the teens at times. A good day to stay indoors. There was not much on the bands to pass the time when I wasn't busy with other chores.
Some time ago I promised to update my Most Memorable QSOs info but one thing or other keep pushing that down the list of things to do. Maybe in a lull in March Madness Monday thru Wednesday this coming week, I'll get to it.
The 115 points by a losing team in March Madness is the record as I surmised in yesterday's diary entry. Most for a winning team is 149 by Paul Westhead's Loyola Marymount. They beat Michigan who also scored 115 points in a losing effort. I might take a more detailed look at the run and shoot era one of these days. I really enjoyed that style of basketball where you didn't play much defense but just went out and outscored the other team.
Now I'm just waiting to see when time comes to put the laundry in the dryer or it gets to be 0000Z and time for my streak QSO. -30-
Friday Mar 22 8:25PM - A lot of action today but it can be summed up in not all that many words except my comments on March Madness.
One major project that took quite a bit of time was getting caught up on some paperwork that had been piling up far too long. I got it pretty much done except that some will require getting it in the mail which I will do tomorrow.
Checks of the bands at various times showed little activity and no QSOs until late afternoon when a CQ netted a 36 minute rag chew with Joe AA4JV in Iowa. We had a very interesting talk about our early days of ham radio, our jobs, and other interesting subjects. We both worked in broadcasting, he in TV, and I of course at WPIT AM/FM. This evening I worked OM2VL in the BW contest on 20M, then a short QSO with W1TCD that was cut short by QRM on 30M.
March Madness wasn't too mad today and went pretty much according to seeding except for 3 upsets by Northwestern over Florida Atlantic, Yale over Auburn for some Ivy League happiness, Colorado over Florida 102-100 in a high scoring game that prompted a look through my MM spreadsheet for some high scores by a losing team. Back in the run and shoot days around 1990 plus/minus a few years, Wyoming scored 115 points in a loss to Loyola Marymount's 119. There are more, but that one came to mind after a couple minutes research. UNLV was another high scoring run and shoot team under Jerry Tarkanian in that era. Anyway, that's a total of 7 upsets in the first 24 or so games so far completed. I just really like March Madness, the only sporting event I follow real closely. -30-
Thursday Mar 21 8:26PM - Very poor conditions today carried into this evening as well. However for the 10,823rd day in a row, I still managed to get a QSO with my CW/QRP/Simple wire antenna. It was with Tim WB2KAO up in Rochester, NY on 80 meters. So the streak goes on another day, thank goodness.
March Madness goes on another day for 32 teams after today also. As happens every year, it seems, at least one #11 seed upsets a #6. Today so far there were two such games with about half of the 16 games played. No upsets underway at the moment in the 4 games underway. Nice to see a local Pittsburgh team, Duquesne, be one of the #11 seed upset teams, over BYU, #6 71-67.
Not much else to talk about today as there wasn't much out of the ordinary going on. -30-
Wednesday Mar 20 8:49PM - Just went from NA to NCAA. NAQCC Sprint to NCAA March Madness. Grambling and Montana St in an overtime barn burner.
Got my usual one or two QSOs in the sprint. Two tonight, both from GA, K4KBL and John K4BAI. Before that I got 9A3A for my streak QSO. The bands weren't so hot today again. I did work GC0SP for a new prefix and M0AIA.
Grambling is pulling away in OT, but still a couple minutes left. Going to follow that now. -30-
Tuesday Mar 19 7:19PM - I was just sitting here trying to think of something to write in the diary when I got two emails with the following attachments:
They are QSLs from a QSO I had yesterday with EA8CMY. When I worked him, he sent a couple letters after his call that I couldn't catch because of QSB and QRN. I see now from the QSLs that the letters were EMESCT and EMELP. I caught the EME part and thought it was something to do with Moonbounce. The email said to check QRZ for more info. I haven't done that yet.
In contrast to yesterday, the bands were horrible today. I heard very few station all day except for a brief period this morning when I heard 4L and Z6 stations but couldn't work them. Z6 is an unauthorized prefix for the "Country" of Kosovo. I have one QSO from there in my log from a few years ago if I remember correctly. I have worked 4L before for sure.
The first First Four game is underway with Wagner leading Howard at the half by 38-27. Love this time of year and March Madness, my favorite sporting event. I don't follow college basketball all year, to speak of, then go crazy when the tournament comes along. I've got my Excel spreadsheet all set for all the important stats to be filled in as time goes by. There were two teams entered this year for the first time ever, Stetson and Grambling. I was kind of surprised at Grambling after their success in football over the years. Then local Pittsburgh school Duquesne for the first time since 1977. I'll probably be talking more about the tournament as it goes on into mid-April or so. -30-
Monday Mar 18 7:54PM - Just had another first in ham radio. When Mike was here on Friday, I casually mentioned I had never heard anything on 2 meters. I had never had a rig capable of 2 meter operation until I got the IC705. I asked him for info on the local repeater. He gave me the date, time, and frequency of the weekly(?) net session, and of course I forgot it. Fortunately he texted me to remind me the net was running. I hurried to the shack and heard several checkins, then heard Mike check in. I was surprised how well I could copy because I have nothing close to a 2 meter antenna. I copied about the same on my 6 and 10 meters antennas, and a couple others as well. So a new experience earlier this evening for me. Of course it was voice so I had no intention of checking in. I just wanted to hear something on 2 meters to see how well it works on the 705.
Earlier in the day, the high bands were good for DX and I worked UR, GM, I, DL, HB, and EA8. Tonight the streak QSOs were WB0RLJ (POTA) and a 39 minute rag chew with Pete K4EWG down in GA on 40M.
Now I've got to hurry as it's almost time for Roscoe's last walk of the day. -30-
Sunday Mar 17 9:11PM - The bands were good today, especially to EU. I picked some good stations to work for their prefixes or new countries for the 705 or new countries to record on the 705. All in all I got EI80MB, GB9SPD, DR100PE, CE2ML for my collection. I now have 96 QSOs recorded from 59 countries. I have 96 countries worked on my 705 since I got it back on September 9. Anxious now to get the last 4 for an ICOM705 DXCC now.
It was a chilly windy day today, but I did get my 1+ mile walk late this afternoon.
Well, the 68 teams are set for March Madness now and I have my MM spreadsheet pretty much ready to start filling in scores Tuesday evening. What a great sporting event!! -30-
Saturday Mar 16 8:54PM - Kind of an up and down day. Started with a shopping trip to Walmart to get some food for Roscoe, and also for some Chili for Bruce to make for tomorrow evening's March Madness selection show. Then a little later a 1.1 mile walk with a stop at Sprankle's for a couple items.
I never did get around to checking the bands during the day. Probably a good thing because Mike said they were in poor shape there. This evening I grabbed a VA station in the VAQP for my streak, then tuned around to check the bands. I found 9K2NO on 20 meters, and just as I found him, K4BAI worked him. He couldn't hear me though so I looked around some more. Finding nothing else, I went back to see if 9K2NO was still there. He was and like before he wasn't all that busy, so I decided to try again and after a few unanswered calls or losing to the competition, he finally came back with K3W? I sent my call and he responded with K3WW 599 NR 383. I guess he was in the RU Contest? I sent my call twice again, and finally got a R K3WWP 599 383. That was only my 4th ever Kuwait QSO, but not a new band country as 2 of my other Kuwaits were also on 20 meters. Oh well, still nice to work a somewhat rare country for me.
Ooops, 9PM now and time to get my weather readings. So 73 for tonight. -30-
Friday Mar 15 9:09PM - Late again on this busy day with Mike visiting, then a long rag chew this evening with K1YAN. Now the details.
Not much going on this morning. The bands were their usual dead selves when I checked, so I did some other chores around the house till Mike came around 2:30PM
We checked the bands and they were still dead except for a couple stations. One of which was DB100FK on 15. I worked them a few days ago so I let Mike work him which he did pretty easily. Then we fooled around killing time in the shack till 4:00PM when Mike got into the SST Sprint and worked 10 stations in a half hour before we went QRT and headed out to the Lenten Fish Dinner. We got there at a good time with hardly any line to speak of like the last two times we went. Just one round at the buffet which is our standard this "watching our weight" year. Back home for some computer gaming then off to Brookville for Mike and walking Roscoe for me.
Streak time came and I called CQ on 30M to be answered by Gary K1YAN. We gabbed for 37 minutes in a good rag chew. Now I'm updating the website before the last walk of the day with Roscoe. -30-
Thursday Mar 14 8:22PM - Happy PI day to all you mathematicians out there. I might as well have spent the day doing math problems instead of wasting time on the bands. Conditions were very poor all day or at least all the times I checked them. I got no answers to my CQs on several different bands, nor any responses from other stations calling CQ. At least I did make one QSO at 0001Z this evening to stretch the streak yet another day.
It was a warm day today. It even felt hot in the sun today and I cut my midday walk a little short, but got my 1.1 mile walk this evening when it cooled down a bit. The high is listed at 76 degrees on my LaCrosse remote weather unit, the warmest day yet this year. Maybe a record for the date. Let's see. Nope, it was 80 on March 14, 1990.
Tomorrow a visit from Mike, and our third Lenten Fish Dinner. Looking forward to that. Also looking forward hopefully to better band conditions.
Getting ready for March Madness. I made up an outline spreadsheet today. Now the info needs filling in Sunday evening when selections are announced. -30-
Wednesday Mar 13 8:44PM - Well, I said I'd talk about yesterday, but let me start with a few things from today. The big event was helping take Roscoe to the Vet for a yearly checkup and to refill some medicines. He got a great report overall and that was very good to hear since he's getting up in years now. He came to Bruce in August of 2012 when he was a few months old, so he's at least 12 years old or as they say, 84 in people years.
Otherwise today, the bands were about average, I guess you could say. I worked OZ7BQ on 12M. Also XE1XR on 15. I needed Mexico to add to my recorded countries of which I now have 56.
This evening a nice chat with Martin AI5IN mostly about QRP and other rigs was my streak QSO.
Now to yesterday. Mike arrived around 2:30PM and we chatted for a while, then went to the shack. I let him listen to a couple of my recordings, especially R90KEDR to see how strong he was here. Mike summed it up that R90KEDR sounded louder than me on the recording. That was pretty much true as he was really booming in. There wasn't much on the bands when we were in the shack, so we went and got a Sub from Subway before heading off to SkyView. We were the first ones there and had to take down the chain across the driveway. Someone else came shortly after and opened up the building as we don't have keys to that yet. We'll have to remind the person in charge about that.
Mike had a paddle that needed fixing and the pieces were there this time, so that was taken care of after Mike made a couple DX QSOs. Then I took over the IC7300 while he worked on the paddle. I had fun making 4 DX QSOs with the IC7300 at 5watts. However I was using the Quad antenna so I used the club call of K3MJW so I wouldn't tarnish my K3WWP log with QSOs using a big beam/quad antenna. HI. I'm learing more about the rigs and antennas at the club, and I was swinging the Quad around to Work CT3MD in Africa, DL6ED in Europe, IR0IDP in Italy, and finally HR5/F2JD in Central America.
Let me talk a bit about the DL6ED QSO after I pause to go get my 9PM weather readings. OK, the low was 36 and the high 71 today. DL6ED became interested when I told him I was running QRP. He was running 500 watts. Then he lowered power to 50 watts and wanted a comparative reading. He was 599 at 500 and 579 at 50. Then he went down to 5 watts and was 559 which is what he was giving me at my 5 watts. It was an interesting experiment and we both enjoyed it. It was solid copy all the way, no matter the power level.
