K3WWP's Diary Archive

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DIARY ARCHIVES - 2020

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Thu Dec 31 2020 7:40PM - Happy New Year to all who read this diary entry, the last one of 2020. The common wish as this year comes to an end is that 2021 will be better than 2020. I echo those sentiments.

2020 did have its bright moments along with the many not at all bright. Some of the bright ones for me were still being able to do ham radio related things with Mike KC2EGL along with model railroad things as well. Despite the poor showing of sunspots in the first half of the year, the streak went on for another 366 days. Then we did get some spots in the last quarter or so of the year as a sign that we are coming out of the doldrums. For me, ham radio was much better in 2020 than in 2019 as far as stats go. Every one of the stats that I track were either tied with or better than 2019. Use my menu above and go to the QRP section and there to the Yearly Stats page to see in detail what I mean. Also of course in the house on the other side of me, Roscoe continues to be a source of joy. Actually I guess there are a lot more good things I could write about 2020, but I'll stop here.

I fired up my Begali Blade straight at 0000Z and two minutes later had a nice QSO with W2QF on 80M up in ME. That was the first QSO of 2021 for both of us.

Did you ever hear of putting some change on the outside windowsill on New Years Eve? If it is still there in the morning, it is suppose to ensure a good financial new year. I am totally non-superstitious, but I do it every year for fun. It always works, too! HI.

I've got a lot of work coming up the next couple days as I mentioned in the diary entry last night. I already did some things today like updating the above-mentioned Yearly Stats page and uploading my Dec QSOs to LoTW and eQSL. I also updated the stats table on the main page of my web site.

See you next year here in the diary. -30-

Wed Dec 30 2020 7:28PM - It was a pretty good day again today. Not much going on though. A QSO with Gary N4PIR who answered my CQ on 80 meters closed out another calendar year of the streak. There should be an easy start to 2021 tomorrow evening with the SKN in action. Barring anything unforseen, that is.

That's about all there is to say in the diary tonight. Tomorrow night I'll close out the diary for another year. There will be a lot of end of year things going on here in addition to the usual end of month chores. It will be a busy time for sure. -30-

Tue Dec 29 2020 7:25PM - Things were a little brighter today due to some nice sunshine and a couple other reasons as well which I won't discuss now. Maybe later.

I had one of those 0000Z streak QSOs tonight. I heard W8ACM calling CQ just about as soon as I turned on the rig and called and got him before the digital atomic clock reached 0001Z. He is in MI and the band was 80 meters.

As I said it was sunny today and a little breezy and both contributed to a great s#$wmelt. There is a lot of green showing except for where the stuff is piled up from shovelling and plowing. Looks very nice. -30-

Mon Dec 28 2020 7:52PM - Still kind of in the post-Christmas rut here today. Other than eating, walking Roscoe, some computer work, and a little house cleaning, nothing much else happening. Of course my streak QSO also. No contests this evening, so it took a little longer to find and work someone, but I did after 15 minutes or so. It was Adam down in VA NA4IE whom I last worked just one month ago on November 29. So two more days and another calendar month and year will be complete in the streak. -30-

Sun Dec 27 2020 7:16PM - Another quiet day today just like yesterday. I had a big good meal with Bruce (and Roscoe) of holiday leftovers. Nothing much else to write about except I was on the computer a good while today working on indexing and modifying a lot of my digital photos.

The SST contest of course provided a quick QSO with K1EBY Frank in CT. I think if the SST keeps going Sunday evenings, I'm going to use it to get the quick streak QSO, then do my weekly laundry which I'm doing right now as I type. We'll see how that works out. Of course then I'll have to find something else to do Monday mornings. HI.

It was a pretty nice day today as far as weather goes. A high in the mid 40s provided some decent s#$wmelt despite not staying in the 40s more than a couple hours. -30-

Sat Dec 26 2020 7:10PM - What a difference a day makes. After a busy fun filled day yesterday, today was back to the old drag and usual routines. The only "people" I saw today were Bruce and Roscoe. It was a good day for eating though, I guess. A lot of leftovers, candy, etc. made for good meals and snacking in between meals.

Of course with the Stew Perry 160M contest, the streak QSO came quickly at 0002Z with K8LX in MI. And that wraps up today. -30-

Fri Dec 25 2020 9:21PM - I'll open this entry with something I said to Mike a couple minutes ago. The only thing wrong with today is that it's coming to an end. Otherwise there was very little to find fault with. Maybe nothing.

Then this morning early I helped Bruce get his chili up and cooking, walked Roscoe, then waited for Mike to come which he did after Roscoe's second walk of the day.

Right now I've got to pause in my typing and take Roscoe out for his last walk of the day. Be back a little later.

Picking up where I left off, Mike and I played with and ran my trains. He gave me two new hopper cars for Christmas. We gave them a good workout. Then we played some Sherlock Holmes games on the computer. In the midst of that we went over and walked Roscoe again and had some of the chili. Back here to continue the Sherlock Holmes game.

Then we killed time until it was about time to start our lights tour. I'm not going into details, but I will say it was a very enjoyable almost two hour tour.

Then just a couple more things to close out the day and this diary entry. We went to my shack to get my streak QSO which took a while, but I eventually found and worked Dan KB6NU on 80 meters. After eating, Mike headed for home. -30-

Thu Dec 24 2020 7:40PM - Now as I do each year:

MERRY CHRISTMAS

For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

-30-

Wed Dec 23 2020 8:37PM - Happy Christmas Eve Eve! No, not a typo. This is what it is. The eve before the eve. This is the fourth time that phrase has come up today. Once in one of the dozen or so cartoons I read every day in the morning. I think it was Garfield. Then Bruce and I used it when we went shopping this evening.

I wanted to get a quick streak QSO so Bruce and I could go shopping, and I did. 40 meters was unusually busy this evening and I found K2UKM calling CQ at 0002Z. QSB kind of set in quickly and it was only a 3 minute QSO which is just about what I wanted.

I seem to be more excited about Christmas this year. I think it's because my friendship with my neighbors has grown. It has always been good, but I think we're even closer now than before. I was watching the Polar Express movie a couple nights ago and somewhere in there it's mentioned that friends are the greatest Christmas gift of all or words something like that. That seems to be right on.

A busy couple days coming up now. Some gifts to distribute tomorrow. Also helping Bruce make a big pot of chili tomorrow evening and Christmas morning. Then of course the Christmas lights tour Christmas night with Mike to close out Christmas day. I'm looking in my diary to see when Mike and I started the lights tour on Christmas. I see we got together on Christmas 2009, but I don't mention a tour that year. I do mention it for the Christmas 2010 entry so that must be when we started. This will make tour #11 for me and Mike.

It looks like heavy rain tomorrow and a s#$wfall late tomorrow of probably 2-5 inches or so. I'm not going to let it dampen my Christmas spirit though. -30-

Tue Dec 22 2020 7:18PM - A quick DX streak QSO tonight when I worked EA5C on 40 at 0003Z. He got WP on my first time calling, then a couple repeats of the rest of my call got a brief good copy QSO with Christmas greetings.

Again nothing special today. Mostly just fooling around with trains and the computer. Oh, and watching s#$w melting. In spots where only the original s#$wfall accumulated, it melted all the way down to nice green grass. Maybe my dream of a green Christmas will come true. Hope so. Especially for the Christmas lights tour Christmas night.

Unfortunately it was cloudy last night and tonight, so I couldn't see the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn at the closest, but they will still be pretty close for several more nights to come if it is clear although they are setting earlier and earlier each evening now.

I heard a little while ago on Penn State weather that the giant radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico collapsed. I think they said today. I'll look up more info on the Internet a little later. -30-

Mon Dec 21 2020 7:22PM - The winter solstice was at 5:02AM today, so the sun is over 1/2 day on its northward journey as of now. Hurry up, Mr. Sun. For anyone who is picky, I know the Sun is not doing the travelling. It's mainly the direction of the Earth's axis in its orbit around the Sun, etc. that makes it seem like it is doing the travelling. Nuff sed on the subject.

I got a quick streak QSO this evening from Jim K8MPH whom I've worked pretty often the past couple months or so now. Then I went to 40 meters and worked LZ5DB with a single call. He was just about a true S9 here. Nice to work some DX for a change.

I enjoyed one of my winter hobbies today. Watching s#$w melt. With all the shovelling and moving s#$w around, it's hard to tell for sure, but I would guess we went from 11 inches a couple days ago to about 3 or 4 inches today and now it's still melting with the temp at 36 and some lite rain falling. That's the good news. The bad news is we might get some more on the day before Christmas. Too soon to predict how much. I just hope it's good weather by Christmas night for the annual Christmas lights tour with Mike.

Here's what my back yard, etc. looked like this afternoon. The footprints to my thermometer shelter showed the first time I've been out there since the storm. I've been using my remote readings in my log since they are just about always within a degree or less of the outdoor readings. The only thing I have to figure out is an approximate division of the precipitation over those few days. There was a total of 0.79 inches in the gauge.

Well, that's it for another diary entry. I wonder what number this is. Let's see, it started sporadically the first part of 2006, and became regular around June of that year. So that's about 19 1/2 years which times 365 is around 7,120 very roughly. Whew, wonder how many words, letters, etc. that is. No, I'm not going there now. Maybe sometime. -30-

Sun Dec 20 2020 6:56PM - Good news. The sun is about as low in the sky as it gets and it will gradually be coming north very slowly at first. I'm not sure exactly when the winter solstice occurs, but it should be very close one way or the other now.

Also good news on the streak. With the K1USN SST sprint, I should be able to get a very quick QSO, then get on to some other things. I may do my laundry tonight and get that out of the way. Or run my trains. I haven't run them much the past couple days. But now off to the shack. -30-

Sat Dec 19 2020 7:28PM - I thought I'd grab a quick streak QSO in the 9A DX Contest, but that didn't work out. I couldn't work any EU stations on 40, and that's all I was hearing there. I didn't hear any USA stations, so I went to 80 and heard a couple USA stations in the contest and quickly worked N3RD. So for yet another day, the streak is secure.

Otherwise, today was just like the last few days following the big s#$w. The only time I was outside was when I walked Roscoe. Other than that it was pretty much another day on the computer playing a few games, organizing pictures, and the like.

It looks like we are going to get some light s@#w off and on the next few days but nothing like we got on Wednesday and Thursday. Hey, maybe we'll get rid of all the s#$wstorms in December and won't have any more in Jan and Feb. Yeah, dream on little dreamer, dream on. But that would be nice. -30-

Fri Dec 18 2020 7:16PM - Of course the RAC contest provided a quick streak QSO at 0002Z tonight. I like those quick QSOs, but I also like long rag chews when they happen. Last night I had a 42 minute QSO with N4LSJ which could have gone even longer had his wife not called him to help her with something. Fortunately (unfortunately at times) I don't have that problem here as I've been single all my life.

I guess my main two projects today were still arranging my photos on the computer along with some other files, and learning the new National Weather Service Radar setup. At first I didn't like it, but as I learned more about it, I think I will like it as much as the old radar. It's here if you want to check it out. You'll have to enter your location, etc. for it to work for your area. The opening defaults to a combined radar map of all the USA radar sites. -30-

Thu Dec 17 2020 9:21AM - I thought I'd do an early entry today with a couple of obscene pictures. We got bombarded by around 11-12 inches of s#$w from winter storm Gail. I was just doing a quick check of s#$wfall totals on the NWS s#$wfall page and the highest total I found was in the area around Binghamton, NY at 44 inches (OUCH!!) so I guess it could have been worse here.

In looking at my pictures, the rain gauge to the right of the thermometer shelter is 13 inches high which gives a idea of the depth of the pile of s#$w on the shelter.

Almost time now to take a quick short walk with Roscoe. -30-

Wed Dec 16 2020 8:47PM - Well, we got hit by the biggest s#$wstorm in quite some time today. I would guess about 8 inches with more still coming for a few hours. I don't keep s#$wfall records here, so I can't figure out just when we got that much s#$w the last time. However long it was, I hope it will be several times that long till we get the next one. I'm getting too old to deal with it. I don't shovel the stuff any more. I might sweep it a little bit, but that's about it. Disgusting!!!

The bands seemed a little more deserted this evening, but it didn't take all that long to work N1MX at 0006Z on 80 for my streak QSO.

At least I won't have to go outside for a while except for some very short walks with Roscoe. My neighbor took me shopping early this morning to pick up some things I needed. He needed to go shopping so that worked out good. I also got the last of my Christmas gifts, I think. Well, I need to get Roscoe something yet. I can do that next week. -30-

Tue Dec 15 2020 7:11PM - It looks like winter is going to fire up (fire is a bad choice of words) good tomorrow. By Thursday morning we may have from 4-10 inches of that horrible white s#$w. Nuff sed about that.

I got another special event station for my streak QSO this evening. W2F in NY on 80. Let's see what it's all about now. Something called the 3rd Annual 12 Days of Christmas Event. They have a nice QSL and Certificate which I probably won't bother getting. If you would like to get one though, the details are on QRZ.com.

Not much else going on here as usual of late. Just doing some house cleaning and cleaning out some pictures on my laptop computer. I hate these short amount of daylight days of winter. At least since December 7, the Sun has been setting a few seconds later each evening. However it will continue to rise later in the morning until January 3 or so. A lot of folks find that hard to believe, but it's due to the Earth's orbit not being a true circle along with a few other factors I'm not going into here. If you want to explore this matter further go to here. It also explains about the shortest day of the year which is a misnomer anyway. Every day is 24 hours long, or closer to 23h 56m for the more precise folks. The day with the least amount of daylight is a more correct name and it is around December 21 each year. For info on Kittanning or your own QTH, visit this site. End of astronomy lesson. HI -30-

Mon Dec 14 2020 6:54PM - I'm just sitting here awaiting the 0000Z hour to go to my shack and get my streak QSO, hopefully quickly. Nothing much else going on today. It's kind of the calm before the storm on Wednesday. We're supposed to get accumulating s#$w then as the forecasters put it. From Penn State's outlook, it looks like SE PA will be the hardest hit as of right now. However if the track changes, the amount of s#$w changes. Basically it's too early to put a definite figure to the storm. We'll just wait and see.

Off to the shack now. I'll be back and report on what I find there.

It was a fairly quick QSO. I was mostly listening around 160-20 to see what conditions were like. They seemed pretty good, but everyone was in QSO or in a net. So I decided to try some CQs on 80. After just a couple, I got a call from old friend Jim W1PID whom I haven't worked in quite a while although I had heard him several times either in a QSO or chasing DX. Let's see, our last QSO was on 7/27/2018 on 20M. Tonight was our 75th QSO. Jim runs QRP a lot, but was running 85 watts tonight. -30-

Sun Dec 13 2020 7:24AM - Of course, the SST sprint gave me a quick streak QSO at 0001Z with K1TH on 80M. So with a couple hours now before my next scheduled activity of walking Roscoe, I've got to find something to do to occupy my time. I decided to do my laundry and shift that time to find something to do until tomorrow morning. HI.

Not a lot going on today. I really can't think of anything out of the usual daily routines. I never did get around to checking 10 meters this morning. I probably missed some nice openings, or maybe not. -30-

Sat Dec 12 2020 7:40PM - I'm just finishing getting caught up on all my data from the past couple days when I was away.

I left with Mike Thursday evening about 7:30PM. As soon as we were leaving Kittanning, I caught site of a bright meteor which must have been about magnitude -3 or so. Very probably part of the Geminid Meteor Shower. Then we enjoyed watching the Christmas lights on the way up Route 28 to Brookville. When we got there, we ran his trains for a while. He has one under his tree, and the one in the garage/basement we set up a few months ago. Next we watched some television. First a Prisoner episode. Watching that, I remembered the old (started in 1963), but still currently running BBC Dr. Who TV series, and looked that up on Pluto TV. We watched a few old episodes of that, then turned in for the night.

Next morning we were up about 8:00 and Mike dragged (for lack of a better description HI) me on about a mile and a third walk up and down the steep hills of Brookville. I think that walk tired me out more than any other walk I can think of. Going up those hills was really daunting, but I made it and am still here. After that, Mike fixed us a good breakfast of meat and cheese omelets.

When we finished eating, We ran Mike's trains, did some measuring for a new antenna, checked out the ham bands, had another meal, after I got my streak QSO, we drove around the Brookville area, looking at Christmas lights, and closed out the day watching some more Dr. Who episodes.

This morning we started with a very much less grueling walk on level streets in Brookville, ran and worked on his trains, and watched more Dr. Who videos before heading home. While working on his trains, we discovered one truck on a hopper car had wheels that were dragging. I looked and found a little bracket was rubbing the wheels. I bent it away from the wheels and that cured that. We also found a section of track that was heating up right at the coupling between a railroad crossing and an isolation section of track. That still has to be solved.

Back here at home, we checked for any activity on 10 meters in the contest and on the other bands and found very little. We then ran my trains and watched some more videos.

That is a very condensed version of the past couple days.

Tonight I messed up in getting my streak, but still made it. As soon as Mike left I headed to the shack and quickly worked K8A on 40M, but then looked at my clock and saw it was still only 23:59Z. So I had to find and work another station after 0000Z. I did, at 0011Z. I worked WB8BIL in Michigan. -30-

Fri Dec 11 2020 - Just for the record, I was away at the QTH of Mike KC2EGL, and didn't take my computer with me so there was no entry today. For details of today and the rest of the visit, see tomorrow's entry. -30-

Thu Dec 10 2020 6:23PM - Within an hour now of heading off to Mike's for tomorrow, and then back here Saturday morning. So I figured I'd just do a diary entry before we go, then another one Saturday morning.

Mike got here around 11AM this morning, and we spent most of the day till now running trains, playing Sherlock Holmes on the computer, and of course eating. Eating what? Subs from Subway. I had a roasted chicken and Mike had a new Chicken Teriyaki.

Now as soon as I get my streak QSO as soon after 0000Z as possible, we'll head north to Brookville. Till Saturday 73. -30-

Wed Dec 9 2020 7:17PM - Once again let me remind you that I'll be visiting with Mike from tomorrow evening through Saturday morning and I probably won't be doing any web site updating during that time. Or maybe I will. I haven't really decided yet. If you don't see any updates, nothing is wrong.

I was watching Penn State's Weather World program a while ago as I do every evening. Being the nation's top Meteorological college, I think they have a better handle on the weather than any other service, although they are not perfect either. No weather service is. Anyway when I heard Marisa Ferger say there was a major solar flare today and to watch out for the Aurora Borealis this evening, I thought oh oh, what's that going to do to the bands. I expected to turn on the rig and see nothing but noise on the panadapter screen. I got a surprise when I saw 80 meters even better than the average for the past several days. I had a nice, if short, rag chew with AE8EA in NE Ohio with signals both ways being S9+. So the streak is safe another day. Tomorrow evening I'll probably get my streak QSO from Mike's QTH some 35 or so miles NE of here in Brookville.

I'll talk about the visit the next time I do a diary entry. -30-

Tue Dec 8 2020 7:24PM - I was playing with Roscoe and didn't get to the shack until about 0006Z. It didn't take but a few minutes to find and work KJ1L on 80 who was booming in at 599 with a little QSB and the usual QRN. I haven't heard it used much lately, but many years ago there was an unofficial term of QRNN that meant man-made noise vs. natural static. Mine is definitely a QRNN problem by those standards. I think my constant noise is getting a bit better though because the past couple months I've been able to hear my furnace noise when it kicks in. Last winter I couldn't do that. Oh well, I'm surviving through it and keeping the streak going. Later tonight in about an hour is our NAQCC sprint. If I remember, I'll try to get at least one QSO in it. I've only missed participating in 4 of our 193 sprints. They were 9/20, 3/20, 2/20, 1/20

As usual nothing much else going on today out of the ordinary. I did do a shopping trip which is more unusual than it used to be because of the virus. I don't like having to wear a mask, although I do everytime I go somewhere there is a crowd, which isn't very often for sure.

I'll be spending Friday with Mike at his place. I may skip updating my web site during the visit. I won't skip getting my streak QSO Friday evening though. That's top priority for me no matter what. I'd love to hit the 10,000 day mark which will be in roughly 376 days, just over 1 year around Dec 20, 2021 if I make it that far. -30-

Mon Dec 7 2020 7:29PM - December 7 is a sad day for a couple reasons. Of course Pearl Harbor in 1941. But also in 2011. That's when my neighbor's dog Joe died. I had grown really attached to Joe and when we lost him, I thought I'd never be interested in another dog. However several months later in August a little dog named Roscoe came with my neighbor's son from Indiana for a visit that has now lasted over 8 years. He fell in love with Bruce's mother and vice-versa and she wouldn't let him go back to Indiana. It didn't take long for him to win my heart also, and the rest is history.

Other than regular Monday things like laundry and putting out the garbage, only one other main thing happened today. I did run my train(s) quite a bit. I'm learning the Train Link feature in Lionel's Legacy controller. That's where you make a lashup of two engines so they can run as one. However you can also individually control the second engine apart from the lead engine. Of course you're limited to what you can do. You can't have it running at a different speed for one thing. However you can use its whistle and bell along with the Lionel Road Sounds, crew talk, etc. just by pressing the Train Link button and then the commands from the keypad. When you're done, the Train Link button then takes you back to where the lead engine has control of everything. I think I made that clear. It was confusing to me at first, but after today I've got a pretty good handle on it. You can also control accessories via Train Link rather than individually on their own. It's really neat the things you can do with Lionel Legacy. I guess they have learned a lot of tricks in the 120 years they've been in business with model trains.

Oh, ham radio. HI 80 meters sounded really good this evening. I saw many strong signals on the PX3 panadapter and easily found and worked Jim K8MPH up in MI on 80. There was a little QSB, but all in all, signals were quite good. -30-

Sun Dec 6 2020 6:54PM - As you see from the time stamp, it's just a few minutes before I head to the shack for what should be a quick streak QSO. The SST is tonight and I should be able to get a QSO in that right away. If I do, I may just do my Monday morning laundry this evening, although that will leave me with nothing much to do tomorrow. HI

Actually there wasn't much to do today either. These winter days get to be quite boring at times. Still I have my trains to work on and operate. Plus there is always some kind of housekeeping to do since I live alone.

Well, better get going to the shack now.

PS - Worked Mal W5XX in MS on 40 at 0000Z. Mal and I go back a long way, probably to the 60s when he was K4RIN. -30-

Sat Dec 5 2020 7:23PM - It's a good thing the 160M Contest was going tonight. The other bands seemed very dead except for the nets on 80 and W9ZN on 40 with his KW station. As is, I got my streak QSO at 0000Z from W8MJ in MI.

I never did get on later last night, and probably won't tonight either.

Except for a shopping trip with Bruce to Family Dollar today, there was nothing else out of the ordinary to write about.

Oh, I did figure something out yesterday. I was curious how many days this year I got my streak QSO in the 0000Z hour. The answer was all but 3, Jan 22, Feb 19, and Nov 2. The Jan and Feb days were due to attending the Skyview Club meetings. I'm not sure about Nov 2. Let me see if I say anything in the diary for that date. Oh, that was the power failure night and I was busy checking on my neighbors and other things and didn't get on with battery power until about 0115Z.

While looking that up, I noticed I haven't archived my older diary pages this year since September, so I think I'll do that now. -30-

Fri Dec 4 2020 7:18PM - Of course the 160M Contest gave me a quick streak QSO. I never even checked the other bands. I would like to try to get on later tonight or later tomorrow night to see if I can pick up MS LA which are the two closest of the 8 states I need for 160 WAS. The other six are way out west AK HI ID NV NM WA. I probably won't though. I can work out west as I have gotten CA OR WY MT AZ UT, etc. MS and LA seem to be plagued with QRN and don't hear me when I call. It's going to be rough getting the final 8 states especially since the sunspots are kicking in again. I probably should have tried the past couple years at the depths of the cycle. When I was very active in contesting in the 90s and early 00s, I did much better on 160 at sunspot minimums.

It was a nice relatively mild day today and all the s#$w is gone that staged an unwelcome invasion the past couple days. We might get a bit more on the weekend though, but not much, thank goodness.

Not much else to say tonight. -30-

Thu Dec 3 2020 7:34PM - Conditions about the same as last night. Tonight instead of CT9ABV on 40, it was W4TJE on 80 at 0003Z. Otherwise last night's description fits tonight pretty well.

I updated my LoTW and eQSL veries today. There was a big difference in numbers with LoTW way out ahead of eQSL, and I updated both the last time on November 24. It made me curious to see just how my LoTW and eQSL veries overall match up. I can get the totals quickly in my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file, so QRX in a couple minutes. The LoTW total is 23,222 QSOs veried, and eQSL is 13,902. Wow, that's approaching double. The last time I totalled them was July 2019. LoTW had 22,228 and eQSL 13,516. That bears a bit more analysis since I have all my QSOs since 1963 on LoTW and since 1990 on eQSL which means there are about 20,000 fewer of my QSOs on eQSL. Something like 92,000 versus 72,000. Maybe I will figure what percentage of QSOs on both are verified. I did that in July 2019 and it was 24.4% on LoTW and 18.8% on eQSL. According to all those stats, LoTW is quite a bit more popular than eQSL.

Continuing on that theme, I wonder how you handle eQSLs. I log all received in my Excel log. I save each new band country from each different station. If I work, say K4BAI 20 times on 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10, I only save one of the 20 on each band and archive the 19 others on the eQSL servers. I never print out any of the cards. I think it is sufficient to be able to look at them on my computer if I ever want to do so. Printing them out just doesn't seem the same to me as getting a real paper card actually sent to me in the mail or via buro, etc. Just old-fashioned, I guess, and proud of it. -30-

Wed Dec 2 2020 7:12PM - As I said when I got up off my chair at the key, "Well, that was quick." I'll elaborate in a minute after a little preliminary setup. I was a couple minutes late getting to the shack, and when I turned on the rig and listened, I thought I was in for another long ordeal getting my streak QSO. I only heard the usual net stations on 80, and when I went to 40, it was filled with furnace noise. I thought I'd wait out the furnace cycle, but then I noticed a good sized peak on the PX3. I tuned it in and it was someone working a Polish station. I thought it might be a Caribbean station left over from the CQWW DX Contest. I was close. It was CT9ABV probably operating one of the Madeira stations in the contest. I prepared myself to sit there for a while and try to work him since there was nothing else around. Surprise! On my first call I got K3WP 599. Being sure it was me, I sent my call twice and 599. He corrected himself and I had probably one of the quickest streak QSOs ever even with the repeat. I just looked up CT9ABV in QRZ, and it looks like the operator was DL5AXX whom I've worked many times from a few different countries. Actually 35 times from places like DL GD CU J3 PJ2 CT3. He's a superb operator.

Today I finished off my end of month / first of month chores delayed a bit. Actually I did most of the work on Tuesday and just mailed a couple checks today and took my Church donations to the Church Rectory. Then this morning I got a surprise package in the mail. It was a "Care" package from my health insurance provider with a lot of good items like a fever thermometer, pulse measuring device, battery toothbrush, skin lotion, sanitizing spray and lotion, an 83 piece first aid kit, box of band aids, and a few more things. All for free. Those items will come in handy.

I got to watch one of my favorite winter things today. S#$w melting. It got up to 37 and got rid of a lot of the white stuff. Good riddance! When I cleaned Bruce's van off, I'd estimate we got about 2 inches at most which was quite good as I heard reports of up to 15 inches in NW PA. Pittsburgh had around 6.5 inches. Seven Springs ski resort had 8, if I remember correctly. -30-

Tue Dec 1 2020 7:41PM - Well, one day of winter is out of the way and it was not a good one. The ugly white stuff got off to an early start this year. We lucked out at least so far with less than an inch. There are reports from other parts of West PA that got it much worse. Well, enough of that.

When Mike and I were in the CQWW DX test, we came up with a new description of something. When we would tune across the digital signal section of the bands we said we are now going through the haunted houses. Well, don't digital signals sound like the eminations of dearly departed ghosts? Or at least how movies and TV depict them. Not like the nice crisp sounds of Morse Code anyway.