After that Mike came back in the radio room with a couple other members and chatted a while until it was time to leave around 9PM. Before we left, I made a QSO for my streak on 40M with their 40M dipole using my call. However I got to thinking about it later and I think one member turned the power up to 100 watts to make some digital QSOs. So when I got home I made an insurance streak QSO with KE2BVB I knew was QRP and a simple wire antenna. That ended another good day with Mike and the SkyView members. Now this Friday it's another Lenten Fish Dinner with Mike. -30-
Tuesday Mar 12 10:03PM - It's late as you see from the time stamp, so I'll just say good night for now and write about the SkyView meeting and other things from today, tomorrow. Got that? OK. CU TMW. -30-
Monday Mar 11 6:16PM - I worked a couple of nice prefixes today. DB100FK on 15M and MP7DX on 17M, both of which were all time new ones for me. Later in the day I worked II5IDK, not new but I seldom work II5. Anyway that prompted me to take a look at my WPX page in my AWARDS section of the web site. I found it needed updating so I worked on that today. I glanced back through my log pages looking for band-prefixes I worked but hadn't added to the totals on that page. I found somewhere around 100 prefixes and added them to my PrefixCk spreadsheet. I think that is pretty accurate. I didn't link my K3WWP spreadsheet to the PrefixCk sheet which would be the real way to do it, but just relied on my brain for the checking. Then I partially updated my Prefix Awards page. I only did prefixes worked, not verified. That will come sometime later. I explain that a bit more on the introduction to the Prefix Awards page if anyone is interested.
That was my main project today. I also enjoyed seeing the meltdown of the s@#w from yesterday. Like a typical March s@#w, it didn't stand a chance of lasting too long and is all gone after not much more than 24 hours. Then I went for about a 1.1 mile walk, stopping at Family Dollar for some milk and personal Red Baron pizzas.
Now to go walk Roscoe, then update the Prefixes page. -30-
Sunday Mar 10 8:34PM - Now I have to get used to going to the shack at 8:00P instead of 7:00P for my streak QSO since I use UTC time to determine the day.
I went there tonight with the intention of putting in a full SST, but quickly changed my mind when activity seemed down on 20 meters plus the WIQP was mixed in with ths SST somewhat. So I got two QSOs, AI0Y and K1DW. Then I just checked around the bands and didn't find much else of interest, so I QRT.
The first day of Daylight Shifting Time turned out to be a reversion to winter with s#$w flurries and squalls off and on all day. One particularly heavy squall deposited a little under an inch of s@#w in just about 10 minutes or less.
Actually I went for a walk in one of the flurries. I really don't mind March s@#w that much as I know it won't last long. Even the blizzard of '93 with its 25+ inches was gone in a couple of days.
Well, I'm going to finish my web site updating and get ready to go out and get my weather readings. -30-
Saturday Mar 9 5:53PM - After almost 61 years as a ham and over 103,000 QSOs, it's hard to have something happen that has never happened before in that time span. It did happen today though. At least I'm 99.99% sure it never happened before. I made 3 QSOs, one each on 12, 17, and 30 meters from stations answering my CQs within about a half hour. First I called CQ on 12 and was answered by Bolmar HK1MW at 2150Z. Next I went off to 17 and was answered by Dave W4CI at 2200Z. At that point I realized what was happening was something quite rare for me and I went for the Trifecta on 30 and was answered by Dan NI9Y at 2222Z. I have made QSOs on several different bands in short periods of time especially in contests. Several years ago W4HG and I made a QSO on each band from 10 through 80 meters within an hour or so. However the "via my CQ" made this event today a bit more unique, especially with one of the QSOs being from a DX station on a band, 12M, where I seldom get an answer to my CQs at all.
Before that today I had another somewhat unique experience. I heard what had to be the strongest signal from Russia I ever heard. I worked R90KEDR with just a single call on 15 meters. According to QRZ, that's Asiatic Russia in grid square OO62 in CQ Zone 16. I'm not sure just yet exactly where in Russia that is. I'll check a map in a little bit. The station honors the 90th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Gagarin whom everyone knows was the first man in space. OK, I just looked on the QRZ map and they show the station being located just to the north of Mongolia. That is not CQ Zone 16. So a discrepancy somewhere. If it is near Mongolia, it's kind of strange to have such a strong signal from that area of the world on 15M at that time of day, 1554Z, but..... I remembered to record the QSO, too.
OK, that's it for this entry. I have to walk Roscoe in a bit, then after that it will be time for the streak QSO, maybe from the Oklahoma QSO Party. -30-
Friday Mar 8 7:52PM - March 8 is a memorable date in the history of my interest in weather. Since I started taking weather readings in January 1959 and continued sporadically the rest of 1959, then started daily readings on January 1, 1960, March 8, 1960 was the first day I recorded a below zero reading at -2. That kind of heralded a record cold month of March which was colder than January or February that year. That really piqued my interest in meteorology, which continues to this day 64 years after that -2 temperature reading. One of the few hobbies I can narrow down to a specific date that really fueled my interest. I can remember how my interest in other hobbies got started but nothing as specific as meteorology. For example I can remember my interest in fishing being brought on by my dad taking me fishing at an early age, but I don't remember the age nor the year in which it happened. With my penchant for record keeping, I probably have a written or typed record somewhere. I wish I could remember more accurately when my interest in other hobbies started.
Oh, I know how my interest in radio started. I've told that story here in the diary before several years ago. To reprise the story, I used to listen to the talk show, Party Line with Ed and Wendy King, on KDKA which closed out the day at midnight. Of course KDKA is on 1020 kHz. Well, one night I tuned off of KDKA for some reason and wound up on 1040 where I heard an announcer say something like this is WHO Des Moines, Iowa 1040 on the dial. That did it. I never had any idea there even were other stations other than KDKA and a local Kittanning station at 1380, WACB (Which stood for Armstrong County Broadcasting). I started tuning around the AM band, logging other "distant" stations. Then I wondered what I could do to hear more stations and more distant stations. I vaguely knew about long wires being used as antennas, but I had no idea how to connect them to the radio. There was no internet then to look up things. I looked inside the radio at the tubes and other parts. I saw this thing that rotated with the dial and had several plates that meshed with other plates. Of course that was the tuning capacitor or was it called tuning condenser then. I don't know. Anyway it had these little tabs on it to which were connected some other wires that went to a big coil which was the loop antenna although I didn't know that at the time. I thought I'd connect my long wire to one of those tabs. It really didn't increase the strength of signals, but it apparently changed the tuning range of the radio since I now heard stations like Radio Switzerland which I remember as my first short wave station, along with other stations from Europe. I also heard some folks talking to each other. What's that, I wondered. They had call signs like W3CYG whom I found out was an Amateur Radio operator. Of course in that era, voice was done on AM or otherwise I would have only heard the jumbled sound of SSB. Well, one thing led to another and I found out that a schoolmate was into something called CB Radio. He also told me about studying to get his Amateur Radio license. I was getting more and more intrigued by all this radio stuff, and when he asked me if I would like to get a Ham license. I wasn't interesed in CB, but Ham Radio appealed to me, especially having to learn Morse Code to get a license. I said yes, and we studied together, both the code and theory. When we thought we were ready, we asked W3CYG who was the ham I heard, to give us the test. We went to his house and he sent some code to get us relaxed. Then he closed the code with something like "R U READY? I caught it and said yes. We both passed the test, sent in the applications and a short time later we got the licenses. My friend got KN3WWW and I of course got KN3WWP. His name was Larry Hooks, and we drifted apart as he moved away and I really never knew what happened to him until a few years ago I heard from his son telling me the sad news that he had passed away. I believe if I remember correctly, he was just 29 and was killed in an airplane crash. With that little bit of sad news interspersed, I'll close the story here because after 103,000 plus QSOs, this could become a book rather than a diary entry. HI
It was yet another nice day here although I little cooler than the last few days. Just kind of right for my one mile+ walk and a stop at Sprankle's.
As far as ham activity, it was a fairly good day with the bands in decent shape. At least good enough for a few rag chews, although I didn't work any DX. It was kind of rough this evening though, but I finally got K3EU in DC for the streak. BTW, I can't understand why J38R is so popular. Grenada can't be that rare if I have it worked here on 80-through 10, except for 60 and 160. I did try a couple times just to pass some time, but the pileups are too wide to bother trying to figure out. Now if it were an overall new country, I might feel differently and go for it. -30-
Thursday Mar 7 8:28PM - The bands seemed good all day today. I even heard, but didn't work a VK station late this afternoon on 10M. I was mostly rag chewing, but there was some good DX being heard here. Had a nice chat with an old friend I hadn't worked in 4 years on 30 this evening, John W8FJ in East PA, among some others earlier in the day.
It was a dry day today after yesterday, so I took advantage with a mile+ walk and a stop at Family Dollar.
Not really much else to talk about. -30-
Wednesday Mar 6 6:47PM - Not a lot to talk about again today, so here are a couple pictures to look at.
About two weeks ago I saw my first robin of the season, followed a few days later by a second one. Both were shy and flew away before I could take their picture. However today another one showed up and wanted his picture taken apparently. Here he is:
A couuple of days ago I learned some more about my IC705. I had seen a couple of IC7300s where the marker on the Spectrum Scope was divided into red and green sections, but I couldn't find out how to do it on the 705. I finally caught the info on an Internet tutorial video. All you had to do was touch the "MARKER" button on the screen to toggle it between red/green and plain green. How simple and how elusive it was in the basic manual. I still don't see the info in the manual. Nonetheless, here is how it looks. Also note the R and T in the upper left of the Scope screen. The green R denotes the Receive marker while the red T denotes the Transmit marker. When you are operating and receiving on the same frequency, it looks like this:
Now when you operate Split or use RIT, the red and green markers separate with the green on the frequency you are listening on and red on the frequency you are transmitting on. I think it's another very nice feature of the 705 as shown here:
Probably no one else had the problem I did in figuring out this situation, but if so, I hope it helped to clear things up a bit.
Kind of a repeat of last night for the streak. Only the calls were changed..... The POTA was NM5N and the chat was with Robin NG8S.
Time now to spend another 4 hours doing something today before going to bed and waiting to see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully it will be a little drier than today's off and on rain. If not I can keep busy inside maybe learning some more about the 705. -30-
Tuesday Mar 5 8:09PM - Another nice April/May day in March. Let's see, it was 75 today. Yesterday it did hit 76 on my official thermometer when I checked at 9PM. Let's see what the record is for the 5th. 77 in 1992 so looks like close, but no cigar today. It sure felt good when I was out walking for two walks totalling about 1.75 miles and a stop at Sprankle's. Also a sit on the porch swing with Roscoe. A little longer than yesterday at 10-15 minutes. Tomorrow a bit cooler but still well above normal. Also some rain tonight and tomorrow.
In between enjoying the weather, I checked the bands and there was not much to be had. One late afternoon QSO with Bill W9VC on 30, then my streak work this evening for a POTA QSO and a good chat with K3OS on 30. -30-
Monday Mar 4 7:26PM - What is the one day of the year that is like a command? Today.
The bands were markedly better today. Not for DX as much as for good solid W/VE rag chewing. I had nice chats at various times with KB9UWR 20, W4IT 30, W2XU 20, WW8D 30. Then I did get a DX QSO for my streak this evening - Oliver F6ARC on 30.
A near record warm March 4. My one remote unit shows a tie of 76 degrees with March 4, 1976. We'll see if my "official" mercury in glass unit shows the same when I check it at 9:00PM. Whatever the case, it sure felt good being outdoors today for walking or sitting on the porch swing with Roscoe, although he wasn't in the mood for swinging and only stayed a few minutes for whatever reason. I was watching a kids show one time with one of the kids talking with a Veterinarian. The kid asked what was the hardest thing about being a Vet. The Vet said not being able to talk with the patients about what ails them. Sometimes I feel the same way about figuring out what Roscoe is up to.
We're supposed to have another mid-April day in March tomorrow, then it cools off a bit but still above average temperatures. -30-
Sunday Mar 3 7:46PM - After a few busy days with change of month chores, today was pretty much a nothing day. Even the bands were taking the day off with very little activity. I did manage a chat with VE3UXJ on 30 this afternoon and a SST QSO for the streak this evening with Fred N4BA. That was it except I fooled around in the SST, just listening to see how many stations I could hear on 20 in 15 minutes. I heard about 1 per minute just counting stations who were CQing or looking for somwone to tail end their QSO. I don't know what it proved, if anything. I guess it would be possible to make 60 QSOs in the hour if hearing 1 station per minute would continue the whole hour and I could log that fast on paper. Maybe I'll try it sometime, but use 80, 40, and 20 instead of just 20. We'll see, maybe this Friday if I'm in the mood.
Otherwise today, it was a beautiful April in March day with bright sun and temperatures in the upper 60s almost making it to 70 which it is supposed to do the next couple of days. I've just got to say again what a wonderful non-winter it was for the second year in a row. Let's go for many more like this. I went for a couple of outside walks at about 3/4 mile each. I didn't really need anything at any stores, so I didn't stop anywhere, just walked. Probably do the same tomorrow.
Almost forgot I wanted to add a tulips picture in the diary, so here it is:
I should have cleaned out the leaves and bark before taking the picture, but I was in a hurry. -30-
Saturday Mar 2 5:30PM - I just finished putting the February weather records in my computer Excel spreadsheet. While it's fresh in my mind, let me post a few stats for the month here. It was a warm month, but not record warmth because of those hot Februarys we had in the mid 2010s. We came within a degree or two of those records though. Only one daily record, highest daily precipitation of 1.03 inches on February 28. I guess the bottom line is what I said before above, a very warm month, but not record setting warmth.
I think I'll close with just a brief comment on band conditions. They were good again today, but not a lot of activity to be found. I worked a German YL named Ti at DM88YLF, a special event type of station for French-German YL activity. Also OE3WMA whom I recorded for a new recorded country on the IC705. That makes 54 countries recorded now. -30-
Friday Mar 1 8:24PM - Happy first day of Spring (meteorological, not astronomical) to all the Winter haters reading this. Besides the significance of the day, it was a great day otherwise as well. I got some more of my end of (first of) month chores done. I uploaded all of my February QSOs to eQSL and got about 65 matches out of some 400+ QSOs uploaded. I got them all put in my computer Excel log and saved the QSL picture when it was from a station on a new band with that station. I don't download duplicate band-station cards.
I took a walk downtown and stopped at Sprankle's to get a couple things and to see who was working. It was Jan and Chrissy. I hadn't seen Chrissy for a while now.
I then waited for Mike to arrive. He was a little late so I took Roscoe out and of course Mike then arrived in the middle of the walk. I've found that if you are waiting for something, and it's late, all you need to do is to stop waiting and start something else. Then inevitably what you were waiting on will happen. HI That's Shannon's Law. Mike and I talked and checked the bands for a while. They were very devoid of any DX, so we quit and headed off to the Lenten dinner. We got there a little earlier than last time and the waiting line was shorter this time. We had our one trip through the buffet and headed home. Another hour or so of talking and checking the bands with pretty much the same results as before although I did work NP4L for my streak QSO. Then we worked on our schedule of events - hamfests, Requin trips, SkyView visits, sprints, etc. for the year. Then it was time for Mike to head home. -30-
Thursday Feb 29 4:04PM - Here we are in the last day of meteorological winter. It was the second great winter in a row here with very little s@#w and very little real cold. Love it!! After I put my February weather in the computer probably tomorrow, I'll have some stats here in the diary. Our coldest day in February was 18 degrees which may be a record for the highest minimum monthly temperature for any February although we did have some warm Februarys in the mid 2010s.
I got all my end of month financial things done this morning. It's always nice to get them out of the way. A couple of major things need doing and a couple of minor things also. Putting the weather in the computer as I mentioned above. Uploading my February QSOs. Changing my calendars. And a few other little things.
I spent quite a bit of time in the shack this afternoon. I changed some settings on the IC705 to come up with a better looking Spectrum Scope in my opinion as shown here:
I especially like the different color and style scheme of the scanning waveform. Much better than the IC705 default setup. But it's all a matter of personal opinion.
I had a nice chat with LA5ZO on 15 this afternoon with solid copy both ways - 900 watts vs. 5 watts. HI I got it recorded along with some extra copy as I forgot to turn off the recorder when the QSO ended. HI Someday I'll get turning on and off the recorder integrated into my QSO procedures. -30-
Wednesday Feb 28 7:48PM - Well,one extra day of Winter tomorrow before Spring shows up on Friday. I know it is March that is supposed to come in like a Lion and go out like a Lamb or vice versa. However regular February is going out like a Lion. We had thunderstorms, rain, and strong winds. The winds are still continuing this evening but are subsiding gtadually. Hope they return to a calm state before they do any damage. Tomorrow will be a buffer day between regular February and March, then March will come in like a Lamb for the first few days of the month.
The bands, especially 10 meters, were very good this morning. 10 meters sounded like it did during previous sunspot maximums, something it hasn't done this cycle so far, at least as far as my listening here. I worked DL75BRD, RK3ER, and I2NKR very easily and added two of them to my recorded countries although Russia was a repeat country, but Italy was new. After the good morning, things seemed to slip away the rest of the day. It was rather rough getting my streak QSO this evening, but I did work HI3T on 30 meters finally. -30-
Tuesday Feb 27 8:08PM - I spent part of today going back in my mind and through my log adding more memorable QSOs to the list I presented in yesterday's diary entry. I found quite a few, but I'm not going to update yesterday's list until I'm satisfied I've dug up most all of my memorable QSOs. That will probably take a while with over 103,000 QSOs to go through.
The bands were not good today and of the 6 QSOs I made this afternoon and evening, most were very rough with some even being cut off in mid-stream, so to speak. Only two of the six were good solid contacts. Those with Jeff WN1MB in CT and Dave AA2AU in NJ. I haven't looked at the WWV report yet, but I suspect some kind of ionospheric disturbance may have been in effect. The few DX stations I heard were either fluttery or suffered from deep QSB. Let me pause here and look at the report. Well, I was wrong. The ionosphere was pretty quiet with a SF of 168 and A index of 13. Space weather was minor and G1 magnetic storms. Those are pretty good numbers although the bands didn't show it. Oh well, propagation is not an exact science (yet).
I'm looking forward to Friday and another Lenten Fish Dinner with Mike. Before dinner we're going to outline our ham radio events for the year so we don't forget any like we did with the South Hills Hamfest this past weekend. -30-
Monday Feb 26 11:27AM - Over the past few years, I've added some memorable QSOs to my log. Back in 2015, I added stories to the diary about memorable QSOs from 1963 to 2015. Now I'm going to list those early memorable QSOs and the date their story appeared in the 2015 Diary Archives. Then I'm going to update the list with the more recent QSOs and a little story about them. I think it will be a fun project and I hope you will enjoy it also.
Here now is a list in the order they appeared in 2015's Diary Archive. If you are interested in more info about each one, just go to the 2015 Diary Archive page via the Diary Archives link above and scroll to the date of the entry as listed here:
Story Date in 2015 - Station - QSO Date - Notes
Apr 26 - W9RQF - May 9, 1963 - First QSO with someone who devoted himself to helping Novices as I was then.
Apr 27 - VP7ACF - Jul 18, 1963 - First DX QSO.
Apr 28 - K4HSB/KH6 - Dec 14, 1963 - First Hawaii QSO and a very excited KN3WWP.
Apr 29 - 4Z4DX - Jul 5, 1994 - First Asian to complete WAC.
Apr 30 - K3KLC - Feb 15, 1995 - First ever 160M QSO.
May 01 - VK6HQ - May 10, 1996 - VK6HQ from Perth answered my 30M QSO from about as far from Kittanning as it gets on Earth.
May 02 - W4HG - Jun 12, 1996 - We worked on all bands 10 through 80. 160 too noisy.
May 03 - JA3ZOH - Nov 24, 1996 - First JA station after failing many times before. Now near 300 QSOs with Japan.
May 04 - KO1C - Sep 1, 1999 - First ever QSO with a commercial xmtr (xcvr), TS570D.
May 05 - VQ9IO - Nov 28, 1999 - A QSO from a very remote part of the world.
May 06 - VK0MM - Apr 28, 2000 - Another QSO from a rare country in a remote part of the world.
May 07 - TA3D - Dec 29, 2000 - Answered my 30 meters CQ to my surprise.
May 08 - SU9NC - Nov 30, 2003 - First Egypt worked portable from my late cousin'g house.
May 09 - D4B - Feb 21, 2004 - Worked on 80 through 10 meters in the ARRL DX Contest.
May 10 - WA8REI - Aug 25, 2006 - First worked Ken exactly 40 years earlier on Aug 25, 1966.
May 11 - KH6MB KH6LC - Feb 22, 2009 - First ever Hawaii on 80 with 5 watts. (K4HSB/KH6 was 50 watts or so back in 1963).
May 12 - VK6DXI - Jul 26, 2009 - Wkd on 40 meters before sunset here.
May 13 - WL7E - Nov 26, 2011 - Alaska completes WAS with QRPp mW power.
May 14 - WA4FAT - May 30, 2014 - Similar to WA8REI above, but 50 years earlier on May 30, 1964.
May 17 - W1AW/1 - Aug 27, 2014 - Completed the W1AW Centennial WAS with Maine.
May 20 - K1N - Feb 9, 2015 - Completed all 50 NA entities.
May 21 - W9KSE - Mar 14, 1964 - First of many memorable QSOs with Sue W9KSE.
May 25 - ZL1HY - Jun 2, 1964 - Answered my 40 meters CQ followed by a 23 minute rag chew.
May 27 - RW0A - Jul 30, 1995 - First ever Asiatic Russian QSO.
That does it for today and gets us caught up on the 2015 edition of memorable QSOs. Now I'll make the 2024 edition of memorable QSOs including QSOs like ZD7W, KH6LC, 1A0C, C31CT, etc. -30-
Sunday Feb 25 7:48 PM - I am mentally tired after working on transferring my 324 QSOs in the ARRL DX Contest from paper to computer. I will not paper log on any future contests where I expect to make that many QSOs. It was fun doing the paper logging, but tiring getting from paper to computer.
A nice day again today. Started off on the cold side, but warmed to the upper 40s by afternoon. For the third day in a row, I took a mile+ outdoors walk with a little shopping along the way.
Not much activity on the bands today so I took some time to re-play the recording of my rag chew with KH6LC yesterday. I was able to pick out some things I had trouble copying live yesterday. Actually I didn't miss all that much upon re-listening today. It was really interesting to find out so much about Lloyd after working him some 55 times in contest QSOs. I learned something about how he copies me so well in contests and in the QSO yesterday. He has a very low noise floor which along with beam antennas at some 85 feet could really dig out QRP level signals. Especially the low noise floor. My high noise floor really kills QRP level signals here. The difference is astounding when Mike (or Tom) and I operate from Kittanning Community Park or Moraine State Park. Most of the time the floor in the parks is at S0 or S1 at the very most. Down here in town in the valley, the level is at best S4 or S5 and worse at times when my furnace or some other noisy equipment comes on.
Of course being Sunday, my streak QSO(s) came easily in the SST Sprint. I made three of them including one on 15 meters when I went there after satisfying the streak conditions. I was looking for DX and heard Tom K7RI in the SST and helped him out with a QSO on 15. I also heard Carl N5XE and would have liked to work him, but he made one S&P QSO, then I didn't hear him any more. Sorry, my friend.
Mike and I missed out on a hamfest today. We plain forgot about the South Hills Hamfest. So we're going to come up with some system to remind us of future events like that this year. -30-
Saturday Feb 24 5:45PM - Well, I've had over 103,000 QSOs in my 60 + years of hamming, but few as exciting as one I had just a little while ago. An 18 minute rag chew with Lloyd KH6LC on 15 meters. He was calling CQ and I needed to record a Hawaiian QSO on the 705, so I called him expecting a TU 599 style QSO. However he gave me RST QTH Name, and I did the same and we went on from there with age, wx, rig, lot of other info about life in Hawaii and so on. Actually he seemed to be copying me better than I was copying him in my QRN with some QSB. I've got the whole QSO recorded and I plan to be listening to it a few times to try to dig out some of the parts I was having trouble copying. That sure made my day, week, month, year as far as ham radio goes, and otherwise also. HI. I guess that confirms I do have a Hawaii pipeline. -30-
Friday Feb 23 8:48PM - We're closing in on Meteorological Spring on March 1st. If my math is good, that's just one week left in nasty old Winter. Hooray!!