A couple entries ago, I mentioned about switching antennas on receive for a better s/n ratio. There's a problem with that. Once in a while I forget to switch back to the xmit antenna. I did so tonight and the fellow I was working said my sigs dropped in QSB from 589 to 339. I explained to him what happened the next round when I was using the right antenna. It was interesting he was hearing me at all. I was on 80 meters using my 20 meters dipole. Anyway the bottom line is I did get my streak QSO after it was starting to look pretty grim as there wasn't much on any of the bands this evening. At least stations who weren't busy in nets or chasing DX, etc.

I'm just sitting here admiring my Christmas tree and remembered I was going to post a picture of it. Let me get to that.

Looks even better in person. Maybe I'll see if I can get a better picture of it including a closeup of the manger scene under the tree. After all, that's the true meaning of Christmas. -30-

Mon Nov 30 7:58PM - This is end of the month day today and is usually a busy one. It is today also, but in a different way. I spent a good part of the day doing my Christmas decorating. I'll try to take a picture of the tree tomorrow and post it here.

As far as the bands go, they were rather poor again with the only lightly busy band being 80M. There was virtually nothing on 40, and nothing at all above that. I found my friend Bob NR8M on 80 calling CQ and worked him for the streak.

I'll cut the diary entry short here and get back to end of the month work. I think next I'll upload my November log to LoTW and eQSL and get that out of the way. It's a little more complicated this month with the QSOs from the CQWW DX contest to be included. -30-

Sun Nov 29 2020 7:22PM - We'll do the reverse of last night. Mike goes first, then I'll add my comments.

Good evening all. The day started out early with a bacon and eggs breakfast. Followed by hitting the airwaves to check what was going on with 15M. Well 15M was jumping with DX. We made out quite well on 15 today. Worked new countries (for this event) with 5 out of the first 6 entries. It was a nice steady flow of mostly EU stations. We stayed with it almost all day outside of a few breaks for John to check up on Roscoe and of course our dinner break which was from Vocelli's. We both had one of thier oven baked subs. Then it was back to the radio. We continued on until 23:30UTC when we couldn't find any one that could hear us. So we called it a day. John logged 107 QSO's and I logged 105 QSO's. We pretty much kept things even up until QSB and QRN started to act up towards the end. I better leave room for John's comments. So I will turn it over to him.

Thanks Mike, I always appreciate you helping with the diary writing.

You summed up the day very well with your comments so I won't repeat what you said, but I will add a couple things. One of the stations we both worked was F6HKA. As always Bert took the time greet both of us by name. I finally did work KH6LC at 2013Z Sunday afternoon. It wasn't easy like it usually it, but we made it. We also heard 4 other KH6 stations on 15 after that, but didn't work any of them. We heard no JA stations at all in the contest. There was one strong VK on 15 meters but he was S&P, not calling CQ so we didn't get a chance to work him. As I mentioned, I logged on paper and as the contest got further along, I was pestering Mike to see if we worked such and such a station on such and such a band. He logged on computer so he could do that quickly. I will have to wait a couple days to analyze my results after I enter them from paper into my computer. It shouldn't take too long. For that reason, I'm glad we didn't work all that many stations. Had conditions been really hot, I probably would have done computer logging.

Overall, it was a fun weekend as it always is when we get together. Next up, I'll be visiting at Mike's for a day or so near the middle of the month. More on that later.

Tonight it was an easy quick streak QSO from KN8CWO in the weekly SST event. I'm glad of that after sitting at the key most of the day from 1340Z to 2330Z.

I think that sums up the day between my and Mike's comments. -30-

Sat Nov 28 2020 8:11PM - Just like the contest, Mike and I are going to do a tag team diary entry. I'll work a station and then Mike will work the same station using our own calls, of course. For this diary entry, I'll write a couple paragraphs, then let Mike write his part.

Although it was a disappointing contest as far as results go, 46 QSOs for each of us, it was fun as always doing these contests with Mike. My personal highlights were as follows. Working Oliver OE5OHO, an old friend whom I met through my website and working him on the bands. This is the first time we've worked in several years. We paused in the contest for couple of personal greetings. I always enjoy that and appreciate it when the other fellow who is running QSOs at a fast rate will put on the brakes for a minute or so to exchange greetings.

Sometime in the past couple days Mike and I were talking about some ham radio related things and somehow the topic of working CO8LY came up. Maybe Mike remembers just how we got on the topic. Anyway we both agreed we hadn't worked CO8LY in a long time and hoped he was OK. Wouldn't you know it. I was tuning the contest (that's my part of the tag team), and found CO8LY and exclaimed something or other. Mike wondered who I found and I teased him along until CO8LY signed again and Mike copied. We were both glad to hear him and we both worked him, although conditions changed and it took a while for Mike to get him.

Since things were going slowly, I decided to forego computer logging and log on paper, something I hadn't done in a big contest for a long time. I enjoyed that and being a tag team contest, it was easy as I could write in the details while Mike was working the same station.

Some of my pipelines to various areas of the world where I can work stations easily were not working. I can almost always work Hawaii easily, especially KH6LC whom I've worked even on 80 meters. Today I never got as much as a ? from him on 15 meters, and still haven't worked KH6 in this contest. Also the same with zone 33 stations. Although I have worked a couple in the contest, many weren't hearing me at all. One pipeline did work well. I told Mike I can often work Finland easily in late afternoon, but we weren't hearing any OH stations until OH8X who happens to be an especially easy Finn to work showed up and I did work him easily after a couple tries, and so did Mike. I'm not sure of the propagation aspects of that, but it happens often even if the OH station is quite weak and not easy copy here so it's not a one time fluke, but some regular thing. The Finns will be among the very last stations heard from EU.

I've said enough, now Mike can take his turn.

The non radio parts of the day included eating. We went to Wendys to pick up dinner. Instead of going through the drive through we went in and ordered. We were out and on our way back to John's before the car that pulled into the lot infront of us was at the order kiosk. After dinner we set up John's telescope and looked at Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon. Then it was back to the radio to see if there were any stations worth hunting down. Unfortunately things were quiet just like last night when we started. All in all it has been a enjoyable tag team effort. We will head back up for some more radio fun. John just informed me that Orion is just above the hills in the east. Thats the sign of long winter nights apporaching. Thats it for me. Until next time de Mike KC2EGL. -30-

Fri Nov 27 2020 6:48PM - I am just sitting here with Mike, and I said, you know thousands of people around the world are waiting for the next 12 minutes to pass so they can get in the CQWW DX contest. Then there are many others who are going to wait a couple hours or more to get started when the initial rush of KW stations working each other subsides a bit. Also many others who are thinking no not another contest. I guess I'll have to use the WARC bands this weekend. More on our contest tag team effort in the next two days diary entries. -30-

Thu Nov 26 2020 7:52PM - I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and had a lot of things to be thankful for. I had both here. Bruce and I and Roscoe went to his brother's place for a great meal. Even Roscoe had his own full dish of food. Let's see, there was Turkey, Stuffing and Stuffing Balls, Mashed Potatoes, Yams, Noodles, Lima Beans, Cranberries, Gravy, Rolls, and I'm probably forgetting one or two things. As far as being thankful, I was going to make a big long list here, but I think I'll pass on that and you can be thankful you don't have to make your way through it. HI.

My QSO tonight was a 31 minute one with Adam NA4IE. I don't think we've ever worked before. He said he was off the air for a long time and just got back on about 3 years ago. I have been using my bug a lot lately and it's always a goal to see if I can go through an entire QSO without a sending mistake. I almost made it the full 31 minutes tonight, but I think my hand and wrist got a bit tired at about the 28 minute mark and three errors crept into my sending. Close, but no cigar.

One thing I talk about now and then is copying through QRN and QSB. I find one good trick is to switch antennas on receive. Many times a different antenna will give a better signal to noise ratio and make a signal easier to copy even though it may be weaker. I have an antenna switch that allows me to instantly scan 5 different antennas. A 10M sloping dipole, 6M attic rotatable dipole, 20M attic dipole, 15M vertical dipole, 160-30M attic random wire. Also another position on the switch that very loosely capacitor couples to the random wire. Often one position will really make a signal jump into easy copy although with time it may change to another antenna for best copy. A particularly good combo seems to be to transmit on the random wire on 80M, and receive with the 6M dipole. The signal drops way down, but the noise drops even further for good copy. Try it some time if you have trouble with QSB and/or QRN. You may be pleasantly surprised. Of course it doesn't work all the time, but does work most of the time. The more antennas you can try, the better chance of finding a good result. -30-

Wed Nov 25 2020 7:21PM - Another day with nothing special to talk about. I will be glad for the next 5 days when there will be some different things going on. I'll write about them as they happen here in the diary entries.

I didn't see much difference in the bands tonight. 80 was best, but not all that great. 40 only had a few weakish signals. I heard one weak signal on 30. On 20 I heard NG7M in Utah working Japan. I couldn't hear the Japan station at all. As for me, I worked AE8EA on 80 meters for the streak QSO. Not bragging or anything remotely like that, but now and then I sit there at the rig and wonder just how it is possible to work someone each and every day (mostly evenings) without all that much trouble no matter the conditions. I do have one great aide going for me, and that's my PX3 panadapter. Seeing what is happening on a large portion of a band and then tuning to check the peaks is very much a big time saving step in the process. Much easier than tuning back and forth, back and forth across the bands listening for a signal. It's so easy to just tune right across someone that way and not know they are there at all because you crossed them during a pause in their sending either for a space between words or even between letters if they are sending slowly.

I sometimes get questions asking for suggestions on making QSOs easier. My best answer would be get a panadapter. They are a tad pricey but well worth it. Of course the manufacturers are learning how important panadapters are these days and including them right in their rigs.

Besides that, strive to increase your CW speed. If you can copy perfect code at 40 WPM or faster, it will be all that much easier copying slower CW with QRN, QSB, sloppy sending, or other distractions.

Well, I got to rambling a bit there, so I'm going to quit for now and finish my other regular web site updates of my propagation page and the streak table on the main page.

Oh before I go, let me see what the Solar Flux was today. Still going up at 104 and the ionosphere not showing any storminess. Fingers crossed it stays that way for the CQWW DX Contest. -30-

Tue Nov 24 2020 7:46PM - 100!!!! yes 100!!!! That was the Solar Flux number today. Let's see when was the last time that we hit triple digits for a SF number. September 10, 2017 at 100 or roughly 1,174 days ago. Wow! I was wondering how to start off this diary entry when I checked the propagation numbers for my propagation page and saw the 100 there. That may bode well for this weekend's CQWW DX contest unless the sun gets too excited and causes some ionosphere storminess.

I got my quickest streak QSO in a while tonight at 0001Z when I found KF3B calling CQ and worked him for the first time in 15 years according to him which I'm sure is right. That was so quick after we ended our QSO I decided to call CQ myself and got a pretty quick answer from WA1WCC, the WCC commemorative ham station. There's a lot of info about WA1WCC and WCC on QRZ which makes very interesting reading if you've never looked there before.

Another chilly day today but no breeze to lower the wind chill temperature below the actual air temperature so it wasn't bad being outside. I helped Ange clean up some leaves from his garden for about an hour this afternoon. -30-

Mon Nov 23 2020 7:27PM - Despite a SF of 96, the bands sure weren't all that good this evening. Only a very few not very strong signals on 40, nothing on 30 or 20. So it was back to the only surefire band of late, 80. It wasn't that good either, but I managed to work Jim K8MPH again for our third QSO in the past 11 days. We had a 14 minute QSO with pretty much good copy all the way till near the end.

Let's see what else happened today out of the ordinary. I can't really think of a thing that doesn't happen every Monday. I mean doing the laundry and putting out the garbage. Not very exciting events, but necessary ones. HI

It was a cold day, not getting above 38 until the afternoon, and then only getting to the mid 40s with breezes that made it seem colder.

PS: Here's a picture of my newly painted train layout:

There's still a lot of things I want to do with it, but here is how it stands right now. -30-

Sun Nov 22 2020 6:07PM - Since in theory I should get a quick QSO in the K1USN Slow Speed Test this evening, I thought I'd just write the diary entry early since there was not much going on today except a shopping trip and the continuation of a couple projects.

My neighbor and I went to Walmart to stock up on breakfasts for Roscoe and also stopped at Dollar Tree for some dog biscuits for Roscoe. Then a stop at Family Dollar for some things for me. A little later I finished (?) raking the leaves in my back yard. They are pretty much all down now so I should be done with them except perhaps a couple little tweaks.

Early this morning before all the above I finished painting my train layout and later in the afternoon I put back all the track, bridge, buildings, signals, etc. I think it looks nice now. I'll be interested to see what Mike thinks of it when he comes here for the weekend. -30-

Sat Nov 21 2020 7:23PM - I figured this is an easy night with the LZ DX contest in progress, and it was. By coincidence I worked two stations with the same suffix, N5AW then S52AW for my only two QSOs before I quit for other things. Both were on 40 meters. I could have worked a lot more EU stations but I just didn't feel like it. Next weekend I should be more fired up for DXing with the CQWW DX contest and Mike being here for a tag team effort in that one.

I didn't accomplish as much as yesterday, but I did do a couple things. I did more painting on my railroad layout and now have a little less than 75% done. I'm debating (if one can debate with oneself) on whether or not to do some more painting this evening.

I also helped Ange a bit in burying the last of the fig trees for the season. I also did some more work on organizing some pictures on my computer. And that pretty much covers the day here. -30-

Fri Nov 20 2020 7:32PM - It was a busy day today. I probably can't even remember all I did, but I'll try. It started out this morning with another painting session on my train layout. Then after that paint dried, I had a couple more sessions later in the day painting the area around the tracks. I had to paint short sections, then prop up the track with popsicle sticks. After that dried, I moved the sticks and painted the area where they were. Now I'm close to having 50% of the layout finished unless I decide to do a second coat.

I also raked leaves today. I cleaned out a couple cellar window wells, my cellar steps, a corner where leaves gather, and quite a bit of my back yard. I'll try to finish the yard tomorrow. When I was younger, I could have done all the leaves in a short time today, but age takes its toll in slowing folks like me down. HI

Then I helped (mostly watched) Ange bury the next to last of his fig trees. We'll do the last one tomorrow. Up until a few years ago, I could outwork Ange even though he is 8 or so years younger. Age has slowed me down there also.

Then just a little while ago, I got my QSO from K8MPH on 80 meters at 0003Z. The bands (40 and 80) seemed in good shape and pretty active this evening. Mike said 20 was good today with DX also. I never got to check there.

Also mixed in were the walks with Roscoe, helping Bruce with a couple things, and making plans for setting up for Christmas. -30-

Thu Nov 19 2020 7:29PM - Maybe there is day long QSB as I mentioned a couple entries ago. Last night I tried to work W9IK a few times but he didn't hear me well enough to get my call complete. Tonight I called him and got him right away. He gave me a 579 report. He was about 589 but QSB on both ends kept the QSO short at 7 minutes. Then while glancing at my log I noticed I hadn't gotten any QSOs from my CQs in quite a while, so since conditions seemed not that bad tonight, I thought I'd try to get another CQ QSO in my log. It didn't take long for Bob NR8M to answer me for a 6 minute QSO again plagued with QSB and QRN, but a QSO nevertheless.

It warmed up a bit today reaching around 60 degrees. It was a bit breezy though so didn't feel quite that warm. I did get a chance for a brief porch swing session with Roscoe though. I was going to rake leaves, but it was too windy. It's supposed to be calm on Saturday and still mild so maybe I'll do it then.

I painted a bit more of my railroad layout today and have about 25% or so done now. I hope to bring that up to around 50% tomorrow. -30-

Wed Nov 18 2020 7:23PM - Horrible conditions again tonight. You know, it's not using QRP/CW that is rough in making QSOs. It's the location here that makes it hard for me to copy other stations, even QRO signals at times. This local noise that is a constant problem. My furnace which makes QRN whenever it runs. My location here in the river valley. All of those make it a real challenge to find and copy someone when propagation conditions are not the best. It's frustrating at times to have someone copy my QRP signals solidly and I have to struggle to copy their signals. It's only because I've been using CW for 57 plus years that I am able to copy some of the stations I work, and still it is rough. OK, enough grumbling. I suspect if it was too easy, it wouldn't be as much fun nor as satisfying getting a QSO. Tonight by the way, it was N9ZXL on 80. I had trouble with the first round, but got pretty much solid copy the rest of the 7+ minute QSO.

Again not much going on here today outside the usual routine. I did clean and lube my new Frisco 1501 locomotive and tender today since I have been running it a lot since I got it. I also did some test painting on the insulation board I'm using for my railroad layout. It seems to take paint well, so I'll probably paint the whole thing a base green color over the next few weeks or so. It won't be too easy since I plan to do only a portion at a time instead of tearing down and rebuilding the whole layout at one time. -30-

Tue Nov 17 2020 7:53PM - This had to be one of the worst evenings in a long long time for getting my streak QSO. It seems like there is day-long QSB if there is such a thing. One night conditions will be good, the next night bad. Tonight they were horrible. I spent almost 3/4 hour tuning 160 through 30 looking for a QSO. A couple stations I called got my call partially but never could get it all. Finally I ran across K3K a special event station on 80 and it took a long time even to work him. I stuck with him though and when he finally heard me, he stuck with me also long enough to get my call right. I really did want to work him because the special event was the 100th anniversary of KDKA taking to the airwaves. It's often said that KDKA was the first station to do a radio broadcast when it broadcast the Harding-Cox election returns in early November 1920, but there is a lot of debate over that mostly over what constitutes a "broadcast". I'm not going to go into that here, but it is interesting to research it with a Bing search on the Internet. Anyway the bottom line is the streak goes on another day.

Not much else going on today. I paid some second half of the month bills early today, and did a little shopping along the way. Did a bit of tweaking on my computer stand. Also backed up some computer pictures on a new flash drive. It was cold and windy today and also I saw an ugly site, some s#$W flurries. BAh, humbug! -30-

Mon Nov 16 2020 6:57PM - Just thought I'd get the diary entry started before I head to the shack for my QSO attempt. It was another chilly breezy day today. I spent most of the time inside again. I got quite a bit of cleaning done along with throwing out some "junk" for the garbage collection tomorrow. OK, off to the shack now. I'll finish this later.

OK, it's now 7:29PM, and I just finished a nice 21 minute QSO with Chris N8AI in Texas on 40 meters. That has to be the longest QSO I've had with Texas in quite a while now, and copy was solid both ways with some slow QSB at least on my end. I think we are seeing conditions pick up gradually as the solar flux is averaging out in the 70s and 80s most of the time now.

I gave my railroad track a good cleaning today. The first time I've done so since I went to the new O72 curves layout a couple months ago. Oh, I've been meaning to post a picture of the house that Mike and I built on Saturday, so here goes.

I think it came out good although we had a bit of a time getting it assembled. It definitely was not a 'snap fit' kit, and as Mike said, we really needed to glue it to keep it together. -30-

Sun Nov 15 2020 7:09PM - Not a lot happening today after the busy fun-filled day with Mike yesterday. Of course with the SST test this evening, a quick QSO was had with AD0AB in KS on 40M.

I can't really think of anything out of the every day ordinary things that happened today. We did have a few brief power interruptions this afternoon as a strong front went through with high winds. It all lasted only about 10 minutes at most before everything was back to normal. I guess that's about it. -30-

Sat Nov 14 2020 7:40PM - Now here's Mike to tell you about our day. Greetings everyone. I arrived at John's QTH around 9:15AM. We visited for 15 minutes until John had to take Roscoe out for a stroll. After he returned we went to work on his Plasticville O Gauge structure. The box said "snap together, no glue necessary, easy to assemble, for ages 14 and up. There's the problem. We do not fit the age requirment. Well maybe mentally we don't. We did use glue to hold it together because it kept falling apart on us. You would think that after 73 years they would have come up with a system that would snap together properly. Our second project was making cables for one of my straight keys and my Vibroplex 1944 Original Bug. After a little trouble with the very fine wires we were able to get connectors soldered on and tested out on John's KX3. Be forwarned, there will be a horrible sound on the airwaves as I try to operate with the bug. This will be frustratingly fun learning how to send with it. It feels like I am a brand new operator with it. Our third project was to detach a couple of PL 259's from a short length of COAX that I have and attach them to a length of coax to use at my QTH. We found that the PL 259's are soldered and crimped on so tight they feel like they are welded on. So that project is on hold until I find some new PL 259's. We then had a early dinner of a Vochelli's pizza. We had planned on a planet gazing session this evening. We wanted to check out Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. Mother Nature had other plans for that. The clouds rolled in and ruined that idea. We have tentatively rescheduled to the Saturday Nov 28 when I will be down visiting John as we operate a tag team in the CQ WW CW. We mixed in a train running session, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes hidden object games. All in all it was a good day. But then any day spent hanging out with John is a good day. Until next time de Mike KC2EGL. P.S. John was pacing back and forth as I was writing this He's getting even for me doing the same to him on my previous visit. -30-

Fri Nov 13 2020 7:22PM - I hope any of you who are superstitious made out OK on this Friday 13. Me, I'm not superstitious at all and Friday 13 is just another day to me.

It was a pretty good day. I got some needed (cleaning) work done around the house. The weather was OK, but the only time I was outside was when I walked Roscoe.

I thought I was going to have an easy QSO tonight. I found a strong CQ shortly after I turned on the rig. It was 4U75UN in NYC celebrating the 75th anniversary of the UN. He was operating split so I set up for that and called..., and called..., and called. He was not hearing me nor many others either apparently. Most of his CQs were going unanswered. I gave up on him after a dozen or so tries and moved on. Finally a few minutes later I found Jim K8MPH calling CQ on 80 and got him. We had a short rough QSO of about 7 minutes. QSB QRN bad on both ends very unlike last night's solid 31 minute QSO with WS1L.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow now and visiting with Mike for some ham radio and railroad projects. Maybe some astronomy too, weather permitting. Of course there will be a summary of the day here in tomorrow night's diary entry. -30-

Thu Nov 12 2020 7:39PM - The bands were good tonight. Well 80 was. I didn't get around to checking the other bands since I got a QSO just a minute after I got to the shack at 0003Z. It wound up being a 31 minute rag chew at around 20WPM about a variety of topics. It was solid copy both ways although sigs did fade a bit in the last couple minutes. The contact was with Chuck WS1L in northeast MA. He had a computer log and said that was our third QSO, the first since 2008. I'll see that when I update my computer log after I finish updating the web site. I only log on paper in the shack (except for contests when I take my laptop there) then transfer to computer later that evening.

My railroad building kit arrived in good shape today except for one thing. It was a different building than the one I ordered, just like the locomotive last week. It's a split level house instead of the church/cathedral which is fine since it is only one of the first buildings I got in updating my layout and probably would have gotten it later anyway. I won't unbox it until Saturday when Mike is here.

Quite a difference in the weather today. The high was 54 or thereabouts compared to 79 a couple days ago. You could tell it was that Canadian air that the cold front brought through last night. -30-

Wed Nov 11 2020 7:30PM - I hope you all did something to honor our Veterans and our current servicemen today. Thanks to all of those who have served and are serving our great country. I was going to fly my flag as usual today, but it was raining and I treasure the flag too much to have it get wet. As long time diary readers know, the flag was the one that draped my dad's coffin many years ago back in 1964.

I worked an appropriate station tonight for my streak QSO, K1USN in MA. The bands seemed good tonight with many strong signals on 40 and 80 although nothing on 30 or 20.

I was going through some old photo albums today with the girl next door, and it brought back a lot of memories. A couple in particular dealt with railroads. I was going to set them aside to peruse later, but I forgot. I think I know which albums they were though. One dealt with a cub scout presentation on the history of railroads. I honestly don't remember that, but the pictures are there. Then there were some pictures taken at Steamtown when it was located in Vermont. That was a lot of fun and it's always nice to have a teenager who is interested in such 'old' things.

My building kit is now scheduled for delivery on Saturday instead of Friday, but it has already departed the Pittsburgh area distribution center so it seems to me that Friday is still the more likely. Time will tell.

We didn't quite make the 80 degree mark yesterday. I studied it closely and had to concede it was more like 79 than 80. Still that's the latest in a year it has hit that high a mark and it's also a record for November 10 in my records dating back to 1959. -30-

Tue Nov 10 2020 7:33PM - Another rough night on the bands. No answers to my CQs, and no answers from those CQs I answered. Finally Jack N5DY in OK heard me calling on 40M and we had a short rough QSO which served to extend the streak another day toward the 10,000 day mark. Wonder if I'll make it? I'll have to succeed for 404 more days to do so. I'll try.

We nudged 80 degrees today. I'll have to examine the mercury thermometer closely at 9 tonight. It looked like 79.5 or .6 extrapolating on the scale when I looked at it this afternoon. If I do judge it to be 80, that will be only one of a very few times we hit 80 in November. Might as well check my Excel spreadsheet now for an exact number. I still well remember the first time we did it back in 1961. It was red and white day at Kittanning High School. Those are our school colors and everyone wore them that day. We didn't need any heavy coats or even any light jacket. OK, here are the 80+ days in Novembers:
80 2nd 1982 2004
83 3rd 1961
81 4th 2003
82 5th 2015

Close but no cigar 78 23rd 1979. The latest in the season for such a high temperature. Another day I remember well. The Chief Engineer and I were doing some work at the WPIT transmitter site.

My O scale church/cathedral was mailed today from Altoona PA so it should be here by Friday in time for Mike and I to assemble it on Saturday. It's one of those Plasticville Kits. If you are familiar with them, there won't be very much assembly work if I remember correctly.

Back to weather before I close. It looks like Summer is ending today. We'll be getting rain tonight and tomorrow, then the temperature goes back to normal in the 60s tomorrow, the 50s and low 60s the five days after that, then 46 a week from today for the high, give or take the usual errors in forecasting. -30-

Mon Nov 9 2020 8:52AM - OK, lest I forget (gee, that reminds me of a program we had on WPIT many years ago - Lest We Forget with Dr. Jack Munyon), back on track now, here's a picture of my new Lionel Legacy Mikado locomotive. As you see it's a Frisco 1501.

It's still running perfectly. I hope it continues that way.

Mike read last night's diary entry and emailed he'd be glad to help put my building kit together on Saturday. I hope it gets here on time like it says. It's only coming from Altoona, PA around 90 or so miles from here. Those familiar with railroads know that's coincidentally near the famous Horshoe Curve.

Barring something very unusual, that's the diary entry for today. -30-

Sun Nov 8 2020 7:19PM - With the SS still going on until 0200Z, it was again easy to get my streak QSO. I worked W1SJ in VT on 80 meters. I was his QSO Nr 1060.

Not much else to report again today. It's still late summer in November here. I see the AcuRite remote shows the high was 76 which may be a record or very close for the date. I checked the November maximum records last night and they are mostly in the low 80s and upper 70s for the first half of November. Oh, I might as well check again. Back in a minute. Just missed if the AcuRite agrees with the outside mercury in glass 'official' reading which I will get later. It was 77 on November 8, 1975. Two more days of this nice weather before it rains Wednesday and the temperatures drop back to normal after that.

With my new locomotive, which I will get around to posting a picture of it, I've decided to get some new buildings for my layout. Right now I have several different scale buildings and I want to make them more uniform. I started with ordering an O scale church/cathedral today which should be here by Friday. Maybe Mike and I can then put the kit together on Saturday when he is here. -30-

Sat Nov 7 2020 7:04PM - Natch a quick streak QSO tonight with the SS going on. Worked WT9U on 80 at 0000Z. He was up to 215 QSOs already. Although the SS was never a favorite here, I did rack up 537 QSOs in 1999 from 74 ARRL Sections. I had just gotten my first transceiver, a TS570D(G) two months before the SS. Before that it was a chore using separate transmitter and receiver. There's more details of that 1999 SS in the CONTESTING section of my web site - Stories section if you're interested. Just a couple more notes here. That was the first contest I ever crossed the 500 QSO mark, due largely to the TS570D. I set that as a goal and made it. I also set a goal at a Clean Sweep, but missed by 5 sections - NNY VI QC NL and MB. I did make a contest WAS. That was another goal, so I made 2 of 3 goals. Just so you'll be sure, when I got the 570, the first thing I did was hide the microphone in a drawer where it has stayed to this day. I also set the power to 5 watts output where it stayed as long as I used the rig.