Today was very spring-like with sun and warmth. A high of 58 on both of my remote weather units. I took advantage with an outdoors walk of just over a mile with stops at the bank and Sprankle's. So nice to get out and walk to do my banking and grocery shopping. I hope to be doing a lot more outdoor things as better weather arrives and hangs around.
A good day on the bands with a mix of DX and rag chews. NV3N with a 32 minute rag chew this evening. A couple shorter rag chews with KE8TBM cut short by a Roscoe walk time and AA2YK shortened by poor conditions. Then two DX QSOs with F6IRM and HC1MD/2. I believe that's my first Ecuador QSO in a while, and I forgot to start the 705 recorder. @#$%.
Weather time now, so 73. -30-
Thursday Feb 22 7:56PM - I had a nice visit from Tom WB3FAE today. It's been a while since we've had an eyeball QSO, and it was good to do so again. We spent most of the hour and a half talking about the ARRL DX Contest and then looking over my ICOM IC705. Unfortunately there was very little DX activity on the bands when he was here. Instead we listened to some of my recorded DX QSOs.
I worked a country tonight for my streak QSO that I haven't worked in a long time. Let me see when the last time I worked Mali was. I only have three previous QSOs with Mali, in 1997, 2001, and 2016. The 2016 QSO was with TZ4AM, the same station I worked this evening.
Not much else going on today. Some more work on my ham radio Excel files. No outside walks as it was raining most of the day. Sure better than s@#w. -30-
Wednesday Feb 21 7:49PM - Sort of a mish-mash of things I want to talk about in the diary tonight.
After all the brief TU599 style QSOs before, during, and after the ARRL DX Contest the past few days which I enjoyed immensely, it was still nice in a way to get back to rag chewing. I had a nice 33 minute visit on 40 meters with Bob N2OTG for my streak QSO a little while ago. A very interesting discussion mainly about various keys we both have.
Today was yet another preview of spring day with a high of 60 before the clouds started moving in late in the afternoon preparing for a rainy day tomorrow. I took advantage with a medium length walk while the sun was out. Didn't stop anywhere, just walked.
It's so simple to get a basic DXCC, WAS, WAC with CW and QRP, I like to make it a little more challenging. For example, seeing how quick I can work all continents. I've done that in just a several minute period more than once. Working WAS and WAC with my new ICOM705 was accomplished quickly. With regular non-contest QSOs, WAC took two months. WAS took 5 days under two months. Now I'm working on finishing DXCC. I went through the ARRL DX Contest and added 14 countries to bring me closer at 90 countries now. Those are just some ways I have fun with collecting continents, states, and countries. There are others also like doing it with my KX3 when I first got it. Another way dealing with the IC705 is working on recording QSOs from 100 countries on the SD card in the 705. I randomly recorded many QSOs in the ARRL DX Test and I now have 47 countries recorded. I should say 49 because I have yet to do W and VE which of course will be a cinch.
I hope that gives you something to think about when things get to be too easy with your CW/QRP station. Have fun! -30-
Tuesday Feb 20 8:12PM - This was a...... how do I put it, unusual at times, frustrating day, interspersed with good things.
It started off normally with me getting up at 8:00 as I do every day. I got dressed, did my combination one mile walk / morning prayers, and went to the computer to read the morning cartoons. Then I did some work on my computer ham radio files. While doing that, the lights went out, but before I could even get upset about it, they came back on in perhaps 5-10 seconds. I checked to see if it stopped any clocks, etc. I found only two things that go out even from an outage less than a second, my microwave and my computemp remote weather unit. Everything else resumed its normal operation all by itself.
Next up was walking Roscoe followed by breakfast, some more computer work after which it was time for another walk. When I finished with Roscoe, I walked to the PO to mail some letters that were sitting here for a few days waiting for nice weather. It was nice today with sunshine and a high around 50.
Back home again and up to the shack where I worked some DX. Then back to the computer work. I started to look up one of the calls I worked on QRZ on my iPhone and all I got was a blank screen. I tried another call, same thing. I tried on the computer and got a message I wasn't connected to the Internet. I glanced at my gateway/router and saw a red light which wasn't normal. I called technical support at Windstream, and got a very helpful and friendly girl named Anna. She talked me through several things to try, but none of them worked. Finally we agreed a technician visit was needed. She set things up for a visit tomorrow. OK so I've got to live without an Internet for most of a day. I thanked Anna for trying so hard to help me, and resigned myself to the wait. No website updates tonight, no weather spreadsheet, and so forth. I decided to get something to eat. While I was cooking something in the microwave my landline phone rang with a message saying briefly this is the phone company making a line check. Before I could answer, he hung up. Then a couple minutes later, the doorbell rang and it was the phone technician. I couldn't believe it, and asked if he was responding to my trouble report. He was, and said he was in the area and caught a report on the trouble and thought he'd stop by before he quit for the day. Wow! Can't beat that for service. I had texted Mike about the Internet loss and he said waiting a day wasn't bad, he usually had to wait a week.
Dan (the technician) started to check things out and was having the same problems I was having when Anna was walking me through the steps. To keep this from getting any longer, I'll just say that it wound up that there was some problem with the gateway/router, and Dan replaced it with a new one. It took some time to get it to connect, but finally it did. We set up my computer an phone with the password, etc. and now here I am using it just like nothing ever happened. I was very pleased with the Windstream technical support, both from Anna and Dan.
I got my streak QSO on 40 this evening from 9A/NC8R. It was easy although I had to send my call a couple times before he got the P at the end. Now I'm just finishing up counting my new countries in the ARRL DX Contest that I need for my DXCC on my new ICOM IC705 rig. I stand as of now at 90 countries on the 705. Now I've got to finish my other web page updates. -30-
Monday Feb 19 5:24PM - The story of the ARRL DX Contest story is written. Interested? Go to my CONTESTING section, Stories page for the index of my stories. The ARRL DX link is at the top of the list. -30-
Sunday Feb 18 7:20PM - As I said in a text to Mike a little while ago, after 325 QSOs in the ARRL DX Contest, I am beat. I'm getting too old to put in a big effort in contests any longer, but it sure was fun tuning up and down the bands working station after station. That's what makes contesting fun. I know there are other ways of doing it, but that's my way. No spotting or other computer assistance. Just me and my radio. It was even nice logging on paper. At some points logging a minimum of info for each QSO, I had a rate of a QSO every minute or two. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to save my contest comments for the story I will be writing. I have a lot of work coming up this week with the story, transferring paper info to my computer Excel log, going through and cleaning up the many QSOs I recorded on the 705 SD card during the contest, etc. Whew!
So with that intro for my week, I'll close this entry now and start on some of the work. -30-
Saturday Feb 17 8:08PM - Just taking a break here from the DX test to put my laundry in the dryer and type this diary entry. I've pretty much decided I'm going to write a story about the contest since it's the biggest effort I've put in a contest in some time now. That will come sometime later this week. Just past the halfway point in the contest, I've got 204 QSOs in a good many entities. I have no idea how many as of now. I just work the new ones as they come along. I'll count them later when I transfer my paper contest log to computer. A couple highlights to tease about the story. I got one overall new country in St. Helena. I got my usual contest WAC. OK, enough for now till the story.
It was a good day for contesting with a couple inches of s@#w on the ground. We had one squall this afternoon that was almost a complete whiteout. I could barely see across the street which is right outside my shack window. Wish I'd had my phone with me at the time to get a picture, but I didn't. I almost could just post a white sheet of paper as that was very close to what it looked like for a couple minutes.
I got my streak secured with a couple QSOs in the contest after 0000Z. Now think I'll go back to the shack and continue till the laundry is dry. -30-
Friday Feb 16 9:17PM - A very good day all around today. A brief summary here, then maybe more details later or tomorrow or....? Mike arrived around 3PM and we chatted a bit, then up to my shack where he wanted to work some of the SST Sprint. He got about 7 QSOs in a little under a half hour. Then we went looking for and working some DX before heading off to the fish dinner. We both ate in moderation for a change and I don't feel stuffed at all. Back home for another little chatting, then to Brookville for Mike. I got in the ARRL DX and spent two hours there. The bands were excellent, especially 40. I don't think I ever heard 40 so busy to EU and all the EU stations were strong. I spent a lot of time recording new countries for the SD card in the 705 or I could have worked more than the 22 stations I did work. I got 7 EU stations on 40 as deep into EU as RL3A, UW7LL, LY2XW, LY4A plus my usual pipeline to Scandinavia with LN8W. Right now about time to walk Roscoe in the s@#w, so 73 for now. -30-
Thursday Feb 15 8:03PM - I got on the air a couple times this afternoon. There was much more activity from stations getting ready for the ARRL DX Contest this weekend than the past few days. I picked and chose what to work, mainly based on getting some new countries recorded on the SD card in the IC705. I worked HA8RD, but didn't record him for one reason or other. I think it was a duplicate country but I don't have my notes right here now. Then two countries that were new to the recording, OK6DJ and PF88ANT, who was also a new prefix. All 3 were on 10 meters.
Then this evening, I worked PJ2/NF9V for the streak QSO, then CT9/DL5LYM for a new recorded country, #15. I'm really enjoying the QSO record feature on the 705. Maybe some day I'll have a DXCC on the SD card. HI. That will be a while though. I'll probably do the ARRL DX Contest with recording countries in mind more than anything else.
Nothing much else noteworthy today. Oh, did I mention my tulips have sprouted? Anyway I cleaned up the tulip bed today picking weeds and maple seeds. I hope they are not out too early. I did cover them last night anyway as it got down to 18 degrees. -30-
Wednesday Feb 14 9:29AM - I thought I'd better write this early before I forget what I wanted to write about from yesterday. Mike arrived around 2:15 and we got caught up on some things before we went to my shack. Surprisingly there were almost no stations doing their setup and testing for the upcoming ARRL DX Test this weekend. In fact we found only one and worked him, TO4A in Martinique. I recorded the QSO to add another country to my 705 collection. I'm going to make a list to keep track of the countries and where they are on the SD card in the 705 when I get a chance. After that a little more talking then off to Subway for a Tuna sub for me and a meatball one for Mike. Also one of their somewhat new foot long chocolate chip cookies which we shared. My, are they good. I may have to visit Subway more often. They are only a few blocks from here within walking distance when the weather is good.
Speaking of weather, the big s@#wstorm missed us here and went to our SE and really blasted the SE quadrant of PA with almost a foot and a half of s@#w. We only saw a few flakes here.
After we finished eating, it wasn't long before we took off for SkyView. We got there a little before 7PM. Mike had one of his paddles with him which needed some work. One member brought the springs he needed but another one who was supposed to bring the levers couldn't make the meeting. So Mike will have to wait to get the paddle work finished.
Meanwhile I went to the radio room, and set up one of the operating positions without any help. Before long I worked V26CV. There is a little story behind the QSO. After I got home I got an email thanking me for the QSO. It was from Chuck KG9N who was the op at V26CV. He was the op at KG9N/C6A back in 1994 when I started my streak. My QSO with him was the first QSO of the streak 10,786 days ago. I thought that was nice of him to do that out of the hundreds of QSO he has probably made already plus the many more he will make in the ARRL DX Contest this weekend.
I spent the rest of the evening mostly just listening. Al N2MA came in the radio room to visit for a while and to pick up an American Flyer repair manual I was lending to him. We talked for quite a while.
Later Bob WC3O came in for a while. Just about that time I was hearing another DX station and couldn't quite make out his call. It was one of those deals where just when the station sends his call, QSB strikes or a burst of QRN wipes out the call. I asked Bob if he could help copy, but the same thing happened. Finally I figured the call was CB0ZA in somewhat rare Juan Fernandez Island (Robinson Crusoe Island) off Chile. He was operating split and I wasn't quite familiar for setting up for split on the IC7300, so Bob set it up and after several tries, I made the QSO. I was using the club call of K3MJW since it was setup with their big quad antenna, and I don't use K3WWP with QRO nor big antennas. We were at QRP power though. After I made the QSO, Bob used his call and also worked him. Then I asked Mike if he wanted to try, but after a try or two, CB0ZA disappeared, and we kidded Mike about scaring him away.
We stayed a while longer, and as we were leaving, Bob told me we should come down to the club some evening when there was no meeting going on and we could learn more about the radio room setup and work some DX. It is rather confusing when we have only a once a month chance to use it and that is on a meeting night. So we're looking forward to that some time.
On the way home, we decided we'll go to the Lenten Fish Dinner this Friday for our first one of the year. Mike then dropped me off and headed for Brookville. -30-
Tuesday Feb 13 10:15PM - An enjoyable day with Mike visiting and then going to SkyView. Also a tiring day so I'm going to postpone any comments on today until tomorrow. There are a few things I do want to comment on. -30-
Monday Feb 12 8:11PM - Whowever decided 30 minutes was the ideal length for an official rag chew had the right idea. I don't know how many QSOs I've had that wind up in the 20-29 minute range. It takes a little more effort to stretch them to that 30 minute mark, and often I don't make it or the fellow on the other end of the QSO has to QRT for this or that reason right in the 20-29 minute range. So if you make it to 30, it is worthy of being an official rag chew.
I had one of those tonight with K0CDJ on 30 meters. Well, not quite. I see it was actually 19 minutes.
Had a pretty good QSO with Harald OZ8X on 12M today and got it recorded on the 705. He dropped to 10W from 500W as a check with me. He went from 589 to about 229 and pretty much got lost in my local QRN. He gave me a 329 at the start of our QSO. Interesting.
Tomorrow Mike is visiting for a while before we head off to our monthly meeting at SkyView tomorrow evening. Supposed to s#$w tonight and tomorrow, but the boundary of the storm is right on the Indiana/Armstrong county line and we are on the good (no s@#w) side, it looks like as of now. -30-
Sunday Feb 11 7:32PM - On Super Bowl Sunday I had a Super Bowl of Spaghetti next door with Bruce, Jeff, and Roscoe. Now I am STUFFED.
I couldn't find Greg WK0B in the SST this evening so my streak QSO came from K1RF Steve in CT on 40M.
I went for a measured 20 minute outdoor walk this afternoon which is supposed to re-calibrate my Apple Watch. I'll look into that more later.
Other than that, a pretty quiet day. -30-
Saturday Feb 10 7:45PM - Guess I'll write the entry while my laundry is drying in the dryer. Guess that's a good place to dry it. HI
The big event of the day was taking Roscoe to the groomer for a much needed hair trim, bath, etc. He certainly seems to feel better after that.
I got a couple QSOs during the afternoon today. In between I was enjoying the nice weather with a walk in the park. I haven't been there for a while now. It looks like tomorrow will be the last "Spring in February" day for a while. Monday is supposed to cool down and feature some possibly moderate s@#w Monday night into Tuesday followed by cooler weather the rest of the week and maybe into next week as well.
I got 4 QSOs this evening while waiting for the wash cycle of my laundry to finish. Two in the PACC Contest, PI4COM and PE3V. The PE3 might be a new prefix. I'll check later. Then a real rough QSO with N1CAU through my local noise. Finally a short chat with Gary K1YAN. -30-
Friday Apri... ooops, I mean Feb 9 6:00PM - The weather had me fooled there. A high of 64 and two shirtsleeves walks outside totalling a little over 2 miles. Wow, that is so great. Although it is going to cool off starting in a couple days, still it is not going to be all that bad according to the Penn State Weather World Show looking ahead to Feb 24 or so. Some s@#w, but no big storms, and mixed in with rain. They're usually pretty accurate with their long range outlooks, so let's hope.
A 40 minute rag chew on 30 meters just a little while ago was my only afternoon QSO today. Not much heard on the higher bands, and none of it was DX. A bit surprising with the ARRL DX Contest looming on the horizon. Usually a couple weeks before a big DX contest features a lot of stations setting up for the contest.
Other than enjoying the weather, I did some arranging of some of the "junk" here in the house today. Now I'm waiting to walk Roscoe, and then head to the shack for another day of the streak. -30-
Thursday Feb 8 8:15PM - Another in the streak of spring-like days here. I walked to the PO and the bank today enjoying the low 60s temperature. It was cloudy as opposed to the past few days, but that didn't matter.
I went through my ham radio awards today and arranged them a little better in my folder. I separated the contest results awards from the regular awards like WAC, WAS for example. It's interesting to see how many of the awards from foreign countries are on paper that is a little different from our standard 8 1/2 by 11 paper. I had to trim some down a bit to get them to fit in the clear file folder transparent covers. It was easy though with the paper cutter I bought a few months ago.
I didn't make any QSOs during the day today for the first time in a few days now. Conditions were on the poor side. Tonight though I had a couple of nice QSOs with W4YAS in NC who had some nice things to say about my web site. His name is Yas, same as his call. I just looked him up in QRZ and I see he is Japanese and Yas is short from Yasutaka. Then an almost rag chew with Howard K4LXY. We came up 4 minutes short of 30 as QSB got too bad to carry on.
Our local Lenten fish dinners are starting this Friday. When Mike and I get together at SkyView next Tuesday, we'll make plans which one(s) we are going to attend. -30-
Wednesday Feb 7 8:25PM - I did something useful today instead of the usual fooling around with this or that. I prepared and mailed my Property Tax Rebate form. I hate filling out forms like that, and I'm glad it is done now. Hope I got everything right on it. Now to efile my Federal and State Income taxes. Maybe tomorrow but I'll probably put it off again.
I also got on 10 meters this morning and recorded QSOs with two more DX countries, England and France. The one with England, G4RCG was a good solid one in which we even chatted a bit. The one with France F8AAN was a bit on the sloppy side, but all the necessary info got recorded. A third one with ON5SY kind of fell apart mostly due to my error in starting the recording then ending it prematurely so I didn't count it as logged and erased that file.
It was a nice day, so I extended my walk when I went to the PO and stopped in Sprankle's to pick up some things. Actually I went in to get two things, and wound up with around a dozen items. HI. Supposed to be nice again tomorrow so think I'll go out again while the nice weather lasts. It's supposed to be rainy over the weekend. That's still better than s@#w. -30-
Tuesday Feb 6 12:04PM - Got this 12 Days of Christmas Award and thought I'd take it easy with the diary today and just use a scan for my entry.
Added another recorded country to the 705 in LZ3ND on 10 meters. See you tomorrow in the diary pages. -30-
Monday Feb 5 8:46PM - Remember Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year"? Well it was a very good day here. Another beautiful sunny day, a rarity in February. It was not quite as warm as it should have been, but 48 is not bad for February.
10 meters was good again as it has been the past few days now. I need to get on a bit earlier in the day though. By 1600Z, EU is starting to drop away. Still I did work and record Andy SM2JEB to add another country to my list of recorded ones. I'm also getting a bit more familiar and quicker with the QSO recorder on the IC705. Late this afternoon I worked Bob K8FN again for a nice 23 minute QSO on 30M. Then this evening it was Gary K1YAN on 40 for another full rag chew of 34 minutes. I'm now up to 133 rag chew QSOs in my log going back to January 2016. They're becoming few and far between in that era because I was more into DX and Contests/Sprints then.
This afternoon I went for a walk to the Post Office to mail a QSL and buy some stamps. On the way home I ran into my friend Jasmine and had a brief talk with her. It was nice to see her again.
Now it's time to get the weather readings, so I'll close here. -30-
Sunday Feb 4 7:23PM - There must be another shorter pipeline along with the Hawaii and Northwest Africa ones I have. That is to Greg WK0B. Most times I decide to use the SST Sprint for my streak QSOs, it seems Greg is the strongest and easiest to work station. It was so again this evening. I tried a couple other stations first with no luck, but then found and worked Greg easily.
I worked some more on my rag chew QSOs today and got back as far as April 2017 before I quit. I may go back again for a while this evening. It seems as I go back in time, I find fewer rag chews among my QSOs. I'm up to 124 rag chews now from 25 states and Ontario. Just as an idea of how they decrease going backwards, in the latest full year 2023, I had 26 while in the earliest full year 2018 it was just 7. I had the feeling I was rag chewing more lately and that bears it out, I would say. I don't think I am going to increase the state total much beyond 30, if I even get that far. Time will tell.
It was a nice day again today if a bit chilly early in the day before the sun got higher in the sky and warmed things up to a high of 56. Not a cloud in the sky all day as far as I could tell. A beautiful February so far. Phil has been accurate so far and it looks to continue according to the consensus of forecasts/outlooks through at least February 17. A slight chance of s#$w on the 18th, but that's a long way off.
I played some more with the audio recorder on the ICOM705 today. I like it more and more as I use it. I recorded a couple more DX QSOs today on 10 meters with OM2VL and OZ1LO. I tried a couple others but couldn't get them so I deleted the failures. One other thing I have to try is recording a series of QSOs without stopping and seeing if it is possible then to separate the QSOs into individual files. I plan to record as many different DX countries QSOs as I can.
I'm always interested in records, be it in ham radio, sports, fishing, or anything else. I was checking on the PGA tour on my iPhone while killing some time and I see Wyndham Clark shot a 60 today for a Pebble Beach record. Close, but not an all time PGA record. That's a 58 by Jim Furyk in 2016 at the Travellers Championship. A little extra bit of info puts that in perspective. There have been over 613,000 rounds played on the PGA tour. There have been several 59's shot, but the 58 is unique. Wonder what the LPGA record is? Let's see if I can find it. It's 59 by Annika Sorenstam in a 2001 tour event in Phoenix Arizona. Those are the official records. There are also other claims of unofficial 55's. One recognized by the Guinness Book of Records by Rhein Gibson in May of 2012 in Oklahoma. Three others are not recognized due to unusual circumstances. I'll let you look up more in Wikipedia if you're interested. Do a bing search for "PGA (or LPGA) record low single round scores".
Quite a potpourri of info in today's entry. HI -30-
Saturday Feb 3 7:26PM - I started work today on my WAS rag chew list. I began with the present log entries of today and yesterday and worked backwards until March of 2021 where I got tired and quit for the time being. I found 71 30 minutes or longer QSOs. They were from 24 states and Ontario. The longest one was 52 minutes with K4LXY in VA. There were a lot that were close but just fell short of 30 by a minute or two. Six bands were represented: 80 40 30 20 17 and 10. Just glancing at the list without counting, I would say 80M had the most with 30 in second place. Several stations had more than one, such as K4LXY, VE3WH, K1OV, NR8M, to name a few. Ohio was the best state by a pretty good margin. I'll have more stats when I finish checking all my QSOs or get tired of it and give up before then. HI
My QSO tonight was a brief one in the FOC contest from K3AU. This afternoon, I ran into an old friend whom I hadn't worked since 2006, Kevin KI4DEF. Kevin was one of our early NAQCC members and did a lot to help with the club. He still does a lot of QRP work and likes to operate mW power.
Right now I'm doing my laundry waiting for the dryer to finish its task so I'll close here. -30-
Friday Feb 2 1:06PM - I watched the Punxsutawney Phil show on PCN this morning and was delighted when he made his prediction of an early spring this year. The last time he did that was in 2020 and our February and March were both well above normal temperature wise. Let's hope for a repeat, but all the while keeping in mind that Phil has only been accurate about 40% of the time in 135 or so years.
I did something I hadn't yet done this morning. I tried out the recording feature on the IC705. That is pretty neat. I recorded two of my QSOs on 10 meters. One with OH0Z and another with EA6EJ. Unfortunately EA6EJ faded out after it seemed he wanted to rag chew. That would have been nice to have a recording of. I can see some nice features of the recordings. To check if a DX station got my call correct, and try again if not. To record a contest and then log it later. To "show off" some rare DX QSO. Just a lot of applications as I learn to use it more. It records both sides of a QSO, mine and theirs. I'll have more comments on it as I get more familiar with it. -30-
Thursday Feb 1 8:00PM - I had an interesting thought today. How about a Worked All States with a 30 or more minute rag chew QSO? I wonder how close I could come to that with my 97,000 QSOs. I have all the data in my Excel log since I have always logged both the starting and ending time of every QSO. I could probably write some sort of macro to pull out the data. Or maybe just add another field containing the end time minus the start time of each QSO. Hmmmm. I'll have to give that some thought and see if I really want to go to all that effort or not. It would take a little work, for instance how to handle those QSOs that start in the 2300 hour and end in the 0000 hour just to mention one thing. Well, there's no deadline of any kind and only to satisfy my curiousity, so no pressure to do it. I wonder if I ever had a rag chew with Hawaii or Alaska. Lot of things to wonder about. If I don't find enough 30 minute rag chews, maybe make it 20 minutes or even 15? Then how about something for DX rag chews? I think I've opened a Pandora's box. HI What do you think?