Another beautiful day today, sunny and a high around 70 - 72 on my remote thermometer. I probably should have been outside enjoying it more but I had other things to do. I helped neighbor Bruce with a couple things. I also wanted to run my new loco some more to be sure it is going to behave well, and it has so far. It does drink up smoke fluid quite rapidly. That's the only negative I've found so far, and I can live with that easily. Of course the usual walks with Roscoe. Actually it's more like Roscoe walks me. HI I let him go where he wants to and follow along for the most part.

I really enjoyed the day with Mike yesterday and now I'm looking forward to our next project day a week from today. It will be mostly ham radio oriented as far as the projects go, but there will be a lot of railroading also. Then if the weather cooperates, we might have a star (planet?) gazing session in the evening. -30-

Fri Nov 6 2020 7:32PM - I'll be back in a minute after Mike adds his part to the diary. OK Mike. Good evening everyone. I arrived at John's QTH just before 9AM. Today was a visit with two goals. First was to deliver John's new Lionel Legacy Locomotive. And second was a coax project. The first objective was 100% successful. The second was completed 50%. I need to bring 2 connectors from my QTH for a second length of coax. It wound up being a busy day for us. I will let John go into detail. It's almost time for me to head north. So without further ado, here's John...

Well, I really don't have a lot to say which is one reason I asked Mike to do part of the diary. HI. As always it was a good day when Mike visits. After all the troubles I've had with locomotives lately, it looks like this one is going to be a winner. Just one thing. Instead of a SOO Lines loco, it turned out to be a Frisco loco. That was perfectly fine with me as I only picked SOO because it was the only one I could find when ordering. Other than that everything was perfect. Mike and I gave it a VERY thorough workout trying just about every feature the Legacy system provided. About the only thing we didn't try was a lash-up with another loco. I'll do that sometime soon. I love the whistle, the crew and tower talk, the perfectly smooth motion down to about snail speed up to 90 scale MPH, and just too many other features to list here. Now if it just stays this way, I'll continue to be delighted.

Incidentally Mike is giving me a dose of my own medicine pacing back and forth while I type like I do when he's typing.

The bands were busy tonight, but folks weren't hearing me answering their CQs until finally I went to 160 and snagged K8JD there. The next couple evenings should be easy to get my QSO with the ARRL Sweepstakes going on.

Of course Mike and I took time out to eat. We got something from Wendy's. I got a Baconator with Fries. Mike got a Pretzel Bacon Pub sandwich and fries. We also made some plans for doing a Tag Team effort in the upcoming CQWW DX Contest. Also plans for a project day a week from tomorrow, the 14th. More on that as the day draws closer. -30-

Thu Nov 5 2020 7:49PM - Despite the increase in sunspot activity and solar flux, the conditions were really poor this evening. I may have to switch my MO to getting on in the daylight hours on the higher bands as they should be getting better now. The increased solar activity is probably making the ionosphere more dense which is absorbing the lower frequencies I have been using in the evenings. I don't know when the SF was at 90+ the last time, but it was 91 today. I guess I'll go check my Excel SF file and see. Back in a bit. Well, it wasn't in 2020, 2019, or 2018. The high those years were 76, 82, 82 respectively. The high in 2017 was 183 on September 4. The last 90+ was 91 on September 28. That's 3+ years ago. Wow. Oh, I worked W4BTZ near Atlanta, GA this evening. He was copying me better than I was copying him through my QSB and QRN here.

Until I got W4BTZ on 80 at 0029Z I was afraid some of my time with Mike and my new locomotive tomorrow would be devoted to getting my streak QSO. We'll probably still check the bands as we always do, but with no pressure to get that QSO.

I don't know what time Mike is planning to arrive tomorrow, but it will be good to see him again and also to get my new loco. I just hope everything goes smoothly with this one unlike the past couple. At least unlike the very last one which was out of stock, this one exists for sure since Mike picked it up yesterday as I said.

I'm still not used to the time change completely yet. I still think when I finish writing the diary entry, it is time to go get my weather data, but that is still an hour away yet. It was beautiful today with a high at 70 with some high thin cirrus clouds, no precipitation and only a light breeze. Like we went back in time about 6 weeks or so. It should stay this way until next Wednesday at least. Hopefully well beyond that. -30-

Wed Nov 4 2020 7:23PM - Poor bands again tonight. I have to thank Harry KA1FXK for sticking with me long enough to make it a legit QSO. Copy was rough both ways, but we made it another day for the streak.

I got an email from Mike a while ago saying he picked up my locomotive from Hobbyspeed. Or as he put it in the email, "The Engine has landed. It’s sitting in the back of my vehicle." So I should be seeing it on Friday if all continues on plan. Thanks Mike.

Not much else going on today except that it was a beautiful day and Roscoe and I had a couple nice sessions on the porch swing. -30-

Tue Nov 3 2020 8:04PM - The bands seemed good again tonight, at least 80 meters which is the only one I listened to. I found KB8UMD calling CQ and we had a 19 minute QSO from 0003 to 0022Z. Good signals all the way both ends.

Tomorrow Mike picks up my train order from Hobbyspeed in Indiana. It's a SOO Lines 2-8-2 Light Mikado #4005. Not exactly what I wanted, but at least now I'll have a Lionel Legacy steam locomotive to play with starting Friday when Mike delivers it here. I'm still hoping for a UP 844 or a UP 4014 some day in the future.

It looks like Indian Summer coming up this week and into the early part of next week. It will sure be welcome after some cold days with frost and s#$w lately. Some sources are predicting a few days in the low 70s! That will be great. -30-

Mon Nov 2 2020 6:39PM - You may have noted in my streak table on the main page of the web site that my QSO last evening didn't come until 0128Z. There's a little story behind that. We had a power failure here last night and I was busy taking care of things related to that. Checking on the neighbors, getting some emergency lighting set up here, and so forth. I never did get on the air till about 0115Z or so. I connected the rig to my portable battery, and found out what I had suspected for some time. Without the noisy power lines, electronic crap, and other noise sources my QRN level was down to about S2 instead of S8-S9 as usual. The bands were full of sigs that may have been masked by my high noise level otherwise. It was great. I had a nice contact with AA9AA in Wisconsin on 80 for about 20 minutes. He was running 3 watts and was solid copy all the way. I didn't get a chance to check much more though as the power returned not long after our QSO ended. It still wasn't quite as quiet as up in the park with its near S0 noise, but still much better than usual of late. I guess the residual S2 or so noise was from emergency power sources in the neighborhood.

Today has been good so far. I won a prize in the NAQCC Anniversary drawing and it arrived today. I also decided on a train, and I think I'm going to order it after I get my streak QSO in a little while. It's going to be ordered from Hobbyspeed in Indiana, PA. I checked a little while ago to be sure it will be in stock. Brett at the store said there were two in stock so I should be OK. Then Mike is going to Indiana on Wednesday and he'll pick up the order for me and bring it when he visits on Friday for a project checking out his coax line(s) which suffered some damage in a bad wind storm on Sunday.

OK, almost time to head to the shack now for hopefully a quick QSO so I can get my train order in. -30-

Sun Nov 1 2020 9:40AM - October was pretty much an average month with a mean temperature of 54.9, 2.9 degrees above normal due mainly to a brief 3 day period around the 22nd that averaged about 17 degrees above normal. Precipitation was a little above normal at 3.55 inches or .82 above normal due to a heavy rain of 1.32 inches on the 28th/29th.

There were several daily records set due mostly to the warm period mentioned above. 82 on the 23rd tied the high record from 1963.

The highest minimum record was broken on the 21st at 54 and the 22nd at 57. Also 64 on the 11th.

The highest average was 70 on the 22nd and 66 on the 23rd, both records, the 70 tied 1979. Also 68 on the 11th was a record.

The least daily temperature range record was set or tied four times 6 - 19th, 7 - 20th, 6 - 27th, 3 - 29th.

Departure from normal set or tied on 4 days +14 - 11th, +16 - 21st, +20 - 22nd, +17 - 23rd.

Now I wonder what November will bring. It's usually a fairly wet month with low daily temperature ranges.

Back to contemplating what locomotive I'm going to buy now. I'm having a problem finding exactly what I want. A lot come close, but have one little thing I don't like about them. I'll probably have to settle for one of those though. -30-

Sat Oct 31 2020 9:06PM - Whew, I'm tired out of doing one of my least favorite annual tasks. Turning my clocks back one hour, and remembering which ones are smart enough to do it themselves and which need my assistance. It's easy in the spring just moving ahead one hour. Now tomorrow I'll find out which one I forgot to turn or which ones should have done it on their own but didn't. Of course this year was even worse because the calendar pages had to be flipped also. I think that may have been the first time the calendar and clock change coincided, or maybe not since it's been a good many years now since the date of change was changed to the first Sunday in November.

The bands were really rough tonight. I guess all the ghouls and goblins were playing with the ionosphere. I did finally work K5EDM in AR after 27 minutes into the 0000Z hour. That was on 40 meters after I couldn't get anyone on 80.

Besides the clock changing, I did some other end of the month things today. I uploaded my logs to LoTW and eQSL this morning. I did my EOM financial work also. Now about all that is left is putting the October weather data into my Excel weather spreadsheets. I'd guess that October will wind up pretty close to normal as we had probably an equal number of warm and cool days and wet and dry ones. Probably the precipitation will wind up on the low side, but maybe not a lot. I'll know tomorrow as I think I'll wait till then to do that.

Another chore the next day or two will be ordering a new Lionel Legacy locomotive. Hopefully the third time will be the charm. No fault of Lionel the first two didn't work out. I'd still like to get a UP 844, but I can't seem to find any for sale. At least any new ones, and I'm not going to get a used one like I did the first time. If not that, maybe I'll open the wallet a bit more and get a Big Boy. Or maybe a Pennsy K4 loco, since that was my local railroad through here years ago. Or maybe something different altogether. Stay tuned. -30-

Fri Oct 30 2020 8:17PM - The bands seemed pretty good tonight although I didn't really need to listen all that long to get my streak QSO. It came at just past 0000Z when I worked WA7WKY over in Cincinnati, Ohio on 80 meters. After we chatted a bit, I shut down for the night.

Another not much going on day today. It was a cold breezy one and as it clears up and the wind dies down tonight, I suspect we might drop into the upper 20s overnight. It's right at 40 now as I type. They are predicting a bit of a warm up the latter part of next week, but before then, there is a chance of our first s#$w of the season on Sunday. Brrrr! I hate that.

I did a little work on the railroad today. I put down a road through the center of my big oval. I just used masking tape for now and probably will paint it black sometime to make it look like blacktop. I really don't plan to make a real fancy setup. I mostly just like working on the locos and running stock and running the trains. I will do a little with the scenery now and then, but not a lot. -30-

Thu Oct 29 2020 8:34PM - I always enjoy working folks whose call is similar to mine. I worked one tonight who in addition is someone I've worked several times over the years. It is Jim K4WOP. Just needs one dit to a dah and one dah to a dit to be identical to my call. I've only ever worked one other WWP. That was Clark (think that was his name) W2WWP. He's now a silent key. I'm curious now to see how often I've worked Jim and Clark. Yes, the name was Clark. We worked 4 times between 1994 and 1997, both from NY and NC. This was QSO #16 tonight with Jim going all the way back to 1965. So he's a member of my 50 years club of hams I've worked more than 50 years apart. Unfortunately I haven't been keeping up with my 50 years records. I'll have to work on that sometime. It will soon be 60 years if I make it to 2023.

Still another day where the weather liked the 50 degree mark so much it didn't stray far from it up or down, night or day. We got a good soaking rain today probably over an inch although I won't know for sure until 9 o'clock. Much too late to help the growing season, but better than nothing, I guess.

BTW, my QSO with Jim came on the first CQ that I called. So quick, it kind of startled me as I haven't been getting many answers to my CQs at all lately, let alone the first one I call. -30-

Wed Oct 28 2020 8:38PM - Same old story this evening with the streak. Hard to find someone to work, but I'm still keeping things going and still in the 0000Z hour. I'll have to check again to see how many straight days I've gotten the QSO in the 0000Z hour, but not right now. Tonight it took 12 minutes to find, work, and have a nice rag chew with Dick W2WC in an astronomically named place in NY - Halfmoon.

In our QSO, we talked about the KX3 which we both own, although he wasn't using his tonight. I see it is just past 8 years I've owned mine and used it 99.99% of the time since then. I built it on October 21, 2012. Actually Mike was there also lending some assistance, then I made my first QSO with it with him. It has really turned out to be a real treasure. By coincidence, W2WC also got his just over 8 years ago. We should have traded serial numbers, but I didn't think of that until just now.

I did some small things around the house today. I worked on my computer stand a bit, and I may have to continue tomorrow as I just noticed it is slipping around on the stand a bit as I type. I also did some work on my railroad layout, moving a bridge around and fixing the light in the caboose which had burned out. I also cleaned and adjusted the pick-up roller on the caboose. I also did some other things that were just minor ones and can't even remember them now.

It was another November in October day with the temperature hanging around 50 +/- a couple degrees all day and some light drizzle along the way. It looks like we'll get about an inch and a half of rain from Zeta, then get down in the 20s overnight for a few upcoming nights. Very sad to contemplate, but..... -30-

Tue Oct 27 2020 8:31PM - About the only thing of note today is the Solar Flux. It was 82. Now let me see when the last time it was that high. March 22, 2019 as far as I can tell in glancing through my Excel spreadsheet and that same glance showed only one day in 2019 it was that high. So hopefully that will be good news for propagation conditions upcoming.

My streak QSO tonight came from VE2CSI up in CQ Zone 2 on 40 meters. He was really booming in although I did have to repeat my call to get him. -30-

Mon Oct 26 2020 7:53PM - Almost time for the streak QSO. It was an interesting and somewhat busy day today. Being Monday of course, it was laundry day and I did that first thing this morning. I got caught up on some of my (regular) mail correspondence after that. Later in the day my neighbor girl brought me over a platter of lasagna which I'll have later. She visited for a while and we talked about her schooling. She said that one of her school projects this year would be designing a web site. I showed her my site and offered to help if I could. The project hasn't really gotten underway yet. She has all As except for one B so she probably won't need any help. HI.

After that my other neighbor cooked and ate some fried green tomatoes. I haven't had any for a while and they were really good.

OK, off to the shack now then I'll finish this entry later.

It's seemingly harder and harder to get my streak QSO as time passes, but still I am continuing to get it in that 0000Z hour. Tonight it took 21 minutes to find someone calling CQ and in between time getting no answers to my own CQs. It's hard to say if it is poor conditions, lack of activity, or my strong local noise that makes it difficult. Probably a combination of the three. Tonight it was Bryan KO4YB down in AL who got in my streak log when I answered his CQ.

I haven't talked about trains lately. That's because it seems they give me nothing but bad luck. I finally had to return my UP 844 for a refund which I got. Then I ordered a Pennsylvania K4 locomotive and the company sold the last one they had in stock shortly before my order. So another refund and more searching for another locomotive. Sigh! -30-

Sun Oct 25 2020 8:08PM - Of course, the SST test this evening provided a quick streak QSO, actually 2 of them as I wasn't positive the first station logged my call correctly so I worked an insurance QSO just in case. Conditions seemed about average tonight as they have been quite a bit lately.

Another cold or cool day today with a high of 55 which was better than yesterday. I helped Ange with some garden clean up, but other than that and walking Roscoe, I stayed inside most of the day. Well, my neighbor Bruce took me shopping early today, but I wasn't really out in the weather except to go from his van into the stores.

I rearranged my train layout a bit setting up some tracks to store my spare engines and running stock. It looks a bit more like a real train yard now. -30-

Sat Oct 24 2020 7:55PM - Just a short entry before I head to the shack for my streak QSO, hopefully. Conditions have been poor lately and also the bands have been quiet on the CW end. Maybe everyone is in the SSB DX contest, although why, I don't know. That mode has no appeal to me at all, but I have no objections to each having his own.

It was some 30+ degrees colder today than yesterday so no long walks or sitting on the porch. It just barely grazed 50 during the day today although the actual high probably happened sometime around midnight. Yes I see the high on my AcuRite remote was 63 then.

Well, time to head to the shack now. Till tomorrow's entry, very 73. -30-

Fri Oct 23 2020 8:46PM - Probably the last 80+ degree day of the year today although we have had a couple such days in November in past years. It was enjoyable to say the least.

The bands sure seemed empty tonight although the sigs that were there seemed quite strong as if conditions were good. I had a solid 17 minute QSO with K2IWQ up in NY on 80 meters. -30-

Thu Oct 22 2020 6:02PM - It was in the 80s today and while in my back yard, I was admiring what will probably be my last two roses of the year. I thought I'd take their pictures and share the pictures here in the diary. So...

-30-

Wed Oct 21 2020 8:20PM - Poor conditions again tonight as usual the past several days now. After listening around for about 10 minutes wondering if I was going to work anyone, I did find VE3BXG calling CQ on 80M and managed to work him although I got a meager 329 RST report and he was about 559 with his 150 watts. So the streak struggles on another day.

At least the weather was good today with a high in the upper 70s although we did have a few light showers along the way and some real thick fog early this morning. Roscoe and I sat on the swing a couple times enjoying the weather. Tomorrow morning he goes to the groomer for a trim, bath, and toenail (pawnail?) clipping. He should enjoy that. The groomer says he is one of the very best dogs that she works on. -30-

Tue Oct 20 2020 10:41AM - Every now and then I go through the pages of my web site looking for things that need or could use some updating. One thing I have always put off doing until now was updating info about the history of QRP. This morning I found a VERY long article discussing just when QRP evolved from 100 watts to 5 watts and also just when power measurement went from input power to output power. I have now inserted a link to that article (PDF) in my streak page. There may also be some other pages where I can insert the link. I'll check that out later. That's it for today's diary entry. -30-

Mon Oct 19 2020 7:11PM - I see Mike read my diary entry of a couple nights ago as he usually does. He read the bit about doing a tag team effort in the CQWW DX test in November and liked the idea so it looks like we'll be doing it. That will be fun. I get as big a kick out of him getting the QSOs as I do getting them myself. I hope conditions will be good that weekend.

I just did a bit of work on my QSL Routes page here on the web site. WM7D changed the lookup method a bit so I took his form down and now just link to the form on his home page. There sure are a myriad of different forms for doing lookups on the web nowadays and I don't have time to figure them all out.

And that's probably my diary entry for tonight unless I work something really exotic for my streak QSO later. -30-

Sun Oct 18 2020 8:57PM - Time to get my temperature in a couple minutes. I had an interesting time last night getting my temperature. There was a skunk in my back yard and we stared at each other about 7 or 8 feet apart. No problem though as I just went about getting my temperature and he (she?) went about digging for roots or grubs. I don't know how he got in as he was big and there is a fence all around my yard with only small openings. Hope he's not there tonight or if so, things go like last night. I'll find out in a couple minutes and come back and finish the diary report.

No sign of my black and white visitor tonight. I did tighten up a couple of suspicious spots in the fence today. Maybe that helped. We'll see.

I had another 3 QSO evening working IL in the ILQP, then answers to my CQs from NY and MO. Also I had another station call me whom I couldn't copy, but later found out from his email that is was my friend Gene AA8MI. I never heard any of his call, and only heard my call twice in separate answers.

OK, got to update my index and propagation pages now before time to take Roscoe out. -30-

Sat Oct 17 2020 7:56PM - It should be a quick streak QSO tonight with the NY QSO Party going on. If so, I'll try some CQs away from the party frequencies and look for a rag chew QSO also.

That went according to plan with a bonus. I worked W2GN in the NYQP at 0001Z. Then called CQ for about 10 minutes and just as I was about to quit, I got an answer from W8FV down in NC for a short rag chew before he had to quit. Then the bonus when I worked DK9PY in the WAG contest on 40 with a single call. When I was seriously into contesting, the WAG was a favorite and in 2013 I made 106 QSOs in it. Working DK9PY gave me a bit of a taste for working DX and I'm looking forward to the CQWW DX the end of November. Maybe Mike and I can do a tag team effort in that one? -30-

Fri Oct 16 2020 8:34PM - I think we're settling in for winter conditions on the bands already. It seems every evening that 40, 30, and 20 get worse and worse and I wind up on 80 to get my streak QSO. At least I am still getting it. I worked VE3CSI on 80 tonight, but it took a while to get my right call across to him. Then later I called CQ and got an answer from I think a N8?WV, but never could copy his call and never got enough to make it a QSO. Sigh!

To top it off, the weather isn't getting any better either. It's a sad time of year. I took my screens out and put in the storm panes today also. Can't wait till spring in about 134 days or so. But wait a minute, I don't want to be wishing my life away like that. I'll just have to put up with poor conditions and weather and enjoy the many other good things in life. -30-

Thu Oct 15 2020 8:23PM - A sad day today. I put my garden to rest for the (excuse the language) winter. I harvested a nice collection of peppers and tomatoes to keep me going for a while. Not as many as other years, but enough. I also cut my grass for hopefully the last time until spring (now that's a good season).

The bands were good again tonight, but not a lot of activity. I got a rather quick answer to my CQ from someone who seemed to be in a contest or sprint as he only gave me RST ST NAME and some kind of club number. Oh well, it was sufficient to keep the streak going for another day although I would have liked to chew the rag a bit. -30-

Wed Oct 14 2020 8:28PM - The bands seemed a little better this evening. I even worked a DX station for my streak QSO, TI5/N3KS on 20 meters. Then I called CQ on 40 and worked K0ZK up in Maine. I hope things continue to pick up.

I went shopping with my neighbor to get some breakfasts for Roscoe and a couple other things. Then I went out later to get some food for myself. I also went for a walk this evening just before dark. Also Roscoe and I sat on the swing for a while. I guess you can tell from that it was a pretty nice day. Mostly sunny with a high around 70. It's supposed to be even a bit warmer tomorrow. I won't complain about that. -30-

Tue Oct 13 2020 8:54PM - Horrible conditions again this evening. It was a struggle to get my streak QSO, then even more of a struggle to get a contact in our NAQCC sprint, but I made both goals eventually. KC1BMD on 80 for the streak, and WB1GYZ on 80 for the sprint. Both were just above my high QRN level.

I think if I were much younger and had the chance to do it, I would look for some sort of isolated QTH where the noise level was down around S0 or S1 instead of S9 as it is here. Actually up in the Community Park it is quiet like that so there probably is some place not that far away where I could get away from this noise, but still I'm too old to be thinking of pulling up roots and moving so I'll just have to live with the noise. It hasn't ended my streak yet, but it has diminished my participation in our NAQCC sprints and other QRP contests as well unless I do them portable from the Park. -30-

Mon Oct 12 2020 8:29PM - A very cold day for our parkpedition today, but we stuck it out for just under 3 hours getting very cold with few QSOs before we gave it up. We each made about 7 QSOs. I'm speaking of Mike and me, of course. It reminded us of Columbus Day 2009 when we really got frozen out and left after just about 90 minutes. The wind was ferocious really lowering the wind chill. Without the wind it wouldn't have been quite so bad.

Before and after the parkpedition we played some Sherlock Holmes games on the computer. We also boxed up my UP 844 locomotive to return it for a refund. It just never did run quite right. I hated to see it go, but it was just too frustrating to keep it. Now I hope to find another one somewhere that runs better.

We also had a very good pepperoni, mushroom, and onion pizza this evening. I'm sure that's no surprise to those of you who know us.

This evening it was also very hard making QSOs. I had to really struggle to keep my streak intact. It again took over 20 minutes as it did last night to finally work someone, KM4CU in FL on 40. -30-

Sun Oct 11 2020 8:42PM - That was very strange! I thought since I was busy doing my laundry and other things, I'd just grab a quick SST QSO for the streak. I turned on the rig and the first station I heard was John K4BAI. I thought oh boy, this will be even quicker than I thought. Not so. I chased John off and on for about 15 minutes and he never so much as heard me at all. Extremely unusual as John always hears me and he was quite strong. I started to think something was wrong with my antenna, but all looked fine. I tried 3 or 4 other stations with the same negative results. Do I have my VOX off? Nope, it's on. I abandoned 40 and went to 80. The same thing there at first but I eventually did get K4RUM in the SST there. Looking back, I think 40 was in long skip as stations in UT and NM were booming in, but not hearing me either. Oh well, at least the streak is secured so I don't have to worry about it when Mike visits again tomorrow.

The latest weather forecast looks like we will be able to head to the Community Park. We're shooting for a 1500-1900Z time slot and hope to operate around 7041, 10117, and 14061, two frequencies at a time to be determined by conditions and activity. We'll be using N3A/3 as the call. Hope to work you. -30-

Sat Oct 10 2020 7:23PM - It was not the usual good day with Mike. Nothing to do with us or our friendship. Just with things that happened.

We had a good breakfast supplied by me and prepared by Mike. Then when we ran my train, it started acting up the way it did when I first got it and as it did yesterday. I still don't know what the problem is, but it seems to be something with the RailSounds/Control board despite installing the battery which seemed to cure it earlier.

After some Sherlock Holmes computer games, we started putting up our setup for the PA QSO Party. Setup went very smoothly and quickly and we waited for the contest to start.

We used SE call N3A today. When it did start at 1600Z, I immediately worked N3VZ and thought it might be a good day on 40 meters. However it was downhill from there and things started to drag. It took 17 minutes more to get #2 and #3 which I got from my CQs. The rest of the 1600Z hour gave me only 7 more contacts, most S&P. The 1700Z hour gave 9 QSOs, 1800Z just 4, and 1900Z only 4 also. That made only 27 QSOs in 3 1/2 hours. That's when we shut down. Mike had an even worse time on 20 meters. Skip was too long to hear PA and he wasn't hearing any out of state CQs. He only made 3 QSOs total. I'm not sure but I think those were from his CQs. At one point, even his antenna didn't cooperate and the mast collapsed down into the lowest section at one point in the contest. Hopefully things will go better on Monday when we do our stint for the NAQCC Anniversary celebration. We operated from my front porch today and may have to do the same Monday if we get rained out of going to the Kittanning Community Park.

Getting close to 0000Z now when I should get a very quick QSO from the PA QSO Party unless things go like today. At least tonight I'll be using K3WWP instead of N3A so I can work those stations I worked earlier with N3A if necessary. -30-

Fri Oct 9 2020 9:21PM - And now here's my friend and ghost writer to do tonight's diary entry.

Good evening eveyone. I arrived at John's place around 9AM. John immediately introduced me to the new addition to his model railroad. Needless to say I was very impressed. Actual scaled model trains are a thing of beauty. After running his new addition for a while, John decided to re-arrange some of the electronic components of his layout. After that he did some smoke testing to make sure everything was running properly. We did run into one minor issue. His new locomotive doesn't run properly when his hand held wireless controller's battery is nearly out of juice. No worries, eveything ran fine after a quick recharge. Afterwards we tried our hand at a Sherlock Holmes hidden object game. We picked a couple of tough ones. After a few failed attempts on the second puzzle we decided to grab a late lunch/early dinner from Wendy's. Then back to the hidden object game. Followed by checking the bands. Tomorrow we will be opeating in the PA QSO Party. We will set up on John's front porch like we do during field day. And on Monday we will operate from the Kittanning Community Park for our annual Columbus Day operation for the NAQCC Anniversary Event. We will be quite busy radio wise the next few days.

Until next time de Mike, KC2EGL 73 -30-

Thu Oct 8 2020 8:38PM - Took a while to get my streak QSO tonight, but finally got an answer to my 80 meters CQ at 0017Z from VE3PYG. QRN and QSB cut it to 10 minutes, but at least it's in the books for another day.

Speaking of another day, tomorrow is a Mike visit day so that will provide some different things to talk about here in the diary, I am sure. Even more so considering he will be here Fri, Sat, and Mon. The weather should be good for some outdoor things. Of course railroads and ham radio will top the activities, but we'll find other things to keep us occupied also. So stay tuned to the diary the next couple evenings, and beyond also, of course. -30-

Wed Oct 7 2020 8:42PM - I've made over 90,000 QSOs in my ham career, actually 92,031 using K3WWP, and using N3A, N3AQC, and a few other calls, the overall total is 5,266 + 92,031 = 97,297. I bring that up because I just want to say I enjoyed every one of them, be they contest QSOs, 599 TU DX QSOs, long rag chews or any other classification into which you can put them. Every once in a while though, there is one that stands out just a bit from the others, mainly because you learn quite a bit about the person you are talking to. Tonight was such a QSO talking with a Navy veteran about the ships he served on in a 27 year career, mainly submarines. I wondered if he ever served on the Requin, but he hadn't. A couple he mentioned were the Polaris, Abraham Lincoln, and a Sturgeon class sub. I'm not going to repeat the whole QSO here, but you get the gist of it, I'm sure.

He called a bit of a slow CQ, maybe 15WPM or so, so I answered him with my straight key since I don't send too well at speeds below 17 or 18WPM with my bug or paddle. I had no idea he was an ex-Navy man. You could tell though after listening to his near perfect CW for the whole QSO. Anyway it was nice having a full QSO on a straight again. It's been a while now. -30-

Tue Oct 6 2020 8:38PM - 80 seemed quite busy tonite with not a lot on 40. I worked K4JJW easily on 80 meters at 0004Z. Then I tried a few CQs with no luck.

Not much else going on today again. A couple walks and running my train pretty much covered everything. -30-

Mon Oct 5 2020 8:31PM - There seem to be more special event stations than ever active this year. Well, it has been an unusual year, to say the least. I worked another one tonight - N4F in FL. Let's see just what it was for. OK, that explains the CQ NFPW. It's for National Fire Prevention Week. A very good cause. See the QRZ listing for more interesting info.

Kind of a quiet day today with nothing out of the ordinary going. It was chilly with a high of around 60 and 49 right now. I did get in my usual 2 walks though. I'm going to have to move up my evening walk a bit as it is getting dark much earlier each day. I hate to see that, but I can't do a thing about it. -30-

Sun Oct 4 2020 8:22PM - An easy quick QSO in the SST from VE2FK Claude in QC. I tried to get a follow up QSO, but I couldn't, so the SST QSO stands as the streak QSO.

I did a lot of running of my UP 844 today and it performed very well with just a couple minor glitches probably due to operator error more than anything else as I'm still getting used to the Lionel Legacy controls with a steam engine. I am pretty much used to them with my diesel, but there are some differences.

Here's a little better picture of the 844 compared to the one I posted the other night. I can still do better though, and I will get a still nicer picture sometime in the near future.

It's a real beauty and my photography doesn't do it justice (yet).

Mike and I will be having most of the upcoming weekend together. On Friday it will be mostly a train day. Then perhaps a stargazing event Friday night. On Saturday we'll do the PA QSO Party using N3A probably from the park. On Sunday, Mike has other things to do. Then he'll be back on Monday to operate N3A/3 in the NAQCC Anniversary Week festivities from the park. More details as the days draw closer. -30-

Sat Oct 3 2020 8:34PM - I figured I'd get an easy QSO in the CA QSO Party tonite. Wrong. 20 was pretty much closed by 0000Z, and I got an answer from a CA station on 40, but he couldn't get my call right. So I discarded that idea and called CQ on 80 instead. I got a pretty quick answer from Jerry N3EMZ in adjacent Westmoreland County here in PA. We had a nice 18 minute chat.

I haven't said much about my new Lionel Legacy UP 844 loco that I got last Sunday because it's been frustrating. It ran well, but the RailSounds were intermittent at best when they worked at all. Well, tonight I think I fixed the problem. The tender has a connection for a 'back up' 9 volt battery that is supposed to kick in when the loco passes over a bad or dirty section of track. I took the tender apart tonight, found the connection, installed a battery, and I've had two good running sessions since then with everything working fine. It seems the Living Legend (UP844) lives again. I hope the fix is for real and lasts. It's a real beauty of a loco, as is the prototype out in Cheyenne. Just as a reminder, it's the only steam locomotive that was never retired by a Class 1 railroad. It's been on the Union Pacific active roster ever since it was purchased in 1944. The 44 number is only a coincidence not connected with the year. The locomotive was the last in a group of 45 FEF Northern locomotives purchased by UP numbered 800 through 844. -30-

Fri Oct 2 2020 8:29PM - It was a special event station for the streak tonight. W5T in TX on 40. He said something about a hurricane special event. Let's see what QRZ says. It just says a special event operating October 1-14, 2020, recognizing the impact of hurricanes on the Texas Gulf Coast. They certainly deserve something for all the blows they've taken there.

Another day with not much going on. It was too chilly to spend much time outside but I did go for a couple walks. I also cleaned out my garden leaving only 2 tomato and 2 pepper plants. The rest weren't going to produce any longer so I removed them when the weather is still decent rather than freezing later after they died off completely.

I got an email from Mike telling about two new QRP operating events. I'll pass it along verbatim in case you are interested although the events are this weekend so it's last minute news.

"Good afternoon John.
Larry from NJQRP posted information about these two events.
I have applied for a number for both events. I doubt that I will be home in time to operate all of peepers event.
Peanut Power
Leaf Peepers
Both numbers are good for eternity. We can put this on our schedule from now on.
It would make for a nice weekend of radio to mix in with other activities."

Thanks Mike. GL in the events. Since they are QRP it will be hard for me with my strong local QRN to work anyone here at home, so I'll probably pass on them. -30-

Thu Oct 1 2020 9:30AM - For the many of you who show an interest in my meteorological records, I present some September stats from my records.

Monthly stats and departures from normal:
Ave Min: 54.5 +2.2
Ave Max: 77.9 +2.3
Ave Mean: 66.2 +2.3
Prec: 1.62 -1.79
A bit on the warm side and quite dry, but no monthly records were set or tied except those that happen most every September like number days Max 32 or less (0), number days Min 0 or less (0), etc.

Daily records:
Min of 38 on the 19th ties 1982 and 1995.

One interesting stat: The Min was 38 on four straight days from 19th through 22nd. That doesn't happen very much with the Min. More often with the Max.

And that's it for today unless something really important or interesting happens later. -30-

Wed Sep 30 2020 8:29PM - I worked an interesting station for my streak tonight. It was WW0WWV. As you can tell from the call it is connected to WWV in CO. In looking up the station in QRZ, I see it is what they call WWV 100 + 1. The 100th anniversary plus 1 year. Last year they had such a great time and such a big turnout, they decided to do it again this year, but at a lower level of activity due to the virus. I may have been the first QSO they made as I worked them at 0002Z and they started at 0000Z. It took a few repeats for them to get my call so that used up about a minute or so. Could have been another station sneak in ahead of me. That was on 40 meters, BTW.

Of course this is the end of a month day, so I spent most of it doing all my EOM tasks. I'm almost done. About all I have left now is to enter the September weather data into my Microsoft Excel Weather spreadsheet. It looks like it will be around Min 53.5, Max 77.5 and Mean 65.5 for the monthly average. That's about 1.5 to 2.0 degrees above normal. Precipitation should be well below normal. I'll mention the real figures in tomorrow's diary entry. Now time to move on for tonight. -30-

Tue Sep 29 2020 9:16PM - This will be a short entry tonight as it's almost time to walk Roscoe. I had 3 bug QSOs tonight so I got a workout on the bug and got a bit sloppy near the end. It was a lot of fun though. I had a tough time getting started and didn't start the first QSO until 0030Z, the latest in a long time now. Actually not much else to talk about today anyway so it's a good night for a short entry. HI -30-

Mon Sep 28 2020 8:41PM - Where does the time go? It will very soon be October. I hope the winter months pass as quickly as the summer months did this year.

The bands seemed to be not very active this evening. I had to go down to 80 to find my streak QSO in the name of Bill VE3AUI. We chatted about 16 minutes, solid copy both ways. I see more and more 80 meters QSOs sneaking into my log. If it is like last year, before long the vast majority will be on 80 with some 160 thrown in here and there.

Today was probably our last nice day for a while as it is predicted to be wet and cool the next several days. I took advantage with a couple walks and sat on the porch swing with Roscoe for an hour. -30-

Sun Sep 27 2020 8:47PM - Well, the 844 arrived about 12:30PM today, naturally when I was out walking Roscoe. Everything worked out though and Roscoe even got a couple treats from the FedEx man. The 844 ran well for a while, but then developed an intermittant/erratic problem in the sound board somewhere. There are some things I will try to see if I can fix it. If I can't, I have the option of returning it to the seller within 30 days. It runs very nicely, it's just the sounds that aren't working as they should sometimes.

Here's a picture I took quickly after I got it unpacked and set on the tracks. I'll try to get a better picture sometime.

Tonight I got a QSO in the SST sprint, and came to the conclusion that it is too easy to get a QSO in the SST. I will get one if available, but I'll also try to get a second QSO after that like I did tonight. I worked K1ZTE on 40 via my CQ with the bug, and we had a 21 minute QSO before the band suddenly changed. I used the bug all the way. We are contemporaries, having both been first licensed back in 1963. I was just going to talk about changes since then in ham radio, but that's when the band changed and ended the QSO. -30-

Sat Sep 26 2020 8:40PM - A couple interesting things today. First working backwards, my streak QSO came quickly in the ME QSO Party from K1OT on 40. So I thought I'd try some bug CQs on 30. I haven't had any QSOs on 30 for a while now. However tonight I got an answer to my CQ from AJ1Y in MA, and almost a full 30 minute rag chew followed. QSB ended it around 27 minutes as AJ1Y faded completely from S8 to almost nil and never came back up. It was good to get something on 30 again though. I've always liked that band since it became available in the 1980s, but I don't hear much activity there now. Any time I listen or watch the PX3, I hear (see) 2 or 3 signals at most, and nothing all that strong.

A strange thought popped into my mind as I was using the bug. It reminded me of watching a steam locomotive vs. watching a diesel locomotive. With the paddle and diesel, there is really very little to differentiate between them being used and just sitting there. With the bug and steam there is a lot more motion going on when they are in use, the paddle lever and weight swinging back and forth or the driving rods on the locomotive going back and forth and round and round. Well, I said it was a strange thought, didn't I? HI

In late afternoon I got a phone call from FedEx confirming delivery of my UP #844 locomotive tomorrow and telling me to be sure to be available to sign for it. That followed up on some disappointment early today when the FedEx tracking seemed to indicate the package was taking a step backward, going from Indiana to Chicago. Mike also was following my tracking and being familiar with package delivery, routing, etc. he also thought that was strange and he guessed I wouldn't have it until Tuesday from that tracking info. Tune in tomorrow to see what happens.

Earlier still today Bruce asked if I wanted to go shopping with him. He also was going to the bus garage to do a bit of work on his school bus. I said I didn't really need anything, but I would ride along and see if I did see anything in the store. I did find some vitamins on a BOGO sale and stocked up on them for a good savings. I also then got a close up look at the school bus.

Finally a letter from Windstream said they are dropping all personal web pages. That doesn't really affect me since I already dropped my site from there after switching to Cahaba Internet to host my web site, leaving just a small forwarding page on Windstream. After November 1st, even that forwarding page will be gone. You can still always find my site here on k3wwp.com though. -30-

Fri Sep 25 2020 8:38PM - It's always nice to run into an old friend, be it in person, email, or ham radio. Tonight it was ham radio as I ran into Tom KA2KGP, a friend made several years ago via involvement in the NAQCC. We've worked many times on the bands and also met in person several times at various hamfests. We had a nice long chat although it was cut a bit short by QSB and QRN. I again used my bug for the whole QSO.

The railroad layout work went smoothly with Mike today. Only a couple quickly solved very minor glitches. Thanks Mike. He took a couple pictures of the new layout. Let me find one of them, and crop it to show here to compare it with the picture I posted last night.

You'll notice mainly the much broader curves with the O72 track compared to the old O31 curves. All my locomotives and rolling stock seemed to like the more open curves and all ran much better, I think. Other minor changes involve getting rid of the switches, although I probably will replace them someday with new O72 switches. Also the relocation of buildings and accessories.

I got some good news today. My #844 locomotive is scheduled for delivery via FedEx on Sunday, moved up from next Friday to Monday, now to Sunday. I sure hope that is correct. I have had some deliveries from FedEx in the past that didn't quite turn out as expected.

After Mike and I finished the railroad layout, we did some other favorite things like ham radio where we both worked 9A/IZ3NVR on 20 meters, some computer games, and of course eating, today a meal from Wendy's.

Later in the day I had my regular of late evening walk, stopping for some groceries. -30-

Thu Sep 24 2020 8:35PM - The past couple evenings, I've been using the bug to call CQ. Tonight I used it for a full 20 minute QSO with NZ9R on 80 and I was pleased with how well I did. I didn't feel any rust at all on the fist, even after not using it for a full QSO for probably 4 or 5 years, maybe longer. I can't really check since I don't note what key I use in my log. Anyway it really felt good to use it again. I think there will be more bug QSOs in my future.

Another thing in the future, namely around October 2, will be the arrival here of a Lionel Legacy Union Pacific's Living Legend FEF #844. I went ahead and ordered it today.

Continuing with the future theme, tomorrow Mike will visit and we will tear up my old railroad layout, then lay down a new one with O72 curves for the #844 when it arrives, and any other future locomotives that require the broad O72 curved track. There still might be a Big Boy in my future.

Before I close, here's a picture of my current layout which I took today so I can remember how it looked.

With the new layout, I hope to organize things better, and get some buildings that are nearer to true O scale as well as some other scenery, etc. Maybe even mount it up on a table some day. Stay tuned for developments. HI

Oh, the nice weather continues here with a 45 minute swinging session with Roscoe and a long walk early this evening. Should be the same way through Sunday before some needed rain comes along. -30-

Wed Sep 23 2020 8:24PM - For the first time this month, I made more than one QSO per day. After a quick 599 TU QSO with K1CX (wonder if he was a special event call or something, I'll look in a moment), I tried some more bug CQs as I did last night, but tonight I got an answer after just a couple minutes from N4PIR in NC. Copy was rough, but we did exchange some info about my streak and my web site along with rig and wx. Don't see any special event for K1CX, but it is listed in QRZ as a call for the Elitist Contest Club. OK.

My garden friend Ange took me up to visit my relatives' grave sites in our local cemetery today. I hadn't been able to get up there much lately since I don't drive and it's a long walk up a very steep winding road. So I thanked him for that and helped him do a bit of work in his garage.

I sat on the swing with Roscoe two times today. We've got to get in as much of that now before the nasty weather comes. I also walked quite a bit enjoying the nice weather.

Late this afternoon I got a good spaghetti dinner from the girl next door. We talked a while about how her school is going and some of the things she is studying there this year.

I think I've pretty much decided that I'm going to go ahead and order the Union Pacific #844 locomotive tomorrow, although I could always make a last minute change of plans. I wish there weren't so many different locos that I like or that they were less expensive so I could get a few of them at one time. -30-

Tue Sep 22 2020 8:44PM - I got a quick QSO for my streak tonight from Fred N9BSO in St. Louis, MO on 40 meters. So I thought I'd fool around for a while on the bands after that. I called CQ using my Vibroplex Lightning bug. Other than making a quick QSO with it in the bug category each month in our NAQCC sprint, I hadn't used it much at all for at least a couple years. I must say, it felt good to use it again, and I did very well in my sending with only one or two sloppy letters. For many years I thought I could never use a bug after using a keyer for so long, but it didn't take long before I could switch seamlessly between bug and keyer. The only problem tonight was I didn't get a single answer to my bug CQs in about a half hour of sending. Oh well, at least my primary goal of getting the streak QSO came easily.

Our string of nice days continued today and it looks like we have 4 or maybe 5 more coming before a string of showery days comes along according to the AccuWeather outlook. So Roscoe and I enjoyed about a 50 minute porch swing session today. I took a couple walks early this evening before it got dark around 7:30PM.

Other than that I did some house cleaning and ran my trains to pass the time. I also did some more thinking about which locomotive I'm going to buy. At the moment, the Union Pacific Northern #844 is at the top of the list. The UP Big Boy #4014 is a close second. If you can "admire" a locomotive, I do admire the 844 for being the only steam locomotive that has never been retired by a Class 1 railroad. It's been on UP's active roster since it was delivered in 1944. Until the late 1950s, it had a job delivering freight and passengers. Since then it's been excursions and other special events like double heading with the 4014 for the Golden Spike 150th anniversary celebration in May of 2019. Of course, the 4014 is very special itself. It was retired for many years on display in California until it was restored a few years ago and now joins 844 as the UP's two active steam locomotives. -30-

Mon Sep 21 2020 8:10PM - DX!! Not the most exotic, but not a W/VE station, so that's DX. The first DX in just over a month since I worked CM2XN on August 19. Tonight it was David XE1XR on 20, the 41st time our signals have crossed paths. It took a couple calls till he heard me, but then a solid brief QSO ensued.

Today we bid goodbye to astronomical summer on a chilly note. For the third day in a row now it's been more like mid October than September with a low in the upper 30s although we almost made it to 70 late in the afternoon. Another good day for walking though, and I again took a couple pretty long walks stopping off for some groceries along the way.

Nothing else of note today and it should be the same way the next 3 days as well until Mike comes to visit to work on upgrading my train track. I'm looking forward to that and then being able to run whatever locomotive I decide to get that can run on O72 curves. Still haven't decided. -30-

Sun Sep 20 2020 8:24PM - I'm going to forget how to rag chew. Eight of the last ten days, my streak QSO has come from a contest or a special event station. Just a quick TU 599 ** type of QSO. Tonight it was KM4FO in the SST contest.

We're continuing to get a preview of late fall weather here with lows in the 30s and highs struggling to make it to the 60s. I've added a couple blankets to my bed and kicked the furnace up a notch to take the chill off. I also replaced most window and door screens with storm windows. Really now, it's much too early to be doing all that, but......

It's actually good walking weather in the afternoons though, and I took a couple good long walks today. -30-

Sat Sep 19 2020 9:04PM - My new track arrived early this morning. However it will be until next Friday before Mike is able to come down and help me do the upgrade. I could do it myself, but it's always nice to have a second set of hands and a second brain, especially since one set is now 75+ years old. That will give me time perhaps to decide which Lionel Legacy Locomotive I want to add to my collection. With the O72 curved track, any locomotive should be able to negotiate the curves now, so my choice is no longer limited. Except for the price, that is. HI

As usual of late, 40 meters is the good band with very little heard on 30 or 20 in the 0000Z hour. Tonight it was an easy QSO with K2DSW in the Iowa QSO Party.

It was more like early October today rather than mid September. The low was 38 this morning and it topped out only in the low 60s. I wore a light jacket just about all day, inside and outside. -30-

Fri Sep 18 2020 8:40PM - A somewhat unusual QSO tonight. I heard VE2CSI calling CQ and answered him. He came back with just a 599, so I sent 599 PA. He said 73 and that was it. I didn't think he was anything special, but a bit later he sent Zone 2. He apparently was giving out QSOs from relatively rare CQ Zone 2, hence the short QSO. If I used spots or other such news, which I don't, I probably would have known. I think that takes a lot of fun out of ham radio. Anyway, it was a QSO and continued the streak another day.

I did work on my Santa Fe F3 diesel today. The commutator was really dirty so I gave it a good cleaning along with the brushes and brush holders. It still doesn't run as well as it once did many years ago, but it's better than it has been lately.

It was a cool breezy day today. Good for walking, so I took a couple walking shopping trips and got some items that were on sale to stock up on the groceries a bit. I didn't do any swinging with Roscoe though as he doesn't care for the wind and the breezes were pretty strong at times.

My Lionel track is due to arrive on Monday, but it may come tomorrow as it left the Pittsburgh mail center early this morning. We'll see. -30-

Thu Sep 17 2020 8:05PM - I could just refer you to yesterday's diary entry for tonight's entry as today was pretty much the same as yesterday with a couple changes. For the third out of the last four nights I worked a Rte. 66 station for my streak QSO. Tonight it was W6P in St. Louis, MO on 40 meters.

Now it's been one more day since my Lionel track shipped, although USPS tracking doesn't show any progress from yesterday.

It was another nice fall day today (it is meteorological autumn now since it started on September 1) and I took a couple good walks and sat on the porch swing with Roscoe for almost an hour. I thought about going fishing when I walked by the river. It seems that ever since I got my lifetime fishing license a few years ago I kind of lost interest in fishing. Maybe I'll get enough interest to go before the weather turns bad this late fall. Probably not, but who knows.

I also ran my trains quite a bit today. I may have to work on my old Santa Fe F3 diesel. It was running poorly today, but all the others ran just fine. -30-

Wed Sep 16 2020 8:20PM - Once again the Rte 66 Special Event stations provided me with a quick streak QSO at 0001Z. This time W6M in KS. 40 had a lot of activity again tonight with virtually nothing to be heard on 30 or 20.

My O72 track was shipped today from Hobbyspeed in Indiana, PA. I ordered enough to make a full 6 foot diameter circle. Then I already have enough straight track to make it into a 6 x 8 oval. After that I'll decide what I want to add to it in the way of scenery, buildings, sidings, etc. No hurry on that. First I want to get a Lionel Legacy steam engine, be it a Big Boy, UP 844, Pennsy K4, or something else all together. I also like the UP 3985 Challenger, NKP 765, SP 4449, NS or N&W 611, and a few others. -30-

Tue Sep 15 2020 8:41PM - After yesterday's fun filled busy day, it was back to the normal routine today. It was a chilly day for this time of year with a high of only around 69. It was hazy with smoke from the West Coast fires making it here to the other coast and actually out into the Atlantic Ocean. The sky was close to a uniform white when it should be a uniform blue on a "clear" day as it was yesterday in the park pictures.

I got a usual quick streak QSO this evening thanks to Gary VE2GDI on 40. We've worked a few times now. -30-

Mon Sep 14 2020 2:02PM - Curse you Mother Nature for blowing over my antenna - Mike KC2EGL. That was the lowlight of today's activity in the park. The setup went too smoothly and something had to ruin it - Mother Nature did. As far as on the air activity went before the antenna collapse, it was slooooow. Mike got 3 or 4 stations on 20, I got 10 on 40 and one on 30. We worked CT, NY, ON, IL, GA, TX, NC, TN as far as SPCs go. Because of the antenna blow down and the slow activity we called it a day at 1630Z instead of our projected finish time of 1830Z.

Except for the strong winds, it was actually a beautiful pleasant day as shown here in a picture.

Another picture of the beautiful weather with my antenna in the foreground.

The base of my antenna with the 4 orange radials and the circuit board with loading coils and switches.

My rig, log, key, etc.

A distant shot of our pavillion.

Mike sitting at his table waiting for some answers to his CQs.

Hopefully our next outing which will be on Columbus Day for the NAQCC anniversary celebration will go better. -30-

Sun Sep 13 2020 7:10PM - Just sitting here awaiting Mike's arrival, and thought I'd write my diary entry. Really not much to write about beyond the usual daily routine. Hopefully (certainly) that will change when Mike gets here. In fact I think that's his car pulling up right now. Yep, it is, so I'll just cut this short here. Maybe add something later, or maybe not. HI -30-

Sat Sep 12 2020 8:40PM - The bands were busy tonight with a couple contests going on. However I didn't use them for my streak QSO. Instead I looked for a regular CQ and found one on 40 from KC1BMD. We worked for 13 minutes.

Nothing much to report on from today. I did a little railroad work. My trains were slowing down a bit on one section of track. I got out my rail pliers and squeezed the track connectors together. That seemed to help things. I should take the whole track apart and give the connectors a good cleaning. However I am planning to be upgrading my old round rail Lionel track with their newer Fastrack when I go to O72 curves so I can run a big boy on it, or perhaps a UP 844 or Pennsy K-4. I still haven't decided what will be the next locomotive I buy, but with the O72 curves, the track will be ready for anything I decide and I can still run my old locos as well. The best of all worlds. HI

Looking forward to Mike's visit starting tomorrow evening and continuing through Monday and our parkpedition. We're missing several events together this year with all the cancellations taking place because of health concerns. Hopefully 2021 will be better than 2020 so far. I guess we'll see. -30-

Fri Sep 11 2020 8:11PM - A quick QSO in the FOC contest with KZ5D extended the streak tonight. I'm not an FOC member, but non-members are welcome in the contest. Thanks FOC! A nice weather day again today. Roscoe and I sat on the porch swing for 2 full hours. He never gave any indication of wanting to get off so he must have really been enjoying himself. We probably could have gone longer but I had to get up and go. While sitting there, I figured out there are about 30 swings per minute so that's 30 x 120 or 3,600 swings. Whew!

Then this evening I went for a good long walk again enjoying the nice weather. I think September and May have the closest to perfect weather here. You get some thunderstorms in May and once in a while a tropical storm visits in September but otherwise they are generally quite nice.

It's supposed to be great weather for Monday and our parkpedition. See the entry for Sep 9 for details. Mike will be coming down Sunday evening and that will give us some extra time to play with trains, etc. -30-

Thu Sep 10 2020 8:22PM - After a shopping trip (stopping at 4 places) first thing this morning, the rest of the day was pretty quiet. I walked to the 4 places so maybe I wore out this old body a bit. HI No, not really as I'm still in pretty good shape for being 3/4 of a century old. Along the way I mailed my QSL package to the ARRL Outgoing QSL Service. My cards should be there on Monday. I confirmed 107 QSOs with the cards, all DX and virtually all requesting my card. Only a couple QSOs where I needed a prefix or something confirmed myself.

A quick QSO again this evening took care of the streak for another day. It was with KB4GYT and was our 7th QSO dating back to 1994. It seemed to me that we had worked before that but my log doesn't lie. HI

I also did some more work on my WPX records, culling out the /MM prefixes that don't really belong to any continent and making a separate page for them so I can keep my continent prefixes straight.

And finally I did some more house cleaning, mainly moving some more of my train equipment, accessories, and parts around.

Our Skeeter Hunt results have been posted, and our effort with N3AQC from Mike and I wound up 7th overall, 1st in PA, and 1st overall multi op. Not bad for the poor conditions we had. I guess conditions weren't that great elsewhere either, as I was surprised we finished as high as 7th. -30-

Wed Sep 9 2020 7:10PM - This was one of those great busy days with almost non-stop things to do. Let's see how many I can remember. HI It started off with laundering my bed clothes. Throughout the day I worked on sending a batch of QSLs to the ARRL Outgoing QSL Service. With my meticulous record keeping, that's a real job, but I've almost got it complete now and should get the package in the mail tomorrow morning. At least now, I've gotten caught up on answering a lot of cards that have been sitting around here for quite a while.

I rearranged my train room quite a bit today. I moved a lot of things that I don't use at all anymore or use sparingly to a storage room upstairs. One reason I did that was because I'm thinking of getting my telescope out sometime again and it was kind of stored behind a lot of train stuff. I was talking with the girl (young lady?) next door yesterday and mentioned the telescope in our conversation and she seemed interested in doing some observing, especially of Jupiter and Saturn when we get a good clear night. She's sixteen and school just started here yesterday so it will probably have to be some weekend.

Let's see. What else did I do today? Oh, I posted our Monday parkpedition that Mike and I will be doing. We're shooting for about a 1430Z start and will stay as long as activity warrants. We'll operate on 7041, 10117, and 14061 two bands at a time. If we get another op, we'll try to have all three active at the same time. We'll use the NAQCC club call of N3AQC.