My streak QSO this evening was a 32 minute rag chew with Mike K1OV in Florida. Only 49 states to go. Oh, I did Michigan with Ed AB8DF the other afternoon in a 30 minute QSO. And Ohio with K8FN in a 40 minute QSO about a week ago. And a couple near misses 29 minute QSOs. Darn. Well one was a dupe Ohio anyway, but the other was Virginia. OK, enough of that for now.
It was a fairly nice day today with a high in the upper 40s. Speaking of weather, I put the January weather in my Excel file today. Let me look at it and pick out any interesting stats. The average low, mean, and high were all above normal by the given departure. 26.5 +6.6, 32.9 +4.7, 39.3 +2.9. No overall monthly records were set or tied except the number of days with 1.0+ inch precipitation at 2 days. Of course no 90+ degree days and the like which are tied every year.
Some daily records Greatest Precipitation - Jan 9 1.65", Greatest daily high temperature - Jan 26 64 degrees, Highest daily mean temperature - Jan 27 55 degrees, Hughest daily minimum temperature - three days in a row Jan 25-27 at 44 46 43. Greatest departure from normal high temperature - Jan 26-27 at +27 +22.
Quite a January thaw from the 25-27, pretty much on schedule as it usually happens around the 3rd week in January.
One interesting stat was mentioned on Penn State weather. 90% of the time in Pittsburgh in January the skies were cloudy - the greatest ever in ANY month since such records were kept probably going back to the mid-late 1800s. Awesome. -30-
Wednesday Jan 31 5:11PM - And another month is about to become just an historical memory. It's the 945th month in which I have been alive, if my math is correct. It's the 353rd month in which my streak has existed. It's the 718th month in which I have been a ham radio operator. I don't know why I keep figuring these things as it doesn't do much except to make it more clear just how old I really am. HI
OK I've got all the January QSOs uploaded to eQSL, and now I'll wait for the matches to come in and I'll log them in my Excel log and save the card images that are new band QSOs.
We had an unusual occurance here today. A very bright object appeared in the sky this morning. I forgot what it was for a while until I realized it was the Sun that hadn't been seen here in quite a while with all the overcast skies of late. Unfortunately the overcast won out again by Noontime. SIGH!!! It was nice while it lasted, though. -30-
Tuesday Jan 30 7:55PM - I reached sort of a milestone a little while ago when I worked AB0BM in IA on 30 meters. That was my QSO number 97,000 as KN3WWP/K3WWP since April 1963 when I got my Novice ticket. If you add in the QSOs I made using for example N3AQC, N3A, NY3EC, and a few others I'm not going to list now, that makes a grand total of 97,000 + 6,389 = 103,389 QSOs. Of those, 76,024 came during the streak as K3WWP since August 5, 1994. Gosh, I'm feeling mighty old as I sit here and type this. HI. Now the next big goal if I make it will be QSO # 100,000 as KN3WWP/K3WWP. That's 3,000 more QSOs. In the latest two years, I made 2104 + 1646 = 3750 QSOs /24 = 156.25 QSOs/month. So at that pace, I should hit 100,000 in about 19 months which would take until July/August 2025. If I can stay healthy, that's not unreasonable.
Today was another chilly or mild day depending on what you reference it to. Mild for winter, chilly compared to the past couple weeks. I went shopping with Bruce today to get a couple things. I did some cleaning and dusting. Got on the air a bit late afternoon and worked a nice prefix in HH220Y on 12 meters, along with another nice rag chew with Bob K8FN on 30 meters. -30-
Monday Jan 29 8:02PM - I'm finding that as I age, I'm noticing that my interest in rag chewing is becoming more dominant in my ham radio activities. I really enjoy sitting there discussing not only ham radio topics, but others as well like the weather, fishing, walking, your career, other hobbies, etc. The list is endless, but never politics or religion. When you use voice to talk, it's easy to run out of things to say, at least for me. So CW is an ideal way for me to get into conversations with its slower speed compared to voice. I had just under a 30 minute QSO tonight with K4LXY. Let's see, at a speed of about 18 words per minute, that's 30 x 18 or 540 words or roughly 270 words for each of us. At that speed, we covered a lot of subjects, but never ran out of anything to say and could have gone on a lot longer had K4LXY not had to QRT. Much more interesting than those QSOs where you exchange a club number or some other simple quick DX or contest type exchange. Please don't get me wrong, I love DX and contest QSOs also. I always have and always will. There's a lot of satisfaction in working a rare DX station or making a lot of QSOs in a cantest, but it's a whole different kind of reward from having a long meaningful conversation with someone. End of tonight's "soapbox" if you can call it that.
Today was spent doing routine chores for the most part, but I also worked some more on my weather records and got on the bands this afternoon for a couple QSOs. KP4JRS for a quick DX QSO on 12 meters and KF2P for a short rag chew before QSB and QRN ended it prematurely. Then another DX QSO from V31XX on 40 this evening. Now I'm updating my web site and waiting for 9PM to check my daily weather readings and 9:30PM to walk Roscoe then watch the final part of the movie Shane with Bruce. A late night snack then off to bed. -30-
Sunday Jan 28 7:55PM - A little different streak plan this Sunday evening. I usually go for the SST Sprint to get my streak QSO, but tonight the 705 was set to 30 meters when I turned it on and there were a few good signals on the 705 Spectrum Scope so I thought I'd just stay there and call CQ. My CQs netted 2 QSOs with W8BWE and K1WAT.
It was a cool, compared to the last few days, day today and a lot of rain. We had exactly one inch overnight last night and more rain added throughout the day today. I think it was raining for all three of my Roscoe walks and may be so for the last one later at 9:30.
The NFL playoff games were interesting with KC "upsetting" Baltimore, and now Detroit leading SF. I watched a bit of both games over at Bruce's. He also had a spaghetti dinner for game day which was good. -30-
Saturday Jan 27 8:07PM - That's a nice ham radio related time - 807. Those of you old enough to remember vacuum tubes will recognize that and perhaps have some fond memories of it. I used a 1625 final tube back in my early ham radio days. I don't remember for sure, but I think the 1625 was pretty much identical to the 807 except for the filament voltage, 6.3V vs. 12.6V. Maybe some of you older timers can verify that.
Not much going on today except to look out the window and admire the s#$w-free vista. Isn't it great. At least I love it. Hope it lasts till spring. I guess I said that in an earlier diary entry or two, but it sure feels good to be able to say it and hope for it.
I had a couple nice rag chews this afternoon on 30 and 17 meters. Bob K8FN on 30 whom I haven't worked for about 3 or 4 years. We gabbed for about 40 minutes getting caught up on our news. Then it was Brian WB4IT for a 23 minute QSO on 17. The bands were very cooperative with steady strong signals for the whole of both QSOs.
Then the other extreme this evening with a very quick brief 160M contest QSO with K3ZM for the streak. -30-
Friday Jan 26 5:33PM - I feel good now. I just got an extra dose of Vitamin CW a few minutes ago. I liked that little phrase, "Vitamin CW" when K8QBS used it in our QSO last night and told him I would like to steal it. He gave me permission to use it, so I am and will continue to do so from time to time.
I just worked Jan K1ND in MI and Bill W9VC in IN on 30M. There wasn't much activity on other bands, but 30 was busy in the 2200Z hour today. It usually does show quite a bit of activity in that hour.
It was a warm January day today more like March with a high of let's see, ....... 63 on my La Crosse remote weather unit. That breaks the record of 60 for January 26 in my records going back to 1959. The 60 occurred way back in 1963. The highest January temperature in that long span was 71 twice on Jan 8, 2008 and Jan 13, 2006. We also hit 70 one time on Jan 11, 2020. Needless to say all our s@#w from a few days ago is totally gone. Our high is supposed to be in the 40s the next 10 days now except Monday when it will only be 39. I'll take that kind of weather in January any year. I hope it continues through February then warms up when spring (Meteorological) comes on March 1. Speaking of that, I'm going to watch the Friday Forecast Frenzy on Penn State television now in which they give a 2 day forecast, an extended forecast to 10 days and an outlook for the second week ahead. -30-
Thursday Jan 25 4:37PM - An early diary entry with a little story and a couple pictures.
Last night after I wrote the diary entry, I remembered it was the night for the NAQCC 160M Sprint. I set my iPhone alarm for 8:28PM to remind me later to get on and give it a try.
The time came and I headed to the shack. For some reason my mind was thinking mW sprint and I set my power to 900 mW, but still got on 160M. I heard K8NGW tuning up and getting ready for the sprint. When it started I gave him a call, and he came back with K3W?. I sent my complete call again and he got it and exchanged info to complete the QSO easily. That's about when it dawned on me about setting the power at 900 mW. After calling myself a dummy, I wondered if I ever had made any mW QSOs on 160 before. Conditions were good and I probably should have made more QSOs, but I only intended to get one QSO and QRT. I honored that intention and went to my computer and submitted my one QSO log with a soapbox comment about the mW power. Later I looked up 160 mW QSOs in my Excel log and found I had previously made 16 of them, 14 in the 2010 ARRL 160M Contest and 2 in the 2011 CQWW 160M Contest. That was when I had an attenuator to lower my 5 watts output from either my TS-570 or TS-480, whichever I was running at the time. The resistor values I had on hand lowered the power to 930 mW. So I now have 17 mW QSOs on 160M with my attic random wire. Yes folks, QRP and QRPp does work no matter the situation.
When I looked out at my mailbox there were two big white envelopes rubber banded together. I checked and one was for some health insurance info, the other from the ARRL. I thought maybe it was an award certificate. They sometimes take forever to send out such certificates and I forget I even ever entered an ARRL contest. Anyway it was nothing of the sort, but the following as shown here:
I was surprised because I knew I dropped my membership for a few years while I was inactive while pursuing my career in broadcasting. Apparently that was taken into account and they only totalled the years I was a member. Apparently there were fewer years I was inactive than I thought. I believe I first joined in 1963 or 1964 which would make 60 or so years. So I guess I was a non-member for about 10 years. Sorry for doing the math here, but I was curious about it while I was typing the diary entry here. HI
It was nice to hear from Paul N8XMS via email today. Paul followed Tom WY3H as NAQCC President when Tom retired as President and I retired as Vice President around 2014. I haven't talked to Tom for a while now, and think I may give him a call tonight. -30-
Wednesday Jan 24 4:09PM - Is there any more beautiful sight in nature than that I'm about to show you?
I've been working on my 63+ years of weather records again today. Getting them somewhat better organized. I hadn't looked at some of the records in many years now and it is very interesting to go through them again. It brings back a lot of memories going all the way back to 1959. I could probably write a whole book about the history of those records, but I don't think I ever will go beyond making notations about this and that along the way.
I thought I'd take a little break and get the diary written for today. I have these pictures of a nice s@#w melt and an interesting fog formation.
First the s#$w melt. The first picture from 12:52PM yesterday, January 23. The second from 3:16PM today, January 25. That's a span of a little over 26 hours from downright ugly to beautiful, thanks to the January Thaw's arrival just about exactly on time this year.
Lastly what I think is an unusual fog formation with the fog layer splitting the hills in the backgroud. They're basically just one large hill. I don't know exactly how the fog did the neat splitting job.
Think I'll do some more work on the weather records now or perhaps go upstairs and check the bands. -30-
Tuesday Jan 23 7:37PM - We lucked out weatherwise. NO Freezing rain at all last night or today. That was a real blessing. Actually we didn't even get much regular rain or s#$w. Just a few drops of rain, and that was it, so far.