I'm sure there were more things I did today and have forgotten now. HI Anyway this evening I got on the bands a bit late at 0011Z and immediately found and worked KB0HXL in MN on 40 meters. I also got caught up on some of my NAQCC awards, mainly the QSO-A-Day ones. -30-

Tue Sep 8 2020 11:20AM - I thought I'd get started on my web site history early today on its 24th birthday. I'm going to use the Internet Archive site to take some looks at the site as it was on earlier days. The first site picture that I can find so far is from July 2003 when the site was about 7 years old and looked like this.

NOTE: For this and following pages from the Internet Archive, some intended pictures and/or other graphics might not show up as intended. Also some intended links on the pages may or may not take you to other pages from my site at the time. I have no control over any of this. I am just grateful to the Internet Archive for preserving my web site history.

I may also have locally here some older views of the web site, although it may take quite a while to find them among all the things I have stored in this house, and there are a lot. Keep checking the diary entries for more site history as I find and organize it. -30-

Mon Sep 7 2020 8:13PM - I worked John K4BAI in the MI QRP Sprint for another easy quick streak QSO. Just a bit of info about John and me. This was our 231st QSO over the many years starting with a QSO on May 10, 1964 pretty surely in the GA QSO Party since I have it listed as my 10th contest I entered and the GA QSO Party usually has been and is now around that time of year. Although we mostly have worked in contests over the years, we have also had the occasional good rag chew now and then. A rough count shows 18 of the 231 were rag chews. That's a span of 56 years and 4 months give or take a couple days between our first and most recent QSO. Wow, I guess we are both getting old, but still pounding away on the keys.

Another thing that is getting old (how's that for a segue?) is my web site. It will celebrate its 24th birthday tomorrow (9/8) and begin its 25th year of existence. I'll unveil the new top banner with different colors and an updated number of years tonight.

As time permits over the next several days, I'll present a history of the site as best I remember it and maybe have some pictures of how it looked in the past. I'll start tonight with a short bit of info about how it got started back in 1996. My neighbor Eric (now KB3BFQ) and I were always interested in sports and recently he had become interested in ham radio also. We thought it would be fun to have some kind of a web site about our interests. He decided on hockey, and I was torn between auto racing which was my favorite sport at the time and of course ham radio. Naturally ham radio won out for me, in particular something about how I helped start the CW County Hunters Net with WA8EOH back in 1966. Somehow we found out about GeoCities, a web site hosting service that offered free web site space. We studied how to go about creating a site and posting it. Both our sites were somewhat crude at the very beginning, but they nevertheless were a start and both developed over the years.

With that little teaser, I'll close for tonight with the promise of more to come about the site. It will take some time which is a now and then a rare commodity around here, so don't expect something each and every night, but it will be here for sure. -30-

Sun Sep 6 2020 8:09PM - As expected, the TN QSO Party gave me a quick streak QSO at 0002Z when I worked K4VIG on 40M. I always liked the TNQP and did quite well in it a few years ago. Maybe some day my interest in contesting in state QSO parties will return. If so, I'll definitely do the TNQP.

Not much going on today except a lot of continuing work on my WPX totals and some train running. Tomorrow will be different though as I have a couple things planned. A shopping trip to Walmart for some breakfasts for Roscoe and some new shoes for me. Then after that on to my neighbor's brother's place for a hot dog / hamburger, etc. cookout. -30-

Sat Sep 5 2020 8:30PM - The bands were fairly good this evening and after listening around a while I found and worked KC2THY on 40 meters.

I worked on my WPX totals quite a bit today, and I'm getting close to updating my WPX page here on the web site with a lot of new and different stats about them.

Other than that, not a lot going on despite it being another very beautiful day with the temperature in the 70s most of the day and beautiful blue skies for the most part. I hope it will be like this when Mike and I get together for a parkpedition probably on the 14th. -30-

Fri Sep 4 2020 8:18PM - A nice preview of fall day. Well actually it is already fall meteorologically speaking. It was so nice I cut my grass today, sat on the porch quite a bit, one time with Roscoe, and took a long walk this evening. The grass had grown quite a bit after several rainy days of late took care of the drought conditions at least for now, but another string of dry days is coming starting today.

A quick QSO in the CWO contest this evening with K7TD on 20 meters. Sounded like a fun contest. If I was in a contesting mood, I might have stuck around a while and made some more QSOs.

Tentatively, Mike and I are going to do a parkpedition on September 14. More details as the day draws closer. -30-

Thu Sep 3 2020 9:09PM - Did we skip fall and go into winter. 80M certainly sounds like it. It was just full of good signals this evening and wasn't too bad last night either. I had two solid QSOs tonight, one 30 minutes with Wilbur KB1CL in MA and the other 20 minutes with Larry N3URO in PA.

Not much happening here today. It was a showery early day although only .05 inches of rain accumulated, then gradually cleared for a nice evening. I took one of my longer walks in a while this evening and it really felt good. Although I do walk in the house when it's too hot, too wet, too cold, etc. outside, it's not like walking outside in the fresh air. -30-

Wed Sep 2 2020 5:51PM - A few years ago in the diary I had a feature asking readers to send me questions as if they were reporters asking about my streak and other QRP/CW matters. Then I devoted a diary entry to each question that I thought was worthwhile answering, and virtually all questions were very good ones. I'm thinking about doing the same thing again to update my answers including the things that have changed, if any, during the time since the interviews were first done. So think about it, and watch for any announcements in the diary in the upcoming weeks.

One question that I will ask myself to give an idea of how the interviews work is "You must devote a lot of time each day to be able to make your QRP/CW streak QSO. Is that true?"

I find that an intriguing question and I did some research to back up my immediate answer which is: "Virtually every day I get on the bands at 0000Z since I use UTC days for the streak and the QSO is in the log before the 0000Z hour is over, usually before the hour is very well advanced, in fact." To back that up I analyzed my Microsoft Excel log which is very easy to do. As of August 31, there were 244 days in the year, and my streak QSO came in the 0000Z hour on 242 of those days or 99.2%. The two days that I didn't make it were days Mike and I attending the evening club meeting at the Skyview Amateur Radio Society and didn't get to my shack until after 0100Z. I'll list those days and times in a moment.

First let's go back and analyze 2019 also. Of the 365 days that year, the streak came in the 0000Z hour on 359 of those days or 98.4%. Now let's list the 8 days in 2019-2020 when the streak QSO was delayed:

Date         Time    Band  Reason
01/19/2019 - 0122Z -  80M - unknown
01/24/2019 - 0108Z -  80M - Attended Skyview meeting
02/04/2019 - 0142Z - 160M - Bands dead in 0000Z hour (folks watching the Super Bowl?)
03/23/2019 - 0118Z -  80M - Lenten fish dinner that evening
12/11/2019 - 0207Z -  40M - Skyview meeting
12/25/2019 - 0132Z -  80M - Annual Christmas lights viewing with Mike KC2EGL
01/22/2020 - 0321Z - 160M - Skyview meeting
02/19/2020 - 0321Z -  80M - Skyview meeting

That's it. All other 601 days the streak came before 0100Z. I think that definitely says that I do not waste a lot of time each day unsuccessfully trying to get the daily QRP/CW QSO in the log. Six of the eight non-0000Z hour streak QSOs came because I wasn't home in the 0000Z hour. One other I'm not sure why it was late and only one day were the bands unworkable in that 0000Z hour.

Yes, as I've always said, QRP/CW does work and work well. If you want to emulate my streak, don't be concerned that it will take up too much of your time, just go for it and find out for yourself what I say is true.

Maybe someday I'll delve further back in my log and have some more figures on the 0000Z hour QSOs. It won't be hard with Excel. -30-

Tue Sep 1 2020 7:00PM - I just checked on the summer temperature records as I said I would do. This year was the third warmest summer in my records going back to 1959/60 at an average of 74.8 degrees. And unlike a lot of times when someone says such and such is the second place record but never tell you what is first, I will tell you. 2011 and 2016 tied for first at 75.3 degrees. I was watching the Penn State weather tonight as I always do, and it was interesting to see while several stations had their warmest summer since the late 19th century, nearby Pittsburgh had only the 23rd warmest summer, and the 40th warmest August. A couple other figures here. July was our 2nd warmest at 78.5 degrees behind 2011 with 79.0. August was fourth warmest at 74.6 behind 1980 at 76.3, 2018 at 75.8, and 1995 at 74.8. Those are all mean temperatures, i.e. the sum of the average maximum and average minimum divided by two. I didn't check the max and min records (yet).

And that will do it for this entry. If I work anything really out of the ordinary for my streak QSO, I'll mention it in tomorrow's diary entry. -30-

Mon Aug 31 2020 8:22PM - And another month bites the dust. Conditions on the bands in August were up and down as they have been forever now (well, it seems like forever). Some nights in August the streak QSO was a piece of cake, other nights it was like a rotten apple trying to find a good chunk of apple. Well, after writing a description of band conditions for hundreds of diary entries, a new description is sometimes needed now and then. Tonight it was rough, but fairly quick. I called a couple stations who were booming in, but one didn't hear me, the other one did and sent K3WWP? then disappeared after I verified my call. Next up was WD0BC who gave me a 339 and we exchanged enough info to make it a legit QSO.

It was another nice day today to close out meteorological summer. The high was 75 with partly cloudy skies and a nice breeze. I did some outside work and took a little longer walk this evening before it got dark. It's pretty dark by 8PM now and getting darker earlier more and more quickly as we approach the autumnal equinox when the rate of change is the greatest.

Of course I was busy doing my end of the month chores today, and tomorrow it will be the first of the month chores. It will be interesting when I do the August weather data analysis along with the summer analysis. A few places in PA are already reporting this as the warmest summer on record with some records going back to the late 1800s. Of course mine only go back to 1959/1960 so statistically I have a better chance of this being my warmest summer in my records. I'll try to remember to let you know in tomorrow night's diary. -30-

Sun Aug 30 2020 8:40PM - A different day for a change. After walking Roscoe this morning, my neighbor and I departed on his trial run of his two school bus routes. That took a couple of hours and it was good he checked the route as there was one detour on his route that wasn't listed on his schedule and it looks like the detour will be in effect for some time so the schedule will have to be adjusted accordingly. There were also a couple other little things that may need adjusting when he talks with the bus scheduler tomorrow.

On the way home we stopped at the store and got a couple zucchinis and flour and a while after we got home, we made our first attempt ever at making zucchini bread. After some trouble grating the zucchini, things went very smoothly and the bread turned out great.

Tonight for my streak QSO, I worked another streaker, Danny N4DT who has a streak going of 4 years and 8 months now with his QRP setup down in SC. Congrats to him and I hope his streak lasts as long as mine is now.

Tomorrow it's all my end of month work in addition to being laundry day as well. So it will be a busy one again. But that's good. I love being busy with this or that. -30-

Sat Aug 29 2020 8:24PM - Thanks to the KS QSO Party for a quick streak QSO tonight. I just emailed Mike a while ago in response to him mentioning the KS QSO Party and said normally we would be working some KS stations from the Skyview ARS clubhouse this weekend, but along with many many other events, their swap and shop was cancelled. Hopefully next year.

I did some more work on my trains today and ran them quite a bit. It was a nice weather day after about 2 1/3 inches of rain the past couple days and nights. Lower humidity and temperatures were the order of the day. I went for an outside walk this evening for the first time in a few days now. And that pretty much covers the day.

Tomorrow will be a little different. My neighbor (Roscoe's owner) is a school bus driver and he's going on a trial run of his route tomorrow morning and asked if I wanted to come along. I said sure, that will be something ouot of the daily ordinary things here. -30-

Fri Aug 28 2020 9:00PM - What drought? We had 1.49 inches of rain today that should pretty much take care of the drought. For the most part it was a medium rain with only a couple short periods of downpours. That way most soaked into the soil instead of running off.

40 meters was good again tonight, but it was easy to get my QSO tonight when I worked WA3CKA at 0001Z on 40 meters. I tried some CQs after that on 40, 30, and 20, but didn't get any additional QSOs.

With the rain it was mostly an inside day except for the Roscoe walks in pauses in the rainfall. I ran my trains a lot and watched some train videos on the computer.

I also updated my main web site banner getting ready to start the 25th year of the web site come September 8 when I'll post the new banner. -30-

Thu Aug 27 2020 9:06PM - It was tough getting a QSO tonight but I made it. 40 was in very good shape, but I just couldn't get anyone to answer my call or my CQs. The closest I came was a Cuban who sent something like A3WWP?, but never came back to my repeats. Finally I did wind up with a nice chat with Bob K0RKH in IL on 40. It lasted about 22 minutes.

We had some more rain today. A line of storms came through late this afternoon, but it seemed in a hurry to get through Armstrong County. I watched it for a while on radar and I'm sure it speeded up through our county and only gave us some wind and .20 inches of rain which will help our drought situation a bit. We should get more from Laura's remnants on Saturday also.

I visited the Ol' Station Marketplace today for the first time in quite a while. I bought a couple buildings that I might use on my railroad if they are close enough to scale. One is a church, the other a bank. I also got around to reinstalling my streetlights after redoing the layout a few days ago. -30-

Wed Aug 26 2020 8:46PM - When I first turned on the rig and checked 20 and 30 I heard nothing but a couple very weak signals. I said OH OH, this doesn't look good. However when I got to 40 it was hopping with several strong sigs. The second one I saw/heard was calling CQ. I answered and wound up with a very good solid interesting 42 minute QSO with Greg W1GF. A lot of the conversation was about QRP and QRP DX in particular. Greg has worked "them all" and got to thinking about trying to do it again with QRP. He never worked QRP before. At one point he reduced his QRO which was peaking over S9 to QRP 5 watts and only dropped to S7 and S8, almost S9 on the highest peaks. He found that interesting and said he was going to start a QRP WAS with our QSO. I always enjoy it when I can interest other hams in CW and/or QRP. Good luck Greg. I'm sure you will succeed admirably.

Otherwise not much to write about today. Just an ordinary day on the computer, playing trains, walking Roscoe, etc. Not that those activities are boring or anything like that, just regular things I do a lot because they are interesting and NOT boring.

Oh, I did do one different thing today. I watched the movie "The Polar Express". I watched it several years ago at a friend's house, and never again until today. My renewed interest in trains is what sparked the desire to see it again. Although a lot has to do with the train, it also has an enjoyable and somewhat heartwarming plot. I think I may just watch it again in a few days. -30-

Tue Aug 25 2020 8:38PM - We got some more rain today as a near severe thunderstorm blew through this afternoon. And I mean BLEW through. I don't have an anemometer, but I would guess the winds were around 40-50 MPH for a few minutes and blew my recycling bin about 20 feet or so between the houses here. It all dissipated quickly though a few other storms in the area passed us by with just a slight glancing blow. We get passed by a lot of storms here prompting the saying around here that our 'precipitation shields are up'. We just hope they work as well for the s#$w and freezing rain in the winter. We only got about a quarter inch of rain today, but every little bit helps the minimal drought situation here.

The bands were good this evening with strong signals on 40 through 20 although not a lot of action on 30 or 20. In fact 20 was pretty dead except for a couple signals up around 14050-60. But after I worked KN4RBN in NC on 40, I thought I'd just try a CQ or two in the dead portion of 20 and to my surprise I got a quick answer from W4CI down near Orlando, FL. Both were solid QSOs although not very long as the other hams had to run quickly for one reason or other. -30-

Mon Aug 24 2020 8:07PM - That was quick. Nothing on 20 or 30 in a quick check, but several sigs on 40 including one very strong one. I listened to see who it was and it was AF2F/W4 operating from IOTA NA67. Got him on the first try and the streak continued at 0002Z. That was good because my neighbor and I are going to get a couple sub sandwiches from Vocelli's Pizza in a little bit.

We got a little more rain today and it was variably cloudy all day and warm and humid. The humidity peaked at 99% when it was foggy this morning and never got below 45%. The high temperature was right at 90 degrees. Actually the humidity display is only two digits so it probably was 100%. Now I wonder about the temperature readout. OK, I just looked and I see there is room for and an unlit 1 so it would show 100+ if we get that hot. Also an unlit minus sign if (when) we get below zero this winter. I hope I never see that minus sign lit up.

I did some more work on the train layout today, putting some of my buildings back in place. I also ran the trains quite a bit. -30-

Sun Aug 23 2020 8:26PM - It seems like the bands change just about every evening or at least every 2 or 3 evenings. As an example the last couple nights 20 meters was pretty much dead. Tonight I saw a lot of activity there on the PX3 after I got my streak QSO on 30 meters with KM4CU in FL. So I thought I'd throw out some CQs and see if I'd get any answers on 20. It only took 2 or 3 CQs before VE2GDI answered me and we had a nice little solid 10 minute chat.

Earlier today my neighbor and I went on a shopping trip to Family Dollar and Dollar General and stocked up on some food. Along the way we drove back to our 3 or so years old Junior/Senior High School. He drives school bus and sees it all the time, but I had never seen it before since I don't drive and it is up on a hill a couple miles away. It's a very beautiful, very big building with some very nice sporting facilities surrounding it.

Also today I moved along on my railroad layout. After thinking about it a few days, I finally decided to leave the cardboard layout and simply add the insulation board on top of the cardboard. That is working beautifully and it seems to run quieter now. I'm glad I didn't just jump in too hastily and wind up with something I didn't like. I've always been that way. Always plan things out before you do anything. I had a friend at WPIT who thought the same way, and we saved a lot of time, effort, and aggravation by planning things out before we did them.

We had an unusual occurance today. Quite a bit of water fell from the sky. I think it's called rain or something like that. It's hard to remember since we've only had .06 inches of rain since the 4th of August. Today we got over a half inch. The lowest August precipitation was 1.5 inches back in 2017. We still have a shot at breaking that record this year. Despite today and some rain the first couple days of the month, I still think we are under the 1 inch mark. I'll know better when I get my daily total in my 9PM weather instruments check. -30-

Sat Aug 22 2020 8:31PM - It's nice to have an easy time getting my streak QSO now and then. Tonight was such a night with the OH QSO Party in progress. I was done at 0002Z after working W8CAR on 80. It took longer to write the QSO in my paper log than it did to make the QSO.

I finished logging all my WPX info today and now I'm going to analyze it and print up a couple tables. I let Excel take a quick count of my total band-prefixes and the total is 8,366. That is a band-prefix is working, say K3WWP on 80, 30, and 15 which would count as 3 K3 band-prefixes and so on. I think I'll tweak the Excel spreadsheet and add a column to count on how many bands I've worked each prefix. It will be interesting to see how many, if any all-band prefixes I have. I'm counting from 160M through 6M or 11 total bands. I have very few prefixes on 60 and 6 meters, so there may not be any 10 or 11 band totals for any prefix, but I'm sure there will be several 9 bands not counting 60 and 6. We'll see.

I did some work on the railroad today. I'm changing my layout which is now on several pieces of cardboard on the floor. Mike gave me some leftover insulation boards, and I can fit my layout on two of them which will leave only one seam instead of the several I have now. Then it will be easier to transfer it to a table top or bench when I get around to doing that. I still need another day or two to make the transfer on the floor from cardboard to insulation board. -30-

Fri Aug 21 2020 8:32PM - The bands were about the same as last night, but I had trouble finding someone CQing and no one answered my CQs. Finally I dropped down to 80 meters and found a special event station that I worked. It was K3S in MD. Let's see what it was for. The 58th Anniversary of the Nuclear Ship Savannah's first cruse.

I'm getting close to the end of my WPX work. As I said, I'm working backwards and am now down tothe prefixes starting with a number. Next up is Sweden's 8S prefixes. Some countries are much easier than others to get through. Some seem to issue a special prefix if someone drops a hat somewhere in their country. It's not a bad thing, but it creates more work when checking prefixes for that country. Some Eastern EU countries are like that, namely Croatia and Bulgaria come to mind but there are others also. The same countries in many cases also issue a bunch of different postage stamps.

I'm finally taking some time to delve deeper into the Lionel Legacy Operating System. It sure can do a lot of things with a train and a lot of the commands are not overly obvious and need a little study to learn them. But that's what makes it fun, especially with the handheld cab unit. There are apps that will run the system also, but I prefer the more hands-on approach using the cab remote. Feels more like I'm really running the train when I have to think a bit. I guess kind of like running a steam engine vs. running a diesel in the real railroading world. Steam engines require a lot more work than diesels where you simply sit at a console and push buttons. That's rather a simplified explanation but those into trains will know what I mean, I'm sure. -30-

Thu Aug 20 2020 9:08PM - The star band tonight was 40 meters. It looked like there was some big contest going on. At one point I counted at least 20 peaks on the PX3 in the 40 kHz bandwidth on the screen. 30 and 20 on the other hand were pretty much dead although I did hear two weak EU stations on 30, a PA and DL. My QSOs came first from K4JJW in NC, and then N2BZD in NJ, both on 40 meters. BZD and I had a 35 minute long visit talking about various things including last Sunday's Skeeter Hunt. A really great solid QSO.

The weather was nice again today with lots of Sun and still somewhat cool although it was a bit warmer than the past couple days. Still low humidity though. I did some more porch sitting and yard (sidewalk) cleaning. Our grass is mostly brown with only .06 inches of rain since the first few days of the month. Still the crabgrass grows like crazy with its deep roots. -30-

Wed Aug 19 2020 8:36PM - The bands were really poor this evening for the most part. There was a lot of QSB so sigs did come up at times, but still... I did manage a QSO with Steve W2XU from ME on 40 meters. Copy was pretty good for about 19 minutes although it was rough at times. He was interested in my attic random wire since he lives in a place where he would like to try something in the attic. So I referred him to my web site as I did with Don last night. I tried some CQs after that, and did get an answer from someone too weak under my QRN to be readable. I hate when that happens and apologize to him and to anyone else to whom that happens.

Today was like yesterday in other ways also. A nice sunny somewhat cool day with some walking and porch sitting. Also I worked more on my WPX file. I'm now down to the EA Spanish listings. I lost my Internet for about 3 hours this afternoon as Windstream had some kind of problems, but it is fixed now. It sure is missed when it isn't working. HI Fortunately Windstream is a very good provider and I can't even remember the last time it was down, it's been so long ago now. I guess that sums up the day now. -30-

Tue Aug 18 2020 8:39PM - I spent a lot of time today working on the WPX entries and totals in my Excel log. I'm working backwards alphabetically and I have all the prefixes from Z-M done now, and am about to start on the Ls next with all the LZ###XXX Bulgarian Saints stations.

It was a beautiful sunny mild day today and I sat out on the porch quite a while, and also did a little lawn work as well to enjoy the weather.

For the streak tonight, I worked CM2XN on 20 with a single call at 0006Z, so I then tried some CQs on 40 and after a while I got an answer from Don K4NAX in Indiana. We had a nice long chat. He was also using a KX3 rig. He was interested in my antenna setup so I referred him here to my web site, and he also asked about the Skeeter Hunt so I told him I mentioned it in the diary. So maybe you're reading this right now, Don. HI. -30-

Mon Aug 17 2020 7:33PM - I'll start off with the wiring pictures Mike took and emailed me.

L-R are his control units consisting of Wireless Interface, Track Interface Unit, Accessories Interface Unit. The first two pictures show the interconnecting wiring on top of the layout and the third shows the wiring among the supporting sawhorses. Eventually the control units and the wiring on the layout table will be moved to a shelf or table mounted under the table and all units and wiring will be out of sight underneath. Before 'neating' it up, we want to be sure everything works as it should. I think that's a good description. Mike isn't here to correct any mistakes. HI

It was a busy day today with laundry, paying some bills, a lot of computer work, some garden/yard work, and a walk to the grocery store among some other things including helping my neighbor fix a loose latch on his screen door.

That will stand as my entry. If anything out of the ordinary happens when I go to the shack to get the streak QSO, I'll mention it in tomorrow's entry. -30-

Sun Aug 16 2020 9:06PM - A day spent here with Mike today. Besides watching (train) videos, eating, and working some DX here at home, our main event was operating the Skeeter Hunt from Kittanning Community Park from 1 to 5 PM. Except for Mike tripping and falling one time (no serious injuries), the setup went pretty smoothly for a change. I was all ready to operate when the starting time arrived. That was somewhat unusual as we are usually a bit late in getting started in these outings. I had 20 meters and it was really hopping at the start. After 10 minutes I had 9 QSOs. After 30 minutes it was 17 QSOs. Then things started slowing down eventually grinding to a halt. By hours I had 23, 4, 3, and 1 QSO(s) for a total of 31 QSOs in 12 SPCs. Mike had 40 meters and he made 20 QSOs in 8 different SPCs. Our total was 51 QSOs in 20 SPCs. By comparison last year we had 69 QSOs in 25 SPCs. So things were down this year and we probably won't finish second overall as we did last year.

We quit about 5-10 minutes before the sprint ended, tore down our setup, and came home. We then went to Wendy's for a take out meal. After that we emailed our Skeeter Report to Larry W2LJ. Then after more train work (play?) and some ham radio, Mike headed home.

While Mike was still here, I got my streak QSO from Ger, HK7AAG on 30 and Mike worked him after I did. -30-

Sat Aug 15 2020 9:16PM - We finished up some train work at Mike's this morning. We figured out the one dwarf signal problem that severely plagued us yesterday. It involved a lot of tweaking of the sensitivity control. We also replaced a broken bumper at the end of one siding. Then we ran a train continuously to make sure the signal was working properly. Next we watched some train videos, and headed back to Kittanning.

Here I put away the things I took to Mike's. Then we watched some more videos, played a couple of Sherlock Holmes games, emailed a couple of our ham friends, and got a dinner from Vocelli's. I also walked Roscoe a couple of times. He was very glad to see me back home again.

While eating our dinner, we decided we'd better go check out the Kittanning Community Park to make sure it was still OK for our Skeeter Hunt outing tomorrow. While up in the park we also took a couple of walks on one of the trails totalling about a mile and a half.

At 0000Z it was up to my shack for my streak QSO. I worked W5FB in VA on 30 meters.

Mike is going to send a picture of the completed wiring of his layout which I will post in a future diary entry. -30-

Fri Aug 14 2020 8:25PM - I'm at Mike's again tonight after a day of working on his train layout. I asked him if he wanted to write this diary entry, and he said how about he takes some pictures for the diary instead. I agreed and I'll post them either as an addendum to this entry later tonight or in tomorrow's entry.

I got another pretty quick QSO from here tonight with Mark K5OO in AR on 30 whom I worked a few days ago from my home QTH. I'll close for now pending the possible picture additions later.

And here are the pictures Mike took with commentary about them from Mike.

New York Central Hudson steaming around the bend

A lights out view of Brookville Junction Railroad

A lights out view of Brookville Junction Railroad from a different angle

The Piggly Wiggly supermarket with two cars waiting at the RR crossing in background

Dave's Garage

Power Plant and J. Shepherd and Son's Dog Food Plant

Last word from Mike about the layout, "Notice no wiring across the top of the layout, all underneath now."

Before heading to Lowe's for a couple needed items, we stopped off at Dr. Doolittle's Roadside Cafe and Creamery. We had some ice cream and walked around and checked out the rolling stock they have on display. -30-

Thu Aug 13 2020 8:23PM - I just got my streak QSO from Mike's place. A very quick one. I got to his shack about 0011Z, saw a big peak on the PX3. It was K9QVB/9 in WI. I thought he might be calling DX so I listened to another CQ from him, and it was just a regular CQ, so I answered him and with a couple repeats I had my QSO in the log.

Just before that, Mike and I did some work on his train layout. We wired up one of his buildings as sort of a test case. That went smoothly so tomorrow we'll finish the rest of the buildings and a couple dwarf signals. Before that we had a mushroom, peppers, and Italian sausage pizza. And before that continuing backward, we ran his trains a bit and watched a railroad video about the Cheyenne Steam Shop.