One reason we didn't get any was because it all was falling as Virga. What's that, you say, if you're really not into the study of weather. Well, Virga is precipitation that falls into a very dry layer of air normally rather deep and close to the ground. As a result, it evaporates before reaching the ground, no matter what type it was before the dry layer. It will even show up on radar before it evaporates, which is why sometimes radar will show precipitation at your QTH, but a look out the window will show you nothing.
I had a couple of rag chews late this afternoon with a couple of hams I had never worked before, VE1CEN Josh on 17, and AB2T Jordan on 30, both answered my CQs. Then this evening another first timer, WD4AWD on a POTA operation on 30. Not sure where he was as a lot of POTA stations don't give out any kind of location, not even a simple, quick state. Another case of the integration of ham radio and computers. You have to check the POTA web site to get a QTH for an operation, and then if he wasn't spotted there, you have to wait a day or so to see where his operation took place. When I do a POTA, I have and always will give an RST State report. -30-
Monday, Jan 22 6:21PM - Although I hate the frozen kind, precipitation and how it is formed is fascinating. Let's look at the basic four forms: Rain, S@#w, Sleet, Freezing rain. There are other sub-forms, but I won't go into graupel, snow pellets, hail, and the like.
Most all precipation begins in the upper atmosphere as s@#w. What happens between there and the ground determines the type at the ground level.
1. If the temperature is above freezing all the way down, it is rain.
2. If it is below freezing all the way, it is s#$w.
3. If the journey starts in above freezing air, but there is a thick layer of cold air at ground level below that, it freezes before it reaches the ground and is sleet.
4. Similar to #3, but the ground level cold air layer is not as thick, it is freezing rain, not freezing till it reaches the ground, roads, trees, etc.
It gets really interesting when there are more than 2 levels of different temperature air on the trip to the ground. Do a Internet Bing search to learn more about precipitation types.
I got a quick DX QSO for the streak this evening. I turned on the IC705 and went right to 10 meters. Right there on 28016 was a strong LU7YZ calling unanswered CQs. I took care of that for him quickly. I called and he came back with WWP?, so I sent K3WWP and got a K3WWP TU 559 report. I gave him a TU 589 and a day was added to the streak. I looked around the bands some more but didn't work anyone else. TX5S was on 40 with a narrow but huge pileup. I never did actually hear TX5S. -30-
Sunday, Jan 21 8:19PM - Remember back in 2010 (I think it was) when the Netherlands Antilles broke up how the bands were overloaded with those seeking to work the new arrangement of those countries? 17 meters sounded a little like that late this afternoon with folks chasing Clipperton Island and TX5S listening all over about half of the CW portion of the band. Maybe that's an exaggerated comparison, but 17 was busy. Not busy enough to keep me from finding a rag chew QSO with Dave W4CI. I tried a bit to work TX5S, but didn't feel like spending time trying to find where he was listening, and gave up. I have Clipperton worked and confirmed on 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10 meters anyway.
Tonight I worked old standby SST participant Greg WK0B on 20 meters, then took some time for a rag chew with old friend Bill K4VSV on 30 meters.
A little more work on my weather records the only non-routine activity today. -30-
Saturday Jan 20 7:25PM - A very cold day today with a high of 21 and winds enough to make it feel like the single digits. At least no s@#w to speak of. So a good day to work indoors, and I did. I continued my work of late organizing my weather records. I got four 3-ring binders delivered today and took some records out of a filing cabinet and put them in one of the binders. I also split up a bulging binder and split its contents up with one of the new binders. I also did some more updating of the web site.
Ham Radiowise, I also did some work on my log files. This evening was the HA DX Contest with everyone working everyone else so I grabbed VE3NZ and gave him my number uno in the contest then QRT to do my laundry which I have been doing on Saturday evenings the past few weeks now instead of Sunday mornings. Now as the laundry is in the washing cycle, I'm doing the diary entry and updating my streak table on the main page of the web site along with today's propagation numbers on the propagation page. Maybe when the clothes go in the dryer a little later, I'll go back to the shack for a while. Or maybe not. HI -30-
Friday Jan 19 7:30PM - Another day of s@#w, staying inside, and doing some more web site updating. Looking forward to next week's January thaw with a few days in the upper 40s flirting with 50 degrees.
I had a great 30 minute rag chew about an hour ago with W1DWJ up in NH. We went into the time machine reminiscing about ham radio in the 1950s (when he was first licensed) and 1960s in my Novice days. Very interesting to compare then and now as far as ham radio goes. Vacuum tubes vs. solid state devices. Doing it all yourself vs. so much computer aiding these days. In a way it's truly a case of the "good old days" vs. what is going on these days. Which is better is strictly personal preference. My preference is a mixture of both, but mainly the old fashioned way of doing things with a little help from computers. -30-
Thursday Jan 18 7:58PM - I spent part of today doing some updating to some of my web site pages. Some of them haven't had much care recently and the info was, shall we say, outdated. HI.
Also I was looking at the NAQCC Award winners page on the NAQCC site and saw some of my awards there need updating and I worked on that somewhat also.
Interesting how when you get older things tend to get out of hand more easily. A lot of other things change also with age. I'm finding out a lot about that over the past couple years as the ageing is setting in kind of suddenly rather than a slow gradual change. Oh well, I'm still in good shape so no complaints.
My streak QSO tonight had to do with old age also. It was with Jon W8TY. We first worked way back in the early 60s when I was KN3WWP and he was WN8ELT. It will be 61 years since our first QSO this year on May 23. Whew! -30-
Wednesday Jan 17 7:30PM - For what it's worth, we're one day closer to spring than when I talked about the miserable weather in the diary last evening. Actually in about a week now, we may get a brief preview of spring if the outlook of 50+ degrees pans out the middle of next week. We'll see how right that turns out to be.
Not much on the bands this afternoon. I did get a couple of quick QSOs this evening though. First a brief chat with EA3AR on 40 meters. We've worked before a few times now and then. Then back to PA for a QSO with Eastern PA on 80 meters. A little later this evening is our NAQCC Sprint. I might try to get a couple QSOs in that to keep up my participation in the sprints.
Other than that, it was a shopping day to stock up on some food from Family Dollar and Sprankle's. Some $60.00 worth. I was thinking of trying to compare what I would have paid a year or two ago pre-inflation for the same food. I do have some old receipts from then, so it might be possible to do, but a lot of work and I'm not really that curious since there's not a lot I can do about it anyway. I was going to say something about politics here, but I decided not to. -30-
Tuesday Jan 16 6:02PM - We had another 2+ inches of you know what overnight to continue the miserable weather a little longer. Not much of a melt today with low 20s temperatures. SIGH. At least we are in the middle of meteorological winter today so half of the lousy season is over with.
It was a good day for ham radio, anyway. I had three good rag chews on 3 different bands. It started with KS0M on 10 meters. Dick is one of the oldest hams I have ever worked at 97 years of age. We talked for 16 minutes. Then next was W5LXS on 17 meters. We went for almost exactly 30 minutes and could have gone longer but the band dropped out on us suddenly. Lastly, it was N0ZT on 30 meters for 9 minutes, also ended by the band changing. All three QSOs came from my calling CQ. I was especially surprised by the 10 meters QSO. I hope the bands are still good this evening for my streak QSO. -30-
Monday Jan 15 8:07PM - T'aint a fit nite (day) out for man (me) nor beast (Roscoe). We did manage 4 quick short walks though with one more to come. I feel sorry for the little fellow as the cold and s@#w seemed to bother him today. I had to hurry him along. A little bribery helped in that regard. I took a doggie treat out with me and he did hurry up somewhat in anticipation of getting the treat. We had a low of +6 and a high of 25 today. It was a sunny day for the most part which helped boost the temperature a bit. It didn't help much in melting yesterday's s@#w though. It looks like more off and on snow for a week then maybe some warm up from the January thaw weather next week. I've watched the Penn State weather many years now. I believe it was there I heard Mark Mancuso's theory about the January thaw. It made a lot of sense, but unfortunately after all the years, I've forgotten the details. It had something to do with the Arctic climate. There is a definite peak in temperature that occurs regularly in the third or fourth week of January that shows up in my records.
Speaking of records, not for anything to do with the January thaw, I did quite a bit of organizing my weather records today. I started keeping records as a school project back in January of 1959 and after an intermittent 1959, I started keeping daily records on January 1, 1960 and with the help of my mother and an aunt, I've kept daily records to this very day, and in about 35 minutes as I type, I'll be getting today's data to continue that streak another day.
The other streak, the radio one, extended easily this evening with two QSOs, DX from PJ2ND and a rag chew of 27 minutes from W2XS. -30-
Sunday Jan 14 7:14PM - A tale of two QSOs today. This afternoon a rag chew with Vic W9RGB that lasted 47 minutes. This evening an SST QSO with Grant WA3AAN that lasted maybe 15 seonds at most. Both count as QSOs though, and that's the bottom line for my streak.
Very little going on today worth talking about. I definitely don't want to talk about the weather other than to say Winter has arrived. About an inch of s@#w overnight and the temperature was steady in the low 20s most of the day, and is now 15 degrees. BRRR! One good thing is that the wind has finally died down for the first time since Monday or so. Almost a full week of strong winds. I finally could put my porch furniture, hanging flower baskets and wind chimes back out today so it looks a little more cheerful and distracts from the ugliness of winter somewhat.
I also played with the settings on the ICOM705 a little today. Nothing particular in mind, I just wanted to see what some of the settings do, especially the ones that change the look of the Spectrum Scope. I wound up only changing one that increased the display height of the signals to make them stand out more clearly. -30-
Saturday Jan 13 7:35PM - Let's see, how can I describe today. Maybe like a tiny taste of what it must be like for those folks sitting out a hurricane wondering what it is going to bring them? The key word there is "tiny" because the magnitude of what is going on here is very small compared to a hurricane's penchant for destructive force. We did have the pretty steady high winds all day and they will continue through the night and tomorrow although they will diminish a bit by then. Today they were in the mid 20s range with gusts to the upper 30s range. Just a slight breeze compared to a full fledged hurricane. There wasn't much rain at all here today and there was a little snow mixed in now and then. I guess the real similarity is worrying about what the storms will bring. Will the wind blow down some power lines or some tree limbs on the lines or on the house? Will there be flooding from the rain? Any ice mixed in? Things like that which so far have not materialized, and hopefully won't before this all wraps by late tomorrow. Then we go right into the first real cold spell of winter for the next week or so. SIGH, when will spring get here. HI
The NA QSO Party provided an easy streak QSO with KR2Q whom I've worked many times and who took a moment to ask if I was QRP. Didn't take long to answer with an "R". HI. Otherwise in ham radio today I worked on the listing of all those who have visited my web site and signed the Guestbook. I've gotten quite a ways behind in doing that. It was a good way to pass the time and ease the worry about the weather.
Also tonight for the same reasons, I'm doing my weekly laundry. And that's it for now. Hope to be back here tomorrow evening. -30-
Friday Jan 12 7:30PM - A day spent watching the weather, trying to figure out what it is going to be for the weekend. The best guess right now is a wet, windy one, with maybe some sleet and or s@#w mixed in here and there. Then next week will be a cold one, followed by a less cold, dry one. That's my nutshell forecast mostly gathered from Penn State's Weather World telecast. I've been following the Penn State weather practically since its inception. There have been gaps in that when I couldn't get the telecasts. However I've come to the conclusion that it is the most accurate forecast available. The best feature is that they allow for flexibility in their forecasts just like in the real weather itself. No saying tomorrow will be cloudy with a high of 43 degrees and .24 inches of precipitation. But more like we'll have temperatures in the mid 40s with around a quarter inch of rain. I think that little sample will convey their way of doing things.
Tonight I heard VP9KF on 40 and went ahead and worked him for the streak even though I just worked him a couple days ago. This afternoon I had a nice chat with Pete K1PJA on 30 meters for 17 minutes. Signals were perfectly steady all that time.