It's refreshing doing some different things for a change. Tomorrow we're also going to DuBois, PA to visit Dr. Doolittle's Roadside Cafe and Creamery which is a drive-in ice cream place with railroad rolling stock display which will be fun to see, not to mention eating some ice cream. -30-

Wed Aug 12 2020 8:59PM - Good bands again tonight with lot of activity. Good steady signals also. I had a nice 22 minute chat with Greg WK0B up in Fosston, MN on 30 meters with solid copy both ways. We talked about a variety of subjects in that time before his wife called him away. At least that's one thing I don't have to worry about here. HI

Not a lot else going on today. I took care of some donations today among other correspondence via regular mail. Took a walk to the PO to mail them, and walked a longer way coming home. It was nice for walking with the temperature around 87 degrees at the time with a little breeze blowing. It had been in the low 90s earlier in the day. It was also garden watering day for Ange's and my gardens. So I was outside quite a bit including of course Roscoe's walks. Now I've got to go out again and get my weather readings, so I'll close here. -30-

Tue Aug 11 2020 7:51PM - Just waiting to head to the shack to hunt for my streak QSO. I'm still working on getting my WPX records up to date. For any of you who may not be familiar with WPX, it's an award for working different amateur prefixes. I don't really care all that much for the actual award, but keeping track of all the prefixes I work satisfies my love of statistics. A prefix is the first letter(s) and number(s) of a call. My prefix is K3 for example. Pretty straightforward except when it comes to portable stations like VP9/K3WWP or K3WWP/VP9. In those cases, the prefix would be VP9 since the operation took place from Bermuda and the prefix of portable stations is always that of the country of operation. Something like K3WWP/4 becomes K4 since the operation took place from the 4th call area. That's just a brief summary of WPX. It can really get fascinating and is yet another way to encourage folks to get on the air more. You can see more info in the AWARDS section of my web site.

As I was going through my Excel log, I found a couple of errors in logging the prefixes. For some reason I had T46RRC logged as a T48 prefix and had to change my log accordingly and also my web site log as well. There were a couple others also that I forget now. Well, off to the shack now and I'll finish this later.

The bands turned out good tonight. All except 20 which was pretty dead. 80-30 had quite a bit of activity. There was even a strong France station on 80. I tried a couple times but lost out to other stations. I probably could have gotten more than my one QSO in our NAQCC sprint but I quit at one despite hearing several stations on 40. My one QSO was with (X)YL Cathy NQ1B up in VT. I worked her several years ago when she had a N5WVR call. Now I'm off to submit my sprint log. -30-

Mon Aug 10 2020 8:37PM - The bands were back to normal tonight. It was a struggle to find and work someone, but the bottom line is, I did. It was K1GHL up in Vermont on 40 meters. We had a pretty solid 7 minute QSO till he got a phone call and had to run. Otherwise the bands were mostly dead here. I'd say I heard a total of maybe 10 stations on 40 through 20 meters.

Ange is home from vacation so now I only have to help water his garden instead of doing it all myself. That's a relief. However he said he's going to be away for another week in September. It should be cooler then and hopefully wetter with some rain.

It was 94 here this afternoon, and I had to walk to the store to get some gravy. Why? You ask. Well it was time for Roscoe's flea and tick medicine pill and he wouldn't eat it. Putting it in gravy worked before. However we never got to try it. Bruce got a taco salad and chopped up the pill into the ground meat from the salad, and with some effort, it worked.

It was interesting walking in 94 degree weather. I used to love going out in the weather when it was in the 90s or even the few days it hit 100 or more here. But nowadays at my age, I don't do that much any longer. I was glad to find out I can still do it today. Outside of a little sweating, it didn't bother me at all. I don't think I'd like to do it as often as I used to, though. HI -30-

Sun Aug 9 2020 9:11PM - Note the late time. That's because I had a great hour of ham radio this evening. Four QSOs in just over an hour. One DX with KP4TF and three medium chats with K5OO, KB1THM, and W3NA. The first two on 30, one on 40, and finally one on 20. The last 3 on my CQs. I think that's the most QSOs I've had in the 0000Z hour outside of contests in a long long time. Conditions weren't all that great and there wasn't much activity. I just happened to click with those four folks at the right time and on the right band. Felt really good when usually of late I've been struggling to get just my one streak QSO. That doesn't leave much time to write the diary, but nothing much else of note happened today except for some work on my American Flyer train layout. Maybe I'll talk about that tomorrow. Now almost time to take Roscoe out. Sad to see that not long after 9PM it's already quite dark out. Where did those late light nights go so fast this summer? -30-

Sat Aug 8 2020 8:56PM - The WAE contest provided the streak QSO again this evening. Tonight it was EF1A whom I got on just one quick call after trying 3 or 4 others who didn't hear me at all.

Really nothing much else to report today as it was only the usual everyday things that occupied my time. I'm looking forward to doing some different things when Mike and I get together later this week. -30-

Fri Aug 7 2020 8:22PM - I kind of forgot about the WAE contest this weekend and was surprised at first to see all the peaks on the PX3. I never did like the WAE contest all that much because of the QTC feature. I figured it would be too much of a problem for the EU stations to copy my QTC list and didn't like slowing them up. Fortunately very few stations asked QTC?, and to those that did, I just said no. Other than that it is a good contest all in all. Anyway I worked TM6M after trying a few other stations without any luck.

Not much going on today. I did walk downtown for some groceries. I haven't done that much the past few months. I worked on my log, specifically on my WPX records. I'm trying to find out how many different band-prefixes I've worked. I have the totals for those I have verified, but not for just worked. I'm enjoying that. Those of you who are regular diary readers know I love working with stats. -30-

Thu Aug 6 2020 7:54PM - Just getting ready to head to the shack to try to get my streak QSO and make it day # 9,500. That number and the 26 year mark almost collided.

I hope the bands are good tonight and I can get a quick QSO as I have some other things I want to work on before bedtime. Nothing important that can't wait, but it will be nice to get them done.

I just heard from Mike via email about our plans for the following weekend (13th-16th) for working on his trains and then doing the Skeeter Hunt on Sunday. More about that as the days draw closer. Now off to the shack.

Conditions continue to be very poor here, but I did manage to eke out not one, but two QSOs nevertheless. After a long search, I finally found a good CQ from AG4WY and worked him pretty easily. Then when we finished, I got called by N9ZXL and had a ruff 9 minute QSO with him. The QSB and QRN were very bad. It's now 8:33PM so that didn't take too awfully long. -30-

Wed Aug 5 2020 8:35PM - Quite a good day today all around. This morning we took Roscoe to the vet for his annual checkup and shots. He got a good report. Then when we got home, I watered Ange's garden and then mine. Then I did some computer work, mainly updating my streak report. It is now totally updated to the 26 year mark.

Later Roscoe's owner Bruce called and said Roscoe wasn't feeling well. I went over and he was pretty sluggish and didn't seem to want to do anything. We figured he was just having a reaction to the shots he got earlier, and we let him rest while Bruce kept an eye on him. I checked again a little later and he was still about the same. When I came back over here, the girl next door came to my door with a casserole for me. I asked if she wanted to look at some more old jewelry etc. that we overlooked yesterday. Well, we wound up spending about an hour together looking at a lot of the 'junk' I have accumulated over the years. She seemed very interested in everything we looked at. She has a very level head on her shoulders unlike a lot of girls (and boys) these days. I even showed her my ham radio setup. We tried to contact Phil KP2M with no luck. He was working one EU station after another. I guess he had his beam pointed to EU as I never got so much as a ? from him. After she finished her visit, I helped her carry some things she picked out over to her home.

Then I went back to check on Roscoe. This time he was at the window looking for me and jumped down as soon as I got on his porch. So I knew he was feeling better. I took him out for a walk and fixed his supper. He seems back to normal again.

The bands this evening were normal again also. At least normal according to the last 10 days or so, meaning they were poor. A little better perhaps as I did hear a few more stations. I did manage to work KM4CU down in FL on 30, but it was a rough QSO. Still the streak goes on. -30-

Tue Aug 4 2020 8:23PM - The average time to get my streak QSO the last two evenings is 30 seconds past 0000Z. Tonight it was Kevin KE1VT on 30 meters. The bands seemed poorly, but still the QSO came easily.

I did some work on my streak report in the QRP section of my web site today. I have all the text updated to the 26 year mark. I still need to update some stats at the end of the report though. That will take a little more time as I have to juggle my Excel log to figure out some of them. The ones that are updated have an asterisk before them.

I received my American Flyer fastrack in the mail today. That was quick as I ordered it around 11AM on the 2nd. Wow, that's less than 48 hours! It only came from Indiana, PA which is about 25-30 miles from here, but still that's speedy service. It came from the Hobbyspeed store which Mike and I have visited several times now and gotten to know the folks there, especially Brett. The track works good, but there was one joint that kept separating. I wired the joint with a paper clip and it works fine now. I get a good steady speed all around the oval now unlike with the old original American Flyer track.

One more good thing today. The girl next door celebrated her 16th birthday a couple days ago, and I told her I'd give her some of my late mother's old jewelry if she wanted it. Although it was old-fashioned in a sense, she went through it all and took around 20 pieces or so. She really enjoyed looking at it all and picking out what appealed to her. I was glad she took so much since I would never be using it. -30-

Mon Aug 3 2020 8:36PM - It didn't take long for the streak to reach 26 years this evening. Not long at all. I tuned in 20 and 30 and heard nothing a couple minutes before 0000Z. Then went to 40 and saw a few big peaks on the PX3 panadapter. I tuned in the strongest and it was WW2OK calling CQ which ended at 2 seconds after 0000Z. I called and got an answer calling me by name. I didn't recognize the call and asked for his name. He said it was Merrill. Hmmmm, must be WK2G whom I've worked many times with a new call or maybe a special event call. It was WK2G and after a short chat of 6 or 7 minutes, he referred me to the QRZ listing of WW2OK, and I just checked it out now. Turns out it's a calll of the USS Oklahoma Memorial ARC in Tulsa, OK celebrating the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII. Because of the virus, club members were allowed to use the call from their home QTH, after bigger events were cancelled. The QRZ listing is quite interesting. I won't quote any of it here, but you may want to check it out.

OK, on to the streak now. August 4th completes 26 years of daily QRP/CW QSOs here since it started on August 5, 1994 when I worked KG9N/C6A. I haven't missed a day since. That's 9,497 straight days. A total of 70,978 QSOs or an average of 7.5 QSOs per day, a figure enhanced my many contests over the 26 years. On non contest days, it would be between 1 and 2 QSOs per day. I'll have a lot more to say about the streak when I get around to updating the streak pages in the QRP section of my web site here. It will probably take a few days to get it done.

It was a busy day otherwise with laundry, watering Ange's garden (where are you, rain?), garbage day, doing some web site updating, and so forth. Almost time now to get my daily weather report. That's an even longer streak, helped out by my mother and aunts when I was away at school. It goes back to a partial year in 1959, then full time from January 1, 1960 to present. That's around 60 years. Wow! -30-

Sun Aug 2 2020 8:44PM - Whew! Whew! I was thinking for a while the streak might be in trouble. Of course I would still have 23 more hours to get a QSO, but I sure had trouble getting one in this 0000Z hour. Constant scanning of 80 through 20 showed no promise of getting a QSO. Almost no one calling CQ except for a few very weak stations who weren't hearing me at all when I called them. Plus no answers to my CQs. Finally though I found a strong CQ from WA9FCA in KS on 30 meters and worked him easily at 0029Z. Hey, that wasn't all that long, but it sure did seem long when I wasn't getting anyone.

The worst part of all is if the streak did end, it would have been just one day short of the 26 year mark. That would have been doubly bad for sure. Now I am down to needing just one more day to reach that mark.

It was another quiet day around here with nothing really to talk about. Oh I did cut my grass in the back yard today and did some weeding around my garden plants. That's about it. -30-

Sat Aug 1 2020 8:08PM - Some days are virtual lead pipe cinches to get my streak QSO. One such day was tonight with the NA QSO Party going full blast. I easily worked Jeff KU8E on 20 meters. I should have asked Mike if he wanted to do the NA QP as a Tag Team event as we did in January, but I didn't think of it until too late. Actually I was thinking it was next weekend. I used to really get into the NA QP at one time. A couple different times I got over 500 QSOs in 10 hours for a rate of 50+ per hour, the best I've ever done in any contests. Lately though I just haven't been that enthusiastic about most contests. I guess it's old age catching up with me. HI.

We had a somewhat rainy day today which is good because Ange is on vacation and without the rain I would have had to water his garden. So far so good and it looks like I may be off the hook until maybe Wednesday as we have rain predicted through Tuesday.

I did some train work today. I took all my American Flyer track apart and cleaned the connecting pins. I was getting spots on the track where the train would slow down. Now it seems much better although I only had time to run a few laps so far.

I put the July weather into my Excel spreadsheet today. We had the following interesting records. The average low was 66.2, the highest it has been in my records. The low for the month of 58 was the highest for any July in my records. Likewise the lowest daily mean of 71 tied 2011 for the highest of any July. No record, but it was a dry month with only 1.84 inches of rain, 2.45 inches below normal. The average high of 90.9 and average mean of 78.5 were close to records, but 2011 and 2012 beat them out. Despite it being a near record warm month there were very few daily records set. Just to mention a couple, highs of 96 on the 5th, 98 on the 10th, and 96 on the 27th tied or set records. Highest daily averages of 83 on the 9th and 10th, 81 on the 27th, and 80 on the 31st tied or set records. An interesting month. -30-

Fri Jul 31 2020 8:23PM - Pretty much the same conditions as last night. Only a couple good signals heard here on all 3 bands 40, 30, and 20. XE1RK strong on 20, but in a QSO and didn't wait for him. Found KC1BMD strong on 40 and worked him easily to start yet another month of the streak.

My end of the month work went smoothly today, and about the only thing left to do is get my July weather into my Excel spreadsheet and print out the reports. It will be interesting to see where July ranks among the other Julys since I started keeping records in 1960. I suspect it may be among the top five warmest as we had a lot of highs in the 90s and lows in the upper 60s. I don't think it will top 2011 with an average of 79.0 though. Average high that year was 92.8 and low 65.2.

I also uploaded all 58 of my July QSOs to LoTW and eQSL today. -30-

Thu Jul 30 2020 8:19PM - Unusual conditions this evening. I think the bands were good, but there was almost no activity. I heard only one strong station when I checked 40, 30, and 20. It seemed to be a USA KW working some DX, especially when he gave his name as Paul. Still I listened till he signed and it turned out to be HA8JV booming in at S9. That was on 20 meters where otherwise the band was virtually dead. I recovered from my surprise and after he worked another station, I called and got a WWP?. Called again and got a 589 report which is usually an honest report unlike a lot of 599 reports. I figured with conditions that good, I'd try some CQs, but got no answers.

While I was logging the QSO in my paper log, it dawned on me that if I make it, the streak will reach 26 full years on August 4. Whew, hard to believe I've been getting a QRP/CW QSO each and every day for almost 26 years now. That's 9,493 days as of today (UTC). Where does the time go, and as I've said many times, why does it accelerate as we get older?

I did some more tweaking on the AF Hudson loco today and got it down to making 8 second laps on my track, almost as good as the 7 second laps of my other Pacific AF loco. One big help was switching out some spare pickup wheels with the ones on the Hudson tender. They looked in better shape and they cut one to two seconds off a lap.

Nothing much else going on today. I did make out a card for a neighbor girl who is celebrating her 16th birthday tomorrow. I think I mentioned she is the one who brings me over a home cooked meal now and then. She likes Roscoe and vice versa, so I signed the card John and Roscoe. HI.

I'm looking forward to visiting Mike sometime in the second week of August for some more trains work at his place. Also to the Skeeter Hunt later in August. No Skyview Swap and Shop this year though. That's official now as of the latest Skyview newsletter. -30-

Wed Jul 29 2020 8:15PM - Somewhat of an unusual QSO for the streak this evening. A Bosnian in St. Louis, MO as in W0/E74ZH, name of Zudo. That was on 40 meters. I hope he's having a good time in St. Louis. He didn't say if he was visiting, moving there, or what. Perhaps the first time I worked a Bosnian outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina. At least the first time in the United States.

It was another warm/hot day today with a high of 91, but low humidity. Most of the times I glanced at the humidity reading it was in the 30s or 40s and it's 37% right now. So I did some garden and yard work. BTW I picked my first Better Boy tomatoes the past couple days. I gave one to Ange, one to Bruce, and kept one for myself. I used part of it on a turkey sandwich this morning.

I ran my trains quite a bit today. The repaired AF Hudson works pretty well now, but still a mite slower than my other AF locomotive. I think the brush spring is just plain worn out. I also think I need to work on my AF track a bit as there is a spot where the locos slow down a bit, no matter which one I run. I may have to take the track apart and clean the track connector pins. Oh well, it's always good to have something to do. I hate sitting around doing nothing more than anything else. -30-

Tue Jul 28 2020 8:28PM - Not much to report today after the busy day yesterday. The bands were good last night and I got a couple QSOs on 30 via my CQs. Then tonight they seemed to have slipped back a notch again, but I still got my streak QSO rather quickly at 0006Z when I worked KW9R on 30.

Other than that I ran my trains a while and did some more work on the American Flyer Hudson. I got it to running faster now by bending the brush spring to put more tension on the brush. It still is not up to full speed though, so I'll probably take it apart again tomorrow and try to adjust the spring a bit further. Or I may let it go as is, and see if I can find some new brush springs somewhere.

The weather was not quite as hot or humid today but still was in the mid-upper 80s. Actually my AcuRite remote which is right next to the computer here shows a high of 87 earlier today and a current humidity of 48% with a dew point of 57 which isn't bad compared to what it has been. -30-

Mon Jul 27 2020 6:55PM - This was a busy and somewhat exciting day so I'll chronicle it a bit earlier than the usual diary times. Pretty much as soon as I got up just after checking my temperature (body) as I do every morning (it was 97.5 which is about average right after getting up), I put my laundry in the washing machine. When that finished it went in the dryer. As that was going on, Ange came and I helped him water his garden. I folded my clothes and put them away. Then I watered my garden.

Somewhere along the line I put my meager 5 QSOs from yesterday's POS in my "Other Calls" Excel log. That's where I keep the QSOs I made using other calls, N3AQC, N3A, NY3EC, and so forth to keep them separate from my K3WWP QSOs. Then I sent those 5 N3AQC QSOs off to our NAQCC QSL Manager. After that, I filled out the autologger for the POS and submitted it. It was interesting to see how the big station hams like K4BAI, N5GW, etc. made out. It kind of showed just how poor and noisy my location is here at home. I thought how fortunate I have been to keep my streak going from here all this time. But then, if I can hear them, I can usually work them. It's hearing them that is the tough part. Yesterday Mike and I could pretty easily work those stations we heard. We just couldn't hear that many that peaked above my noise level. We would have been better off going to the park, but it was too bloody hot in the low-mid 90s.

Later this afternoon, I decided to continue work on my American Flyer Hudson locomotive. It has been running slow and I eliminated many things like the reversing unit, the wiring, and the like. About all that was left was the motor itself. I took it apart, cleaned the commutator and brushes. I put it together then remembered a little trick. I pressed on the brushes with a toothpick, and voila!, it sped up when I pressed on one of them. So the spring tension is weak. I'll see what I can do to fix that tomorrow. I have a couple ideas of easy ways to do it.

Last night when I was pulling up my one blind to open the window and let some air in, it fell down and nearly wiped out my African Violet and my radiometer. Today I got out my stepladder and fixed it with the help of a neighbor. I don't do ladders as well as I did when I was younger and like to have someone spot me when I'm climbing.

When I was walking Roscoe this evening, we stopped in my house as we always do. When in there, the wind started blowing like crazy. I looked out to see my garbage can and recycling bin blowing up the street. Roscoe wouldn't go out in that, so we stayed here a bit. A neighbor retrieved my can and bin meanwhile. Finally it let up a bit and Roscoe went out and over home. It turns out the wind was from a "Gust Front" which is a cold air downdraft from a thunderstorm flowing out from the storm at very high speeds. I checked the radar and indeed, there was a very thin blue line just ahead of an approaching thunderstorm which is the signature of such a gust storm. I remember the first one I experienced many years ago spawned a tiny tornado or dust devil out back of my house which blew right over to my house and right at one of my bean plants. The damage was minimal, but to someone interested in meteorology as I am, it was quite interesting to watch. I guess tonight's gust storm was about the fourth or fifth I have experienced now. They are somewhat rare since conditions have to be just right for them to form. They are lesser versions of the more severe outflows that you hear about flipping aircraft on the ground and other such damage.

Thanks to Mike for writing a good diary entry yesterday. He made good use of the available material.

Right now it's raining and the sun is out. Think I'll go see if there is a rainbow, and maybe take a picture if there is. -30-

Sun Jul 26 2020 8:23PM. - A quick QSO this evening with KW9M on 30. It was another story for the Flying Pigs sprint this afternoon though. I'll let Mike tell you about it and some other things we did today. Here's Mike.

Good evening everyone. I arrived at John's around 10:00 AM this morning. After a breif visit we went up to his shack to set up for our 'Tag Team' effort in todays Flying Pigs 'Pig Out' event. Which was a last minute fill in for the cancelled Flight of the Bumblebees annual event that takes place this weekend each year. The only good thing about it was that we stayed indoors. It was a hot one out today. The thermometer in my car reached 98F late this afternoon. That was the only thing that got hot. After setting up we had almost 2 hours to kill. So we ran his trains for a bit and watched a few video's before heading to his shack.

The conditions were horrible at best. Things were worse than the Saturday of Field Day Weekend. We logged a whopping 5 QSO's each. One of which was K4BAI who usually comes in quite strong. Things were hopping so much that we shut down 45 minutes early. Thankfully John and I enjoy each others company.

After tearing down our set up we came downstairs and decided on what we were going to have for dinner. We did the Vocellis thing. John had a chicken sub and I had their chicken parm with penne pasta. Just as we arrived at John's place after picking up our dinner we received a call from Vocelli's telling us they gave us the wrong sub. They gave us a steak sub instead of a chicken sub. So we drove back to get John's sub. They told us to keep the steak sub free of charge since it was their error. When I went in to get John's sub they also gave us a coupon for a free one topping large pizza. Vocelli's always has great customer service. After dinner we watched a couple more train videos followed by John getting his QSO for the day. Even though it wasn't a banner day for a radio event we still had a good time.

Until next time, to quote Charles Osgood from The CBS Sunday Morning News. "See you on the radio." (hopefully)

73, de Mike KC2EGL -30-

Sat Jul 25 2020 6:16PM - I finished watching The Lord of the Rings last night. I must say that though the book and movie are obviously done in different media and are not completely identical, that both versions are equally extremely top-notch in my opinion. I kind of wish I hadn't waited so long to watch the movie, or actually three movies, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. However I feared the movie(s) would be disappointing after reading the book as is true with so many books that were made into movies. My fear was certainly not at all true.

Right now I'm following up watching additional special features about the movies. Each movie was a 2 DVD set, one with the movie itself, and one with additional documentary special features about the making of the movies and the actors involved in them. They are also quite entertaining and informative. After all the things I learned in the features, I think I will go back and watch the movies a second time to pick out the little nuances, etc. I may have missed the first time around.

Mike and I exchanged more emails about tomorrow's sprint by the Flying Pigs QRP Club that is taking the place of the ARS's FOBB this year. We decided to use the NAQCC call of N3AQC and do the contest from my shack instead of going out in the field since it is going to be bloody hot tomorrow and also the last minute learning of the sprint would make it difficult to get everything ready for a field operation. If you hear N3AQC, give us a call. We'll probably stick to 40 and 20 meters although we may check 15 to see if it is open. -30-

Fri Jul 24 2020 8:47PM - Bad conditions, part III tonite. Refer to previous two entries. Still I got my QSO - in fact two of them. One from TG9ADM on 30 and one from WW4N in TN on 40. I said the other night there are areas of the world I have a pipeline to. Well there are also specific stations I seem to have a pipeline to. TG9ADM is one of them. Although that area of the world is not all that easy to work regularly, TG9ADM seems to always hear me. There are other stations in other places also. I figure they must live in a very quite noise free area and thus can copy my minimal signals easily as long as the QRM is not overwhelming there. Propagation is a very fascinating and sometimes non-understandable thing.

I just got an email from Mike a few minutes ago telling me there is a Flying Pigs event on Sunday to fill in for the non-existant FOBB this year. Now we've got to decide what to do about it. I emailed him back and am awaiting a reply to my reply.

Here's a left-over item from yesterday. I picked a couple ripe Siberian tomatoes, the first of the year. Also some of my bigger variety tomatoes look like they will be ripe in a few days now. They almost beat the Siberians this year. -30-

Thu Jul 23 2020 8:12PM - I'm going to do something different for the diary entry tonight. I thought about this while I was listening on the bands a few minutes ago. I'm going to just refer you to last night's diary entry. It's just the same tonight with one exception. My QSO tonight was with Jose CT3MD on 20 meters. Jose is a great op and lives in an area to which I have somewhat of a signal pipeline, the Madeira Islands. Had I not found him, I might not have gotten anyone this evening. So thanks Jose. -30-

Wed Jul 22 2020 8:36PM - It was really tough tonight finding someone to work. Condx were terrible and there were very few signals breaching my noise level. Only a couple of net stations on 80 and 1 or 2 signals involved in rag chewing or chasing DX on 40, 30, and 20. However no matter how dire the situation looks, I somehow seem to always find someone to work in that 0000Z hour each evening. I think that proves that you can succeed no matter what even with a simple QRP/CW station like mine. Tonight it was WB5RCF/P near Lake Texoma, TX on 30 meters. We managed a decent 10 minute QSO despite QSB and QRM on his end which I wasn't hearing here.

Not much else to talk about tonight. It was a pretty routine day here doing all the usual things. I didn't get a chance to continue The Lord of the Rings. I hope Frodo can hold out a bit longer till I get back to it later tonight or tomorrow. -30-

Tue Jul 21 2020 8:39PM - The bands were really unstable tonight. At least 20 and 40 were. I had a QSO on each band that started with strong signals and after a few minutes, they dropped down into my noise level. But at least we did exchange some info beyond RST-QTH-Name in each one.

It was a somewhat more comfortable day today. Partly cloudy with a high in the upper 80s, but mostly in the low 80s with some breeze when the sun hid behind the clouds. A little bit of rain. I did get a chance to work in the yard, watering my garden early this morning. Then early this evening picking the dead flowers off my daylillies. It's amazing how many flowers they produce and they only last one day. I picked about 105 dead ones today and I do that each day during peak flower season from early-mid July to early-mid August. Well over 1,000 flowers each year, maybe more like 1,500 from four clusters of plants. Another amazing thing is how fast crabgrass grows during near drought conditions. I pulled a lot of it from the cracks in my sidewalks and from my tulip bed. If we could get vegetable plants to grow like that, we'd really have something. HI

I also watched more of the Lord of the Rings today. The big battle of Gondor is over and Frodo is now held captive in Mordor near the Tower of Doom. I'll probably finish it later tonight or tomorrow. -30-

Mon Jul 20 2020 8:33PM - I worked some DX for the streak this evening. OM2VL whom I've worked a lot of times was booming in on 20, and I got him with one call and a repeat. Then I called CQ on 30 for a while and got an answer from WB2NWR in NH. Heavy QSB cut the QSO down to 8 minutes of somewhat rough copy

I think my favorite book is The Lord of the Rings three book set. I've read it a couple times at least along with its prequel, The Hobbit. I knew that a movie had been made of the book, and I got a DVD copy of the movie quite some time ago, but never watched it because I was afraid it wouldn't be as good as the book. However the past couple days, I decided I'd watch it. I was not disappointed. The movie gets the same 5 star rating as the book in my opinion. The movie is quite true to the book except for a few places here and there. The cast of the movie is excellent. Whoever did the casting really knew what they were doing, whoever they were. I'm sure they are listed somewhere in the mile long credits at the end. I especially enjoyed the character of Aragorn who was played by Viggo Mortensen. Actually all the actors did a great job. I could probably mention them all here, but I'll just mention one more, that is Legolas played by Orlando Bloom. I still have about 2 hours to watch of the third part of the trilogy, The Return of the King which I'll do later tonight or maybe tomorrow. You know how when you read a good book or watch a good movie you hate to see it come to an end and wish it could go on forever. That's the way I feel about the Lord of the Rings movie as I did earlier with the book. -30-

Sun Jul 19 2020 8:22AM - Thanks to Carl N5XE for pointing out the following info to me. Details in a minute, but I want to say first that this is very exciting news about FISTS and should help the club keep up with other CW oriented clubs. Basically membership in FISTS Americas Chapter is now FREE for a lifetime. GREAT! Now if you've been hesitant about joining FISTS because you couldn't afford it, you have no excuse, so come on and sign up if you're not already a member of the BEST CW club in the World. Here is a link to the info on the club web site and I'll also quote the info below here.

Here are excerpts from the announcement. For full details use the info link above.

"[1] All Americas Chapter memberships will be dues free for life.

A. Dues expired memberships will be changed to life memberships by Jan 1, 2021.

B. Current paid memberships which expire this year will be changed to life memberships on their expiration date.

C. All New Memberships after April 2, 2020 will be entered as life memberships.

[2] Keynote newsletters will be produced each quarter and will be available free to all members and the public as an on-line PDF download.

[3] A printed & mailed newsletter will be available at a yearly subscription rate of $25 for USA members and $35 for chapter members outside the USA.

A. All current "Mailed" newsletters will change to On-Line on Jan 1, 2021, unless the above subscription is paid.

Details for printed/mailed newsletter subscriptions will follow towards the end of this year. DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY AT THIS TIME!

Award certificates will continue to be printed and mailed free to all chapter members for the foreseeable future. A fee may need to be charged at some time in the future. PDF award certificates may be made available for on-line download at a future date."

If this news excites you into wanting to become a FISTS member, you can go here to join. I certainly hope you will to further increase the size of the club. Hopefully we will now see increased FISTS activity on the well known .x58 frequencies as well as all over the bands.

To close, thanks to Tim K6ACF for letting me know the link to the train video on my Microsoft OneDrive site in yesterday's diary entry works just fine. -30-

Sat Jul 18 2020 10:30AM - I found in my mail yesterday the following certificate. I had been talking about it the first few days of July. Here it is. The fifth year in a row I've proudly earned it since I love my country.

Now here is the video of Mike's train layout. It shows his Hudson locomotive pulling a passenger car consist past his sidings switches. It's on my Microsoft OneDrive site and should play when clicking Mike's Train Layout with Hudson engine video. If not, let me know. -30-

Fri Jul 17 2020 8:23PM - First an illustration of how busy a day it was. When I asked Mike if he wanted to do the diary entry for today, he said something to the effect that with all we did, it would just take forever and drag on and on. So that leaves it up to me to try to do a condensed version.

Picking up after where we left off last night and started out this morning. Mike fixed us his delicious omelets for breakfast. After that we did a little adjusting of his antenna to try to eliminate some local noise. That didn't work so it was on to railroad work.

We started out connecting the track that we laid out last night. That went well except for one set of road crossing lights. It would blink and ring the bell all the time, not just when a train was there. After switching out several combinations of crossings and connecting track, it still didn't work. So we finally read the instructions thoroughly and I saw where the little switch on the lights and a gap in the connecting track had to be on the same side. When we set it up that way it worked fine. I was just wondering how we missed that combination with all our changing around earlier. Oh well, now the lights work just fine.

Then we set up the trains and ran them. We had a little trouble remembering just how the connections went among the controller units, but Mike finally got that fixed. Running the trains went well except for a couple random problems. One car became uncoupled for no apparent reason at no particular time. I finally adjusted the height of one coupler even though there was only a minute difference in height. That seemed to work.

Another problem was a shut down of track power for no certain reason. We think it may have been because of asking the engine to pull too much weight. When we shortened the consist, that seemed to cure that problem. Later on one passenger car developed a squeal which went away when we oiled it.

After things got to working well, we set up Mike's Menards buildings with some temporary wiring to see how they worked and if Mike liked the location. Another day we'll get together and wire them up permanently running wires under the layout table.

We stood most of the morning and early afternoon, so we sat down for a while and watched some railroad videos until we got hungry and went and got a pizza. We finished that, did a little more running of the trains, and then we came back here to Kittanning.

Mike sent me a few pictures he took with his smart phone. Let me look at them and maybe pick out one or two to post here.

Mike also sent a video. I'll deal with that tomorrow, but here are three pictures.

Big Boy at the road crossing.

Menards Power Plant

The Hudson in full steam approaching the sidings.

Mike was right, this was a long diary entry. Whew! Tune in tomorrow for more. -30-

Thu Jul 16 2020 10:27PM - Mike and I did some work on his train layout today after he cooked a wonderful penne meatball meal for us. We got the foam and grass on the plywood table and roughly laid out the track without actually connecting it together. That we will do tomorrow morning. As with the last time, I'll have more info and pictures in a future diary entry. Now it's late and time to turn in. -30-

Wed Jul 15 2020 8:15PM - I thought I'd get a brief diary entry done in between getting my streak QSO and going back to the shack to check out our NAQCC sprint and see if I can get at least one QSO in that.

It was a pretty warm today with a high around 90. The humidity was low though so it wasn't so bad. Good enough to give me a chance to do some weeding and watering in my garden. My tomatoes are coming along nicely, the beans are climbing, and I have a couple little peppers on one pepper plant. Still overall it's a very slow year this time around. -30-

Tue Jul 14 2020 8:57AM - Happy Bastille Day or French National Day for all my French visitors.

When I got up this morning, I decided I better take care of the pictures from my visit to Mike's a couple days ago. These were all taken by Mike so he doesn't show up in any of them.

First the antenna project. Antenna pictures of those in trees are never all that good, but you can make out the antenna partially at left, and an old man (me) holding part of the feed line or maybe the rope we used to raise the antenna. Hard to tell in this picture.

Next some pictures of the Kinzua Bridge park. First a plaque describing the bridge. Next the OM walking the length of the bridge which is now an observation platform or deck.

Now three views from the deck showing the devastation of the bridge and some surrounding scenery.

We were so busy working on the train platform, we didn't get many pictures, but here's one of the OM and the finished (to this point) platform taken just after lifting it into place and adjusting it and the supporting sawhorses. It measures 10' x 10' and is a little less than 3' above the basement floor.

That concludes this portion of the pictures. Hopefully there will be more after the train project wraps up later. -30-

Mon Jul 13 2020 7:36PM - The StatCounter 'glitch' was explained today by the Founder and CEO Aodhan Cullen. He doesn't say exactly what happened more than there was a data collection error at their site. Then another message this morning that the lost data can't be recovered, but they have 'estimated' the number of visitors for the missing period. I'm still keeping FreeVisitorCounters though as a backup in case StatCounter goes down again. I doubt very much it will because Aodhan and his group have an excellent organization.

It was a nice day today with a high around 80, low humidity and a nice breeze. I did some outside work including cleaning up the back yard a bit along with my brick sidewalks.

Conditions were very poor last evening and it was a struggle to get my QSO. I finally got WB2MSB on 20, but it was a very poor contact. We just barely exchanged enough info to make it a QSO. Still I hung around and got another one just in case from K5OGX in AR on 30 meters. Hope things are better this evening when I go to the shack in just about 15 minutes now. -30-

Sun Jul 12 2020 7:35PM - I've been having several little glitches in this and that the past couple days. I'm not going to describe them here, except for one. Ever since day one, I've been keeping track of the daily visits to my web site. The best counter I've found was StatCounter. However it stopped working yesterday for no reason that I can figure out. So I installed a new counter today to try it out. It's called FreeVisitorCounters and is completely free with no ad banners or anything like that. The stats are not as detailed as those of StatCounter, but sufficient for me. If StatCounter starts working again I'll go back to it, but at least I'll have interim stats until it does, if it does. All of that is really in the background as far as visitors are concerned, but I thought I'd just mention it to let you know of some of the problems one encounters when running a web site. It's not as easy as just getting, for example, a Facebook page, but doing all the design and operating work myself gives me much more flexibility. The only outside work is the site that hosts all the pages that I design, which is Cahaba Internet run by my ham friend Bill WA4FAT down in Alabama. Bill is kind enough to only charge me for registering my domain name of k3wwp.com. All other hosting services he provides free for me. Thanks Bill.

It's getting close to time to head to my shack to try to get a QRP/CW simple antenna QSO for day # 9,475 in a row. It will be a full 26 years for the streak in about 3 weeks now if I make it.

Some of you ask about my garden now and then. I haven't reported on it in a while now. It's been slow this year for various reasons including very low rainfall. My tomato plants are coming along with several large green tomatoes on the Better Boys and several small green ones on the Siberians. I have some flowers on my pepper plants and a couple of tiny peppers just starting where the flowers fell off. Only two of my bean seeds sprouted this year and the one is about 4-5 feet high now while the other one only 1-2 feet. I don't know what went wrong with them this year. I just hope to get enough beans to have seeds for next year as I really like the Speckled Butter Beans that a friend sent me several years ago. As far as flowers, I had a lot of roses back in June but they are slowing down now. My daylillies just started blooming a few days ago and I'll have a lot of them this year. -30-

Sat Jul 11 2020 8:34PM - The IARU HF Championships brought the bands alive this evening, but I had trouble working any of the DX stations save for one. I had an easy QSO with 9A0HQ, but none of the other DX stations I called seemed to hear me at all. I did get a couple ?, but I'm not sure if they were for me or someone else. Strange. I wasn't planning to get more than one QSO anyway, but since that one came quickly, I thought I'd see how I would fare with the other DX stations. The answer was not very well at all. The SF has been down in the upper 60s again for some time now. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

Not much happenning around here today. It was nice to get back to my regular daily Roscoe walks again though. I think he liked it too. It was quite cool today until late in the afternoon due to overcast skies and light rain. That made it nice to walk.

Mike sent some pictures of our 'adventures', so maybe I'll pick out a few and post them here in the diary the next couple days. -30-

Fri Jul 10 2020 8:31PM - Here I am back home again after spending a couple of days with Mike KC2EGL at his new house in Brookville. As I mentioned in the previous couple entries without going into much detail, we worked on getting his ham radio antenna installed and also on his model train layout.

The antenna installation went quickly while we were awaiting on a lumber company to deliver material for the train layout. The only problem during the antenna work was a short somewhere. With the help of a VOM, we traced it to one coax connector. We soon had that fixed and it was time to try it out again. This time it worked well, tuning nicely on the bands we checked. A final check came in the form of making contacts. We worked WA2USA on 30 meters and decided it was working.

When we finished the antenna, the lumber still never arrived, and after visiting the lumber yard and finding they could only deliver part of Mike's order yesterday, we decided to let them deliver that and then changing our plans, as soon as it came, we headed off to the Kinzua Bridge Park whick we were going to do today. In case you don't know, Kinzua is the site of a high-level former railroad bridge that was destroyed pretty completely by an F1 tornado. That was back in 2003. At one time the viaduct was the longest and highest railroad structure at 2,053 feet long and 301 feet high. The viaduct was never fully rebuilt and only part of it exists today as an overlook at the area around Kinzua. And a great view it is. For more info, do a Bing search for Kinzua bridge park.

After we got back home and had a meal of subs, we constructed the sawhorses that would be supporting Mike's train platform. However we had to do that all over again this morning after Mike decided and I agreed that the current height of the sawhorses was really too high at four feet. So as soon as I got up, I tore all the eight or so sawhorses apart. Then I had breakfast with Mike. After that we cut each of the 30+ sawhorse legs down to about 3 feet. Then we reassembled the sawhorses. We arranged them in the pattern intended to hold the plywood. Then we struggled to get the heavy sheets of plywood up on the sawhorses, and grimaced when a couple of them collapsed, and we had to struggle again to reassemble them and get them back under the plywood. Whew! Next we installed some metal brackets to hold the sheets of plywood together, did some tweaking of the position of the now 10' x 10' plywood sheet and also the height of a few of the sawhorses. That was about as far as we could get with the materials we had. Next would be a foam insulation or homasote sheet that goes between the plywood and the train tracks and a sheet of grass on top of that. However the homasote won't be delivered till next week, and then we'll pick up from there some day that week.

Meanwhile after Mike drove me home today, he hung around a while and we played computer games, watched train videos, ate, played with my trains, and checked the ham bands. Before all that though, I had to go over and see my friend Roscoe. Bruce said he really missed me and kidded that the next time I go away, I would have to take Roscoe with me.

I had a little trouble getting my streak QSO this evening, but finally LZ3ND heard me after a few repeats of my call. Last night at Mike's I continued the streak with PJ4/KU8E on 20 meters. That makes only a small handful of QSOs I've made for the streak away from my home QTH. Still all QRP/CW and simple antennas though. -30-

Thu Jul 9 2020 8:40PM - After a couple little glitches with a coax connector, Mike and I got his antenna installed today. We then tried it out and worked WA2USA/P at some park that I didn't catch the name or number of on 30 meters. Then this evening we worked PJ4/KU8E on 20 meters. So the antenna works well.

The train project didn't go as well thanks to a local lumber yard that delayed in delivering materials and then after they did come, they said one item was on back order and wouldn't be here until next week. So we did as much as we could today and will do a little more tomorrow. A full report later. -30-

Wed Jul 8 2020 5:55PM - In a couple hours, Mike will be arriving. We'll have a pizza and do a couple other things like get my streak QSO. So I thought I'd write the diary entry a bit early today.

I'll have more in the diary about some projects we have planned for the next couple days as the projects come to completion.

It was a bit less hot today after a high of 98 yesterday. My AcuRite or I guess more accurately, my La Crosse Technology remote unit shows a high of 93 today and 91 right now. The humidity is a relatively low 41% which keeps the heat index lower than it could be. In fact it's only 92 right now, just about the same as the temperature. Ooops, just dropped to 40%, then back up to 41 again. HI. -30-

Tue Jul 7 2020 8:53PM - I completed a couple tasks today. The last one just a few minutes ago. I filled out my application for the 13 Colonies Award. For the fifth year in a row I worked all 13 coloniew plus WM3PEN, but never worked or even heard GB3COL. I didn't get any new band-colonies since last night so those totals in last night's diary entry are complete for this year.

I finished changing over all my American Flyer couplers today. Now all my locos and rolling stock have knuckle couplers.

This was our warmest day of the heat wave so far at 97 on my AcuRite remote unit. I'll see what the 'official' thermometer shows in a couple minutes. Actually it cooled off quickly as a kind of front passed through earlier this evening. It went from 96 down to 78 right now. However the humidity rose from about 40 to 66 percent now. There was rain all around us, but none here although I think I hear a couple tiny drops on my porch awning as I'm typing this. -30-

Mon Jul 6 2020 8:30PM -Since I got NJ to finish the 13 colonies, I decided to see how many band contacts I could make with the colonies stations. When I worked NC on 30 tonight, that made a total of 23 as follows: 80 - 4, 40 - 10, 30 - 5, 20 - 4. I've worked K2M PA on all 4 bands, K2J NC and K2K NH on 3 bands. I must congratulate the NH stations - They're Everywhere, They're Everywhere. Those of you, like Mike KC2EGL who know of the Chicken Man radio spots will appreciate the reference, I'm sure. They really are. I've heard two of them on the same band a couple times, and I don't think there was one time I went to the shack so far that I didn't hear at least one K2K NH station.

My knuckle couplers for my American Flyer trains arrived today and I have all but one old link coupler switched to knuckle now. It wasn't too hard to do except one stubborn one on one of my tenders. I finally got it though with a lot of effort. Now things look more realistic with the knuckle couplers.

Our heat wave continues here with a hight on my AcuRite remote showing 95 degrees. The humidity remains somewhat low, thank goodness. My house also remains decent when I open it up at night and close it down during the day. Right now it is 80 degrees inside and that is as high as it has gotten so far.

Oh the K2M I worked on 20 this evening was operated by my friend from Skyview, Bob WC3O. -30-

Sun Jul 5 2020 11:53AM - DONE! To borrow from the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. That was the one word message sent by telegrapher W.N. Shilling to signify the completion on May 10, 1869. I use it now to signify the completion of the 13 Colonies event when I worked K2I NJ at 1550Z on 20M today. I still need GB3COL to have a complete completion, but at least I now have the 13 colonies and WM3PEN in my log. It was a very easy QSO after all the futile tries earlier this month. It only took one call plus a repeat after he sent K3W?. That's a relief now. I'll wait to send my log entries to see if I might luck out and get GB3COL. I've never gotten it yet in all the years I've been trying and in fact I think I only heard it one of the years. -30-

Sat Jul 4 2020 8:40PM - I just finished folding my flag with the help of my neighbor after flying it all day today. It's the flag that draped my father's coffin way back in 1964 and it's very special to me. I only fly it on patriotic holidays since I don't want anything to happen to it.

I'm coming to the conclusion that NJ has only one CW operator in the 13 Colonies event. So far I've only heard NJ twice and both times the pileups were awesome and split operation was necessary. It was quite strong on 40 a couple evenings ago, and this evening was pretty weak on 20 and was not hearing me at all. But I'll keep trying as long as it takes. I'd hate to come up one short, but I guess getting 12 plus WM3PEN is not bad for my simple QRP CW setup. Still it would be disappointing to not complete the sweep this year as I've done the past several years. -30-

Fri Jul 3 2020 7:19PM - Still looking for K2I NJ to complete working the 13 Colonies stations. Well except for GB3COL. K2I had a huge pileup last night and I gave up trying to work him. Maybe I should have tried longer as I haven't heard a sign of K2I today. I think I heard all 12 plus WM3PEN that I've already worked. Of course there is still a lot of time left for me, but I would like to close it out as soon as I can. Maybe the 0000Z hour later tonight will prove to be fruitful. I hope so.

I was going back through all my portable operations records today and putting the results in an Excel spreadsheet. I didn't realize how many opeations I've done. Most all of them except for a few earlier ones involved Mike KC2EGL. Some earlier ones were with WY3H Tom. Also a few later ones with Tom WB3FAE when Mike wasn't with us.

It was a good day to do that as our heat wave continues. It hit 92 today. Fortunately the humidity hasn't been too high yet although it may increase over the next few days.

I don't have air conditioning, but keeping windows open at night and closing windows, drapes, and curtains during the day has kept the house comparatively cool so far. -30-

Thu Jul 2 2020 3:54PM - Thought I'd do an early entry today and report on my 13 Colonies quest. I didn't find any more stations yesterday until the 0000Z hour last evening. In that hour I got off to a good start. I started with K2C RI 40, K2H MA 40, K2K NH 80 (new band), K2J NC 40, K2F MD 80 in the 0000Z hour. Then K2M PA 40, WM3PEN PHILA 80, K2A NY 40, K2D CT 40 in the 0100Z hour. A little while ago this afternoon K2L SC 20. That's 9 of the 13 colonies plus WM3PEN so far. I still need GB3COL, NJ, VA, GA, DE. Hopefully I'll get at least a couple of those this evening. I haven't even heard any of them so far.

One thing I should point out for those of you who don't know me all that well. I NEVER use spotting of any kind to find stations to work. I simply tune the bands, and look for peaks on my PX3 panadaptor, then tune in to the peaks and listen to see who it is. I prefer to do all the work myself rather than have someone else do the work for me. If you use spotting, that's all well and good. It's just my personal thing not to do so. If I did use it, I probably could have all 13 colonies already, but it wouldn't be as rewarding to me. End of soapbox. HI -30-

Wed Jul 1 2020 7:41PM - Well, here we go with the second half of 2020. We can only hope and pray this half will be better than the first half.

I started off on my 13 Colonies quest this afternoon by working K2K in NH. 12 to go now plus WM3PEN and GB3COL. I never have worked GB3COL in the previous several 13 Colonies events, although I have gotten all 13 colonies and WM3PEN in each of them. K2K was the only station I heard today. Perhaps I'll find others when I go for my streak QSO at 0000Z. I think that is a wonderful event to honor our great country and since I found out about it, I have participated every year and will continue to do so as long as it is held.

It looks like we are in a heat wave for the next week with temperatures around 90 each day and very little chance of any rain. We could use the rain as we only had about half our normal amount in June. It was about 2.5 degrees above normal in June.

Almost time to head for the shack now, so I'll close here. -30-

Tue Jun 30 2020 8:28PM - Of course with the Canada Day contest starting this evening, it was a cinch to get a quick streak QSO which I did with VE3CX on 20M. I remember when this contest was nowhere as big as it is today. Now it is just like a big contest such as the WPX, FD, etc. Well maybe not that big, but I think you get the point I am making which is that it is really growing as the years go by. It used to be that I could finish pretty high in the scores with my simple setup. K8UCL and I used to battle each other for the top QRP score. Unfortunately Corb passed away before we had too many years to battle. We became good friends due to the RAC contests. Just before he passed, we were going to set up a two man QRP operation in some contests, but that never came to pass.

After FD ended, my next big 'project' with Mike is going to his house up in Brookville PA where we'll spend 2-3 days together setting up his ham station and his model railroad. That should be on July 9, 10, 11 if all works out right. I'm looking forward to it. I was just thinking today when the last time was that I spent the night away from home. I think it was in 2003 when I spent a couple days with my late cousin Virginia on the weekend after Thanksgiving. I remember that was when I did the CQWW DX contest portable from her home. That was a lot of fun as she lived outside the valley here and conditions were so much better there. I might have set an all time high personal score except for a couple of things. First I spent a lot of time visiting with her. Second I didn't have the best equipment. I used Eric KB3BFQ's old QRP+ rig, a makeshift antenna, and logged on paper instead of computer. If you'd like more info on that outing, look in the CONTESTING section of my site on the Stories page and go to the 2003 CQWW DX story. -30-

Mon Jun 29 2020 1:09PM - I thought I better get my FD story written before all the memories fade in my old failing memory. To show what I mean, Mike and I planned on taking a series of pictures of our setup, etc. We never thought of the plan again until after we tore down Sunday afternoon. However if you go to my Diary Archives via the link above, then to 2019 and go to the entry for June 25, 2019, there you'll find pictures of our setup which was pretty much identical to this year's setup. Well, except we are a year younger in those pictures.

As mentioned in previous entries to bring you up to date. Mike arrived Friday evening so as we wouldn't be as rushed getting set up Saturday morning. As it turned out, it didn't take us all that long to get set up anyway, but it was nice to spend time Friday evening playing trains, checking the bands, playing computer games, etc.

After we got set up and started in action, we found the bands pretty poor and had trouble even finding stations let alone working them. The problem was especially bad for Mike on 20 meters, while 40 for me was bad, but not as bad. When we finally threw in the towel sometime around 9:30PM, I had only 60 QSOs and Mike had just 9.

I got started around 8:20AM Sunday morning and found conditions improved over Saturday. Still not great, but I was finding more stations and working those I found more easily. Mike joined in about a half hour or so later and found things better on 20 also. I stuck with 40 meters until just after Noon when I thought I'd see if my 40 meters vertical woulld load up on 15 meters. I thought it might since of course 15 is the third harmonic of 40. I bypassed my 40M bandpass filter, and saw a lot of signals on the panadapter. I hit the auto tune button on the KX3 and got a low SWR, about 3:1 or so. I called AG9A and got an immediate response from him in IL. The QSOs came rapidly, but I had to use the KX3 tuner to get a low SWR every 5 to 10 kHz. I finally just set the tuning every 5 kHz and the KX3 memories remembered the settings as I tuned the band. The setting varied across the band dropping to a 1:1 somewhere in the middle of the CW band and rising to 2:1 to 3:1 as I moved away from center. Anyway whatever the setting, I was racking up the contacts. With a 10 minute break to walk Roscoe, I made 21 QSOs in the 1600Z hour and then, including 2 on 10M, I made 27 more QSOs in the 1700Z hour. Actually 15 was sounding pretty much like 40 as to the stations I was working. With a few longer skip stations (TX, AZ, MO, OK, etc.), I was working mostly the NE quarter of the USA.

Mike made 41 QSOs on 20 vs. 9 Saturday in about the same amount of operating time. At one point he changed antennas and got even better results with his jumper dipole.

After we finished at 2:00PM and tore down our setup, we decided we might as well submit our results. So we combined our dupe sheets, and used the web autologger to submit all the required info which the ARRL acknowledged via email. After we got everything back to normal, Mike visited for a few more hours. We played computer games and watched train videos until he had to leave and head home. It was a great weekend despite the less than optimum conditions.

As a post mortem, when I was putting my log from GenLog into my Microsoft Excel log, I noticed there were three dupes in my 40M QSOs. I think maybe the latest version of GenLog changed the way it handles dupes. I'll have to look into that. So I resubmitted our FD report to ARRL with the three dupes removed. After that we wound up with a total of 230 QSOs and a claimed score of 2,280 points in the 2B category. Oh, we both used our KX3 rigs and PX3 panadapters at 5 watts output. The only bonus points we got were for battery power and submitting via the autologger. -30-

Sun Jun 28 2020 9:17PM - Much better conditions today than yesterday. Mike thought we might have approached 600 QSOs had yesterday been like today. I wasn't that optimistic though. I figured maybe 400 to 500 or so. It's all a moot point now though since we wound up with just 231 QSOs which was still not bad considering conditions that we outlined yesterday.

I just spent time looking through my FD log and it's late now so I think I'll postpone my report on FD till tomorrow.

Conditions were good on 40 this evening and I had two nice streak rag chew type QSOs with Steve K2KRG and Art K8CIT. -30-

Sat Jun 27 2020 10:14PM - Now here's my "partner in crime" with tonight's diary commentary on the first day of FD. Take it away Mike.

This has been the worst field day conditions wise. I worked 20M and had no luck what so ever. I went the first two hours without a single QSO. I thought I had narrowed it down to a bad antenna. I swapped out antenna's during a break due to a torrential downpour which lasted around an hour. I had started out using a Barker WIlliamson window antenna set for 20M. It worked flawlessly the past 2 years. Found a wire had broken off at a connetor. So I installed a new connetor hoping that would fix the issue. This was during our troubleshoooting before the festivities started. Well as luck would have it, it did'nt work

So back to the rain delay. I put up my trusted old multi band dipole that I have used many times during park peditions and other field day events. Shortly after we got back to operating I finally logged my first QSO. I actually celebrated. Normally I would have around 100 QSO's logged by the time we would shut down for the night. I am way behind in that department. The QSB was the worst I have ever seen (or heard)it. Plus the skip on 20M seemed to jump around quite a bit One moment I would hear stations in Tx, AR, and MO. then suddenly I would hear CA and WA, followed by Fl and Ga. Very strange conditions here in WPA today. John was well below his numbers as well. We decided to call it a night due to the poor conditions and some of the neighbors who are celebrating the Fourth of July a week early.

We will give it another shot in the morning. Until next time de Mike KC2EGL.

Thanks Mike. I used FD to get my streak QSO just after 0000Z. I worked long-time contester K1GU in TN using my call K3WWP instead of N3A. I also worked him earlier with N3A. What Mike said about conditions in FD is absolutely true. He could have added my local QRN problem as another reason for the poor showing. It was a solid S6 on 40 and few signals would peak over it, and when they did, the peaks were very short duration. If you didn't work the station right away, he'd probably be gone before you had another chance. Oh well, no matter, it's always nice to get on the bands with Mike, be it FD, parkpeditions, Skeeter Hunts, FOBBs, etc. Mike suggested we do this fall's PA QSO party as a tag team. That sounds good to me and if all goes well, we will do it. -30-

Fri Jun 26 2020 9:19PM - Mike is sitting across the room from me. Do you have anything to add to the diary? "We operated some trains. Went and got my QSO for the day. Some details later. We went for a nice stroll until the artillery of fireworks started a week ahead of the Fourth." I just said to Mike it was so much nicer when fireworks were illegal here except on the Fourth itself.

As for my QSO, it came almost immediately after I sat down at the rig. I heard and worked KW9M on 30 meters. Then added a QSO when N5JJ answered my CQ on 20 meters.