OK, if the high winds don't change things, I'll be here with another diary entry sometime tomorrow. -30-
Thursday Jan 11 5:34PM - I just finished my late afternoon check of the bands that I've been doing lately. They seemed a little more active today than the past few days, but still I didn't work anyone. I didn't really try that hard as I was mostly just listening. I did hear and called a few times my friend Suke JM7OLW on 10 meters but my 5 watts wasn't making the trip today as it has in the past. Suke and I have had 4 QSOs all mini-rag chews. By that I mean they lasted a few minutes each and we actually exchanged more than the all too standard TU599 from DX QSOs these days. I also heard a FY station, but he was jumped on before I even tried calling. Also I tried a few CQs on each band with no success.
I was also reading some stories about Nick Saban retiring as Alabama football coach yesterday. There is a lot of speculation about who will replace him. I have my own choice of the people suggested. I think Dabo Swinney from Clemson would be an excellent choice. He took Clemson to the CFP finals in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 where they beat Alabama in 2016 and 2018. They had a bit of a down year this year, but still I think Swinney would be a worthy successor to Saban if he is willing to go and if Alabama can afford and/or is willing to buy out his contract. Just my opinion, right or wrong.
Otherwise we're watching another storm similar to Tuesday coming this Friday and Saturday with a lot of rain, a litle snow, and high winds. -30-
Wednesday Jan 10 8:03PM - A quiet day today after the exciting in many ways day yesterday. I described the day yesterday pretty fully since I didn't get to write the diary entry till after 11:00PM so I won't repeat it here.
I did get on the air a couple times during the afternoon. I've been starting on 10M and working my way down looking for activity and if not finding any, calling 5 or so QSOs, then if no answers to my CQs, I move on down another band. When I got to 17M I found KH7Y calling CQ with a strong signal. I worked him easily, but he had moved to California since the last time I worked him a few years ago. We chatted a bit then I moved on. When I got to 30M, W1WCC answered my CQ there and we chatted about 18 minutes. You probably know with a call like that, there would be a connection with Marconi and also the coastal station WCC on Cape Cod. We talked about my visit to Cape Cod many years ago among other things.
Tonight I quickly found and quickly worked VP9KF whom I've worked 4 times before. Since that was so quick, I went CQing in hopes of finding a rag chew. NS8S did answer my CQ on 40 for a 22 minute QSO. And that wraps up a quiet day. -30-
Tuesday Jan 9 11:11PM - I had a first tonight at SkyView. I worked China, but with three strikes against it counting as an official K3WWP QSO. 1 - I used the club call of K3MJW. 2 - I used 50 watts of power. 3 - I used a tri-band beam antenna. So it goes into my "Other Calls" log, not my K3WWP log. That's fine with me. Once again it proves to me that working QRO with big antennas is just not as thrilling nor satisfying as CW/QRP/simple wire antennas. It was fun though for a change. I also heard two other China stations to make it 3 heard tonight - more than I've heard total in my 60 years of hamming.
Yes, Mike and I did have a good time at SkyView playing with the equipment and visiting with the members. That's been a second Tuesday evening ritual each month for a while now and will continue to be so in the future. I thought we might not make it tonight because of the weather, but the early morning bit of s@#w turned into a mild rain for the rest of the day totalling 1.65 inches of rain. Imagine if that had been s@#w. No thanks, I don't even want to imagine it. Anyway Mike and I lucked out and missed the heaviest part of the rain on our drives to and from New Kensington. -30-
Monday Jan 8 8:44AM - I was going on a shopping trip early today, but that has been postponed so I thought I'd use the time to talk about the 2023 weather for my diary entry today.
I'll just list the data in one or two line statements with a brief comment if necessary.
Here are a couple of earliest in the year for a maximum temperature reading: 72 Feb 15, 89 Apr 14.
The following data is all in the format shown here:
Spring (Mar-May) daily mean temperature departure from normal
Year 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Data +0.4 +2.1 +4.3 +3.8 +1.4 +3.4 +2.5 +2.9 +2.9 +2.1
Summer (Jun-Aug) daily mean temperature departure from normal
Year 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Data +0.9 +1.6 +4.3 +1.4 +3.3 +2.5 +3.8 +3.4 +2.5 +0.9
Autumn (Sep-Nov) daily mean temperature departure from normal
Year 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Data +1.3 +5.4 +5.3 +3.7 +2.6 +3.0 +3.3 +4.2 +1.8 +2.7
Winter (Dec, Jan-Feb following year) daily mean temperature departure from normal
Year 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Data -1.8 +6.3 +6.8 +2.2 +4.2 +6.5 +3.5 +3.8 +7.6 inc.
Yearly (Jan-Dec) daily mean temperature departure from normal
Year 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Data +0.3 +2.5 +4.2 +3.7 +2.9 +3.1 +4.0 +2.8 +1.0 +2.9
I think I'll stop here. I have many more statistics available, but these along with precipitation are the most interesting, I think. Perhaps I'll do the precipiation stats in a later entry. -30-
Sunday Jan 7 8:28PM - I finished putting my 2023 weather data into my weather spreadsheet. I ran into a couple bugs along the way caused by my using a different spreadsheet program from Microsoft Excel. I exterminated most of them, but still have a couple to work on. The stats turned out to be interesting and can be summed up in a quick bottom line word - WARM. Most all stats seem to show a general warming trend over the last 5 to 10 years with some up and down bumps along the way. If time permits tomorrow perhaps I'll illustrate some here in the diary to support my observations.
For the first time since I went back to a one-a-day QSO formula for my streak, I got a second QSO tonight, and it was a great one. A rag chew with Bill K0CDJ on 30 meters that lasted just a few seconds shy of a full 30 minutes. The first QSO was a SST Sprint quicky.
A lot of our s#@w from yesterday has melted, especially on the streets and sidewalks, and that's good. Looks like the next storm on Tuesday and Wednesday will be a rain and wind one with maybe some s@#w mixed in now and then. -30-
Saturday Jan 6 7:57PM - This is the third day now since I dropped getting a second QSO each day with my streak. I like the decision because the three days have proved hard just getting the one QSO. It's not due to any shortcoming in my station or antenna nor anything to do with propagation. It's mainly due to a gradual decline of folks rag chewing on CW. Put on a CW contest and the CW segments are full stem to stern with signals. Get some POTA or SOTA stations on the air and they draw big crowds. Special event stations likewise. But just getting on the air with CW to have a nice chat with someone seems at least the way I see it, to be dwindling. Perhaps it's because the old-timers who like to do that are dying off. Along with that, the newcomers to the hobby are making it more of a computer/radio hobby with their digital modes like FT8 and all those other fancy names they have. Give me my good old fashioned Morse code and some other ham who feels the same way and wants to chat about this or that subject in a nice half hour visit or longer, and I'm happy. Down off the soapbox now.
I finally got around to putting at least part of my 2023 weather data into my computer. Some interesting stats turned up. When I finish inputting the rest of the data, I'll try to list some of the stats. A quick bottom line - it was a warm year, and a dry one. Not record-setting, but noteworthy.
We had our first good (bad!) s#@fall today, about 1.5 or maybe 2 inches. It shouldn't hang around too long (better not) since daytime temps should be in the upper 30s to low 50s the next several days. -30-
Friday Jan 5 5:48PM - Looks like this was a good day to go back to one-QSO-a-day for the streak. It was a bit difficult to get even the one QSO last evening. Finally I was able to work Jack W4TJE down in VA after about a half hour of fruitless calls and CQs. Jack and I usually talk quite a bit, but last night poor conditions limited us to one set of exchanges. It was a QSO though and the streak goes on. I hope I don't jinx things by saying this, but actually it is pretty hard to NOT get a QSO. I've proved that by getting at least one each day for 10,746 consecutive days now. It will take something pretty drastic to keep from getting a QSO.
It looks like winter starts tomorrow with a winter storm advisory, then other storms showing up every 3 or 4 days or so for at least a couple weeks. Tomorrow should give 1-3" of s#@w or 2-5" depending on whether you believe the GFS or EURO forecast computers or some other computer. It was supposed to be no s#$w from one computer or C-1" from another then the storm took a jog to the west in its predicted track, hence the increase in numbers. The latest on next Tuesday's storm seems to indicate it will be mostly a rain storm with temps in the mid-upper 40s. We'll see.
About an hour to go till streak time. I wonder what conditions will yield tonight. I didn't get to check the bands this afternoon or early evening. Hope they are better than last night. -30-
Thursday Jan 4 6:02PM - Nothing much going on right now, so I thought I'd get the diary entry taken care of. Actually not much going on at all today. I did some cleaning up in the computer getting rid of some files I no longer need, and things like that. I also fixed one of the hanging flower baskets on my front porch. It had been hanging kind of askew the past couple weeks.
This evening I go back to my one-a-day QSO streak after ending the concurrent 2-a-day 365 day streak. Actually those who have followed the streak for a long time now know there have been other concurrent streaks accompanying the main one-a-day streak that will be 10,746 consecutive days with my one streak QSO after 0000Z comes along in about 50 minutes now. For those not familiar with the concurrent streaks, they are all listed in the QRP section of the site on the QRP Streaks page in that section. I haven't written up the latest 2-a-day streak that just ended yet. I probably will do so in the next couple months sometime. -30-
Wednesday Jan 3 8:15PM - Three items to cover in this diary entry.
1. I've decided with the completion of 365 straight days of 2 QSOs per day when I worked VE2PEACE on 80M, I'm going back to just my regular one streak QSO per day as I've done for the last 10,745 consecutive days. What I'll do is get that one QSO, then depending on circumstances either QRT or explore the bands to see what else is around. No pressure to get any more QSOs after the first one continued the streak another day.
2. I didn't have the ambition to do my 2023 weather data today, so maybe I'll do that tomorrow.
3. I finished work on the keyer today making up new labels for it as shown in the two pictures here:
The first picture is the back of the keyer and shows the pin jacks I added to keep track of the voltage with the battery checking position on my VOM and the new label for it. Also the jacks for the cable to the transmitter and for the paddle plus an empty hole that must have been there for something long ago when I built the keyer.
The second picture shows the new recessed pushbuttons for (L-R), a 3x2 CQ, a 3x2 CQ that repeats with a 4 second pause in between CQs, QRL? (my labelmaker doesn't have a ? on it), and the call. -30-
Tuesday Jan 2 7:56PM - I had two somewhat big projects today. At least they were out of the ordinary everyday things. I put the December weather stats in my weather spreadsheet. December turned out to be a warm month with a temperature 8.7 degrees above normal at 41.6 degrees, but short of the record from 2015 of 44.1 degrees. It was somewhat dry with about 3/4 inch below normal precipitation. There were 7 minor daily records like Least Daily Range of temperature, High Minimum temperature, Highest Daily Precipitation, and the like.
Tomorrow or the next day I hope to compile the weather stats for the whole year of 2023. It should wind up being a pretty warm year, although I don't think it will be record-setting, but we'll see.
I also worked on the keyer that we've been using or trying to use on the USS Requin. I think I've got most of the bugs exterminated now with four new pushbutton switches. I also added a couple pin jacks to measure the battery voltage. I can't wait till the Requin opens up again probably in mid-March so we can try it out.
I didn't make all 50 states in the ARRL VOTA deal in 2023. I missed out on AK, GA, MA, NV, and WV. Oh well. I didn't think that was as big a deal as the ARRL Centennial deal several years ago when I did get all 50 rather easily or the 13 Colonies deal each year in July whick I've completed with 13 colonies plus WM3PEN several years in a row now.
A couple of quick QSOs this evening thanks to KC4KNN and N1W. I still think I'm going back to the one-a-day QSO after tomorrow ends a year of two-a-day. Another we'll see deal. HI. -30-
Monday Jan 1 8:14PM - Let's see, it was just about a year ago that I started a "sub-streak" complementing my main streak. On January 5, 2023 I added a second QSO to my daily streak QSO making it two QSOs per day, of course CW, QRP, simple wire antenna style. So two more days and I'll complete a year of <<
Going back to the one-a-day will give me more time to explore the bands more thoroughly after I get the 1 QSO instead of looking strictly for the second QSO. There won't be any self-induced pressure.
I did some end of year / first of year work on the web site today. I especially added my 2023 stats to my yearly stats table in the QRP section of the web site along with some other updates.
That does it for another entry and once again a very Happy New Year to all by diary readers. Have a great 2024. -30-