Now we are both looking forward to FD tomorrow. -30-

Thu Jun 25 2020 8:49PM - Strange bands this evening again. 30 meters started out like last night with several good signals on the panadapter. I thought it was going to be easy to get my streak QSO. However like someone turning off a switch, all the good signals disappeared except for super station KC1XX. I did manage to find NM1I just above my noise and he answered my call. But he gradually faded away during his first transmission to almost nil. I went back with a quick exchange, but never heard him again so I couldn't count that as a QSO. I then went to 20 meters and found K1NVY booming in. I answered him and was suprised that he was in Seattle, WA. We had a six minute QSO till 20 kind of faded away also. Anyway the streak continues.

I did some FD preparing today. I updated GenLog to the latest version which counts "D" FD stations as point stations for this year because of the virus which will have many stations operating as home stations. I got out my portable antenna and some other pieces of equipment I'll be using. Mike will be coming down tomorrow evening. It will be good to get together again.

Otherwise it was the usual daily routine of walking Roscoe, working with my trains, mostly the American Flyers, and so forth. -30-

Wed Jun 24 2020 9:03PM - It's been a little longer day than usual. Well, to be accurate I should say I've been awake a little longer than usual today. The day has been the same length. I had to get up early to help take Roscoe to the groomer. She did a great job on him and he looks and I'm sure feels better now with shorter hair and toe (paw?) nails. Especially with what I'm sure will be warmer weather coming soon. It hasn't been all that warm overall so far this summer.

Wow, was 30 busy this evening. At one point when I was in a QSO, I saw about 8 or 9 strong signals on the panadapter screen. In contrast, there wasn't much at all on 40 or 20. I worked K4UX in VA and W1ZIY in MA. W1ZIY answered my first CQ after I closed with K4UX. In contrast, I had no luck this morning hearing Glenn K3SWZ on his parkpedition. In fact there was virtually nothing at all but noise on 40 meters at that time, and I listened about a half hour. -30-

Tue Jun 23 2020 8:05PM - At last I have a few bits of news to write about here in the diary. The bands were pretty dead all around this evening. Fortunately Kam TI5/N3KS was booming in on 20 when I turned the rig on a couple minutes before 0000Z. I waited for 0000Z to come hoping Kam wouldn't go QRT before them. As soon as it turned to the new day, I called and worked him easily. We've worked many many times. Let's see how many. This was our 23rd QSO, of which 14 were from Costa Rica and the rest from Maryland. Actually more than that since he is usually the op at TI7W in contests. I've got 10 QSOs with TI7W.

Tomorrow morning will be a bit busy. We'll be taking Roscoe to the groomer for an 8:30AM appointment. Then later in the morning I hope to be home in time to look for long time diary reader and email friend Glenn K3SWZ who is going out on a parkpedition in York County PA around 11 AM around 7050. I hope conditions are favorable and we can make it.

I received two certificates from Larry W2LJ for last year's Skeeter Hunt, one for me and one for Mike for our operation as N3AQC. Let's see if I can scan one and post it here.

OK, just checked and that turned out good. -30-

Mon Jun 22 2020 8:34PM - There was kind of a reversal in the bands this evening. It was 20 with a lot of activity and 30 had almost no activity. There was even a strong Russian on 20, but he was quite busy and after calling once and failing, I just moved along. There were good signals from New England on 20 and I worked WA1VUG in MA for a solid but short 589/589 8 minute QSO.

It was a very warm humid day today. I think the most humid day yet this year. It really felt like the heart of summer. So it was mostly an indoor day playing with trains and the computer, only venturing out for a brief shopping trip this morning and Roscoe's usual five daily walks. Well four so far then the last one coming up at 9:30. -30-

Sun Jun 21 2020 8:41PM - The bands were so-so this evening. Very little on 20, but 30 was busy. I got a couple QSOs on 30. KA4FDM in MD and K4ABC in NC. Both 10-15 minute rag chews. Otherwise the day was so-so also. Nothing out of the ordinary except Mike reminded me about getting us a number for the Skeeter Hunt in August which I did. We will be # 130 using the NAQCC club call of N3AQC. I reserved the call from Steve today also. So we're set for that. Mike will be coming down Friday evening to work out our FD plans for the next day. Actually we pretty much know what we're going to do. It's just a matter of some tweaking. -30-

Sat Jun 20 2020 8:53PM - The bands were good again this evening with lots of activity especially on 20, both in the AA contest and otherwise. I found that my Asiatic Russia pipeline is not working yet. RA9P was booming in with not any trace of flutter yet he didn't hear me calling him at all. He just went on calling CQ so it wasn't QRM beating me. He just plain wasn't hearing me. It was interesting that he was sending his age as 15. They still breed hams young, at least CW hams in Russia.

I first worked K8WV on 40 in the WV QSO Party to secure the streak for another day before I went to 20. Then after 20, I called CQ on 30 and had a nice QSO with Steve K2KRG for 26 minutes. He asked me about the QRP streak, and then we talked about the high bands and our FD plans.

It was a little hotter and more humid today on this first day of astronomical summer. The high was about 85 and the humidity is now 55%. -30-

Fri Jun 19 2020 8:37PM - I had to resort to 80 for my streak QSO tonight. I heard nothing on 17 or 15, 20 was busy with the All Asia contest and I couldn't hear any Asians strong enough to try to work. I did call an RT8 or RT9 station but he was very weak and very busy. 30 and 40 had several stations but all were in QSO with someone, and when I tried a CQ, I got no answers. So it was down to 80 where I worked Cliff K3CRM in DE for 11 minutes.

Not much else to talk about today with nothing happenning besides the usual routine things. -30-

Thu Jun 18 2020 8:40PM - Today was largely spent on working on my computer. For a very long time now, I have had two antivirus/antimalware programs working together beautifully. However today for some reason they had a disagreement and no longer got along. It took a while studying Windows 10 Task Manager to figure out why my computer was moving at a snail's pace. Once I did figure it out and uninstalled one of the programs, it now runs like a gazelle again. Very strange why the sudden change. I may, out of curiosity, try to figure it out sometime.

The bands continue in short skip in the evenings. Very strong local signals on 20, a few signals on 17, but nothing on 15 this evening. I had a solid 25 minute rag chew on 20 with Phil WB2DHY in VA till QSB finally set in.

Only about 9 days till Field Day now, and I'm looking forward to operating it with Mike KC2EGL from my front porch with temporary portable antennas as we've done the past couple years now. Conditions may be better this year than last, but always big contests bring out good conditions. -30-

Wed Jun 17 2020 9:03PM - I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I ordered another American Flyer locomotive back on Sunday. It came today, so a lot of my day was spent running it after giving it a good cleaning and lubrication. Actually it ran well right out of the box, but I figured I'd do the maintenance anyway. I'm pleased with it and now that I have 2 AF locos, I will have a spare if the other one needs some work in the shop. This is an AF 290 to go along with the 322.

The bands were in short skip again this evening. I worked Ohio on 15 meters and heard other close by stations on 15, 17, 20, and 30. I worked N4KER in VA on 30 for a solid 11 minute QSO.

Nice weather again today. I cut my grass in the morning and watered my garden a little later in the day. I finally have a second bean plant sprouting. They sure are slow this year. I've got quite a few flowers on my tomatoes. The roses really produced a lot of flowers this year. -30-

Tue Jun 16 2020 8:36PM - I couldn't find much to work this evening so I grabbed VE2SPEED again on 20. I worked him a couple weeks ago. Then I tried some CQs on 20 and 30. I got an answer on 30, but never could pull his call through the QRN and QSB. It was WB0 something. The suffix may have started with a C. The signal seemed to fade just when he sent the suffix. I got the prefix good a few times, but.... Sorry whoever you were.

Then I hung around and got in our semi-annual NAQCC QRPp sprint briefly and worked AB9CA with 900 mW. That reminds me, I better go and reset my power to 5 watts or I'll wonder why nobody was hearing me tomorrow evening. HI -30-

Mon Jun 15 2020 8:28PM - Some short skip on 20 again this evening as my streak QSO was with W2YH in NJ. I didn't hear anything on 17 or 15 tonight though.

Just another ho-hum day here today. Good weather and I did some lawn work but really not a lot else besides the usual.

I've been asked this question in the past and answered it a couple times, but that was long ago, so let me re-hash it here. A ham friend asked what the -30- meant at the end of my diary entries. There are a couple of things it relates to. First it has been widely used in the newspaper industry to indicate end of copy when a reporter submits an article for publication. It also relates to the ham prosign SK which means end of transmission. If you translate the dots and dashes from American (or Railroad) Morse to the International Morse used in ham radio it goes like this: 3 in American Morse is di di di dah dit and 0 is a long dah. Combine them and you get di di di dah di dah or SK in International Morse. More info can be found on the Internet by doing a Bing search for something like "30 newspaper term". Hope that answers the question for those who missed it in the past. -30-

Sun Jun 14 2020 8:41PM - I hope you all proudly flew your flag on this Flag Day 2020. I did. I missed our annual flag ceremony though which was cancelled because of the virus. Hopefully we will be able to have one next year.

Conditions were a bit unusual this evening with short skip not only on 20, but 17 and 15 also. It's just too bad more people didn't know those bands were open. I heard and worked KE1VT in VT on 15, and after we ended, another station called him. Then I heard KE1VT again a bit later on 17. I tried a few CQs on 17 with no luck, but did get an answer on 20 from W2MSW in NJ. I also worked NC on 20. I don't know what caused the openings. Maybe sporadic E skip. Or you know it is just possible those bands are open more often than we know and it's just that no one gets on and then they sound dead. Who knows? -30-

Sat Jun 13 2020 8:42PM - Still more DX. I don't recall DX being this good last year at this time, but then I'm just going by memory which isn't getting any better as I age. So let me check in my log. My memory served well this time. In 2019 through June 14, I had only 22 DX QSOs. This year through June 14, I have 165. However, this year I put in a pretty decent effort in the ARRL DX Contest for 113 QSOs. Removing those it makes it 22 in 2019 vs. 52 in 2020. Still a sizable difference in favor of this year. Maybe we are coming out of the sunspot minimum. Hope so.

Oh, tonight it was LZ5R on 20M.

I did a lot of work today getting caught on managing my computer files like my pictures, eQSLs, old radio shows, music, and so on. I had really slipped in keeping up on such things in the past year or so. I'm pretty caught up now, but still some things to do.

It was another nice sunny cool day today. Kind of like those days we remember from so long ago that either are or seem to be becoming more rare nowadays. -30-

Fri Jun 12 2020 8:09PM - I sure wish there were some ham radio events to go to. Then I'd have something different to write and you'd have something different to read. I know it's getting boring on both ends.

I had another one of those sit down, turn the rig on, and get my QSO at 0000Z with a single call to HA5JI on 20 meters. I really enjoy working DX again and things should continue to be getting better as we dig out of this sunspot minimum. -30-

Thu Jun 11 2020 8:44PM - The bands were about normal this evening. I got one of those quick 0000Z QSOs from Niko S53A on 20M with a single call. Then when I was logging it in my shack paper log, Niko disappeared. I guess I was his last QSO for the evening (morning) or he went to another band. Anyway I got my streak QSO for day # 9,444 in a row.

It was a nice day today after the past two hot and humid ones. We didn't get out of the 70s today with a high of 78 on my remote unit. I did a little outside work in the cool weather. I pruned my rosebushes a bit, tightened a loose railing on my back porch steps, and did a little cleaning here and there. That and the usual chores made up my day. -30-

Wed Jun 10 2020 8:27PM - Some strange conditions on 30 this evening. Seemed to be some one-way skip in effect. I called a station who was close to a solid S9, and he didn't hear me at all after 3 straight answers to his CQ then his QRZ? So I gave up on 30 and went to 20 where I had a nice solid 2X QSO with Gary VE2GDI who was running 40 watts to my (naturally) 5 watts.

It was a hot humid day today. I saw the heat index at one point at 97 degrees. So it was a good day to sit at the computer with the fan blowing on me. I don't have air conditioning but that served the purpose pretty well. Now we're waiting for a line of storms that should come through here in a couple hours with mainly winds and a slight change of hail. It may die down though now that the daylight heating is over with and it's now down in the 70s already. We'll see what happens. -30-

Tue Jun 9 2020 8:14PM - I got a quick (0001Z) QSO from CT3MD on 20 this evening, so I thought I'd write the diary entry before I check out our NAQCC sprint at 0030 and try to get at least one QSO there. There's really not much to write about anyway. A little garden work, a short shopping trip, and some more work on my ham prefixes stats were the only things out of the ordinary. -30-

Mon Jun 8 2020 8:28PM - A lot of activity on 30 meters this evening. Not a lot on 40 or 20. My streak QSO came from AA4MB in TN on 30.

It was another nice June day today with a high in the low to mid 80s, plenty of sunshine and low humidity. After going shopping this morning and doing my laundry, I just took it easy and enjoyed the weather, played with my trains, and did some work on the computer. I might get used to days like this although I do like to be more active. -30-

Sun Jun 7 2020 8:27PM - I never did get around to getting back into the Stay Home contest. It was a nice day and I spent a lot of time outside. This evening the bands seemed pretty good, but not a lot of activity. I managed to find and work N4LMI down in FL on 30 meters. He is also a FISTS member so we exchanged FISTS numbers. I haven't done that for awhile now. That's about it for today. -30-

Sat Jun 6 2020 8:15PM - The Stay Home contest gave me my streak QSO tonight when I worked K2LE on 40 meters. I may try for some more QSOs as I like the exchange of age. K2LE is 86 and I heard a couple others in the 80s as well.

I did some more work on my Excel log today. I checked to find prefixes that I don't have marked in my other Excel file where I keep track of prefixes at a glance. I found about 4 or 5 that I worked recently and hadn't marked yet.

Other than that, just a collection of routine chores today. The weather was nice again and I worked a bit in the yard and also sat on the porch for quite a while. -30-

Fri Jun 5 2020 8:25PM - My main project today was getting all my LoTW matches into my Microsoft Excel log, and I did finish it. I also got a bonus along the way. For some time now there has been a discrepancy of one between the totals on the LoTW web site and in my log. The LoTW had one more than I did in my log. So I used the query feature on the site to narrow down date ranges and did the same in my Excel log until I found the discrepancy. Then I either narrowed further or compared the two lists. Finally I found a QSO with C6AGU that I missed marking in my log. So now everything matches perfectly.

I have 22,930 LoTW matches out of the 91,816 QSOs I have in the LoTW. Imagine how much that would cost with regular paper QSLs. Whew! Still it is very nice to get and send the old style QSLs.

My streak QSO tonight was with a rather weak LZ1ZF on 20 meters. I had to repeat my call several times before he got it, but he did get and send it right after a minute or two. -30-

Thu Jun 4 2020 8:17PM - It was another of those nice warm June days today with predictions of heavy rain and storms that only materialized briefly in late afternoon. While it was nice I finally got all my garden plants put out. That included the rest of my Siberian Tomatoes and my Peppers. They were still pretty small, but I think they'll take off and grow now that they are outside.

I also did some more cleaning up in the back yard before I put out the plants. It felt quite warm with the sun beating down and I probably got a start on my suntan.

It was another super quick streak QSO this evening. I turned the rig on, saw a big S9 peak on the PX3, tuned to listen and found it was HG2DX. I gave a call and before the 0000Z minute expired I had my QSO since he heard my initial call. I listened while I was logging the QSO and he was very non-busy with many CQs going unanswered.

I also started to get caught up on logging my LoTW matches today. I was about 5 weeks behind in doing so, and it seemed a large percentage of my CQWW WPX contest QSOs were in the LoTW for me to log. I've still got a lot to go as the scrollbar on my text program has hardly moved down any yet. Oh well, it's something to keep me busy. -30-

Wed Jun 3 2020 8:31PM - The bands seemed about average when I tuned in around 0000Z. After a couple minutes I worked Eddie KP4TF easily on 20M. Then I tuned around checking the bands from 40 through 17, trying some CQs here and there with no results. I thought conditions/activity declined in the few minutes since I first tuned in.

It was a nice day today with rain predicted that really never materialized save for a couple very light showers. It was warm and humid just like June should be. I did some work in the back yard pulling some weeds and watering my plants. Otherwise inside I continued working on my computer switching. That's about it except for the everyday tasks.

Oh, I did order another piece of American Flyer rolling stock, a boxcar. -30-

Tue Jun 2 2020 8:43PM - I spent a lot of time today continuing the job of switching a lot of my work to another computer. It's really enjoyable doing so, but also a bit mentally exhausting. Anyway I'm not going to delve into talking more about it here.

The bands were pretty good again tonight, but I had one failed QSO with W8HOG as my local noise acted up and QSB set in before we could exchange enough info to make it a complete QSO. Then I worked W2RDK for a solid QSO and afterwards Lloyd K3ESE gave me a tail end call. It was good to work Lloyd again after a long time. And that wraps up my day today here in the diary. -30-

Mon Jun 1 2020 8:41PM - The bands were good again tonight with a lot of activity on 20 although I didn't work anyone there, just listened. I got my streak QSO right away at 0000Z when I worked VE2SPEED on 40 meters. Let's see what that call was for. Le Grand Prix de Montreal it says in QRZ. Makes sense. HI. I also worked Jim W8RTJ on 40 for a short rag chew. Nice to work Jim again.

I spent most of the day doing my change of month chores. I moved a lot of them to another computer and that took more time than usual. Kind of tired me out, so I'm going to cut this short now. -30-

Sun May 31 2020 8:39PM - Gee, another month gone. Where do they go, and go so fast?

Not much to report on again this evening. Some end of the month chores done, but I still have more to take care of tomorrow. Today, like the rest of May, just went by too fast.

The bands were really poor tonight - noisy and pretty devoid of signals. I thought I'd have to wait till tomorrow morning or afternoon to get my streak QSO. However before giving up, I did find and work KC3MIO on 40 meters to avoid one thing to do tomorrow. -30-

Sat May 30 2020 8:55PM - Mike is about to leave for home. Do you have anything to say before you go? "A great day of radio, another great tag-team event. Looking forward to Field Day." I agree with Mike's brief summary. We made around 165 QSO's apiece, the vast majority were W/VE stations. We didn't work (or even hear) any DX until very late afternoon when we worked about a half dozen DX stations each from EU and the Caribbean. It was a lot of fun overall and we really had no long times when we didn't work someone. We were consistently busy. Mike just said "we sure were". Maybe I'll have more info after analyzing my log, but I'm tired right now after about 10 1/2 hours on the air with only a couple short breaks for chow and walking Roscoe. So I'm going to close for now. -30-

Fri May 29 2020 8:09PM - Of course a quick QSO in the CQ WPX contest for the streak this evening. So I got a jump of 1 QSO for our (Mike and I) tag team effort tomorrow in the contest. That's going to be a lot of fun for the first tag team effort since the ARRL DX contest back in February. 20 meters was really hopping tonight. Hopefully it will be the same tomorrow. The big pileups this evening should be somewhat diminished when we get on the air starting around 9 AM. Perhaps even 15 and 10 might provide some QSOs. We'll see in a little over 12 hours now. -30-

Thu May 28 2020 8:16PM - Conditions a little above average tonight. Quite a few signals on 20 and a few on 30. Nothing heard on 17, and I didn't really check 40. I got a quick streak QSO from WP2DX keeping my streak totals of DX ahead of W/VE QSOs lately. This Saturday will be interesting when Mike and I do the CQ WPX contest. I hope the bands are good and we get a lot of DX QSOs. -30-

Wed May 27 2020 8:15PM - Today felt a little more like May instead of July as it did the past couple days. The high was in the mid 80s with lower humidity and a nice breeze. I pulled some more weeds and grass out of my brick sidewalk to enjoy the nice weather.

Other than that not much going on. The bands slipped back again somewhat tonight from the excellent conditions of last night. Still I managed to work DL100BKW for my streak QSO on 20 meters.

I also got a nice email certificate today. I didn't even realized I had earned it.

-30-

Tue May 26 2020 8:43PM - Excellent conditions this evening. 20 almost sounded like there was a big contest going on with all the activity. There was a mix of DX and W/VE stations. I only worked a couple stations for my streak, but had a good time just listening to all the activity. I also checked 17 meters and there was some activity there. W1AW was well over S9 and AA7FU was strong from the West Coast. I didn't hear anything on 15, but 30 was also pretty good. I heard a TG9 and SP7 plus a couple others and I worked ND4Q in AL.

It was another hot day today. 91 on the AcuRite and 92 on the Computemp. It wasn't as humid as yesterday though and there was more of a breeze today. I planted out three of my Siberian tomato plants. I still have some more to put out along with some pepper plants.

I did some more work on the AF train setup today. I took the track apart and cleaned the connecting pins. The train was slowing down a bit in a couple places and I thought maybe the pins were dirty. I guess they were because the speed seems steady now all around the track. I also got my little adapter that allows connecting AF link to knuckle couplers. That works nice and adds versatility to my consists. -30-

Mon May 25 2020 Memorial Day 8:18PM - I hope you all did your part in honoring those who served and are serving in our Armed Forces on this Memorial Day. Of course our annual Memorial Day parade and ceremony was not held this year because of the virus. However I did my part by flying my flag. Regular diary readers know that's the flag that was draped over my dad's coffin back in 1964. I've flown it on most all of the patriotic holidays since then.

It was our hottest day of the year so far beating yesterday for that honor as the high peaked right around 90. 90 on AcuRite, 91 on Computemp, and I'll get the 'official' reading from the thermometer shelter at 9PM. It should be either 90 or 91. The record for today was 92 back in 2012 so we're close.

I did a little work on my American Flyer 322 locomotive today. The tire had come loose from the white plastic insulator so I slipped some CA glue between the tire and insulator and now they seem to be well bonded together again.

I worked a special event call this evening for my streak QSO - W5M in MS activated to increase awareness of the upcoming hurricane season set to begin on June 1.

I also attended a small (number of people, not amount of food) barbeque meal today with my neighbor Bruce and his brother Jeff. That was good but now I've had big meals three days in a row now. I'm going to have to fast the next couple days. HI -30-

Sun May 24 2020 9:00PM - Just got my temperature readings and today was the warmest day of the year so far. The maximum was 86 on my 'official' mercury in glass thermometer. The AcuRite remote showed a high of 84.

I got a quick (0005Z) streak QSO this evening from LZ3ND on 20 meters. That's 5 days in a row now I've worked some DX. It sure is nice to be working DX again especially when I'm busy with something and need a quick QSO for the streak. Tonight was such a night since my neighbor and I were having subs about 8:15PM (0015Z). -30-

Sat May 23 2020 8:30PM - Before I talk about the day with Mike, I'll go over the events of this evening. Although the bands weren't all that great this afternoon when Mike and I listened, they were good this evening. I actually heard signals on 17 meters! I even worked one of them, YV5IUA John. Let me just see when my last QSO on 17 was. It's been a while. November 28, 2018 when I worked H7/RM0F. So that's about a year and a half now.

As always, Mike and I had a great day. He arrived about 9:45AM just as I was about to take Roscoe out. I took care of that, and then we settled down to running trains after watching some train videos. We gave his Hudson and Big Boy extensive runs. We had a bit of trouble with the Big Boy because the MTH draw bar connector wasn't pushed in all the way. Their draw bar is difficult to connect. Then we ran my NKP diesel for a while and it behaved well. My steam engines all ran well too with a couple minor glitches which were quickly corrected. Sometime along here, we went out for about a mile and a half walk to enjoy the nice warm weather and get some exercise. Next it was a check of the ham bands. At that time of day around 1630Z they had little to offer so we watched some more videos before heading out to check on some supplies for Mike's train setup at home. Then it was a stop at Subway to pick up a couple subs to take out. After walking Roscoe again, it was back to the shack again where we found the bands a little better, but not much. I did manage to work HA3NU on 20, and Mike almost got him also, but not quite. Some more videos and running trains followed. This time we had a minor problem with Mike's Hudson. When I picked it up to put on the tracks, a small screw fell out. After finding where it went and replacing it, it ran well as did all the other engines. Mike brought me a birthday cake and we dug into that next. We closed out the day with some videos and some computer games before Mike had to leave for home just as I was about to head to the shack for my streak QSO. I'm sure that covers all our activities although they may not all be in the correct order. HI -30-

Fri May 22 2020 8:18PM - The bands seemed to have regressed back to the poor conditions of a few months ago. There was very little activity heard here, although some of it was DX including the station I worked. Early in the hour I heard and tried to work F2YT on 30 meters, but couldn't. So I checked 40 and found it wanting. One station I heard went from S9 down into my noise quickly. I also heard LZ50BFRA weakly. I called but only got a possible ? from him whether it was for me or someone else. I was thinking of maybe just waiting till tomorrow when Mike will be here to get my QSO. However I went back to 30 meters again and F2YT was still there just a little stronger. I gave a quick call and got him right away this time with nary a repeat needed. Strange how the bands work. You should never give up completely too quickly. But don't wait forever for a station unless it is one you really need for some reason. Sometimes conditions are not going to change and you'll continue to fail in trying to work him. You've got to learn when to keep going and when to quit.

I got a couple of American Flyer trucks and couplers in the mail today. They were link couplers so I replaced one of the knuckle coupler trucks on the hopper car I got the other day and now I can use it in my consist. I'll keep it as one link and one knuckle coupler so it can be something I can use to connect strings of both kind of cars together. I'm also getting an adapter coupler that can connect link to knuckle couplers. That will make things even more versatile. Hopefully that will be here tomorrow. Then I'll have to get some more AF rolling stock. -30-

Thu May 21 2020 8:37PM - I didn't find anyone to work right away at 0000Z so I thought I'd try some CQs on 20. As soon as I sent QRL? I saw a peak on the panadapter right next to me and checked to see who it was. It was a not too strong 9A9A. I gave a call and after a couple tries he came back with the desired K3WWP 599. I sent my exchange and another DX station was added to my log and another day to my streak.

As soon as I typed QRL? above, I thought of one of those "Why is it that..." questions I haven't asked here in the diary in a long time now. Why is it that some folks send QRL when they really mean QRL?. Maybe they don't know the differenct so I'll explain it here. QRL? asks if the frequency is busy or in use. QRL means yes, the frequency is busy or in use. It's a subtle difference but a very important one. The question mark makes a big difference. Please use it if you mean to ask if the frequency is busy, don't omit it. Thanks from me and many other hams, I'm sure.

My day today was occupied with the usual things. I worked on and played with my trains a lot, especially the new old American Flyer train. I pruned my tree a bit in the back yard which isn't a usual thing, I guess as I only do it about once a year. I walked Roscoe which has become one of the favorite things I do each day, and it's even nicer now that the good weather is here. Although I like it in the bad weather also. He is a real joy.

I guess that sums up the day. I'm looking forward to seeing Mike again this Saturday. Nothing special planned, just hanging out together probably doing trains and ham radio. Really nowhere to go to do much else. -30-

Wed May 20 2020 8:23PM - At 0000Z I heard LZ50BFRA going unanswered in his CQs, so I gave a call even though I worked him 8 days ago and worked him easily. Had he been busy, I wouldn't have called and maybe deprived someone else who hadn't worked him yet of getting a QSO. That pretty much sums up my policy of working or not working DX.

Just another 'normal' day here with nothing out of the ordinary to talk about. Our NAQCC sprint is coming up in a couple minutes and I intend to go back to the shack and get at least one QSO so it will count as a participation point for me. -30-

Tue May 19 2020 8:48PM - An interesting evening on the bands tonite. I had a couple things happen that haven't happened in quite some time now. I started out with a QSO with KO4AXD on 20 meters. He is almost a brand new ham, having gotten his license in January of this year. He does very well copying and sending CW. It's always a joy to work a new ham who uses CW. After that I got a tail-end call from N5URL in NM, the first NM station I've worked in a long time except in contests. I may check to see just how long it has been now. That was followed by another tail-end call from K1ETA in RI. Except for contests, that has to be a very long time since I got three QSOs in a row from two tail-end calls. 20 meters seemed pretty much wide open tonight since I worked VA, NM, and RI within about 40 minutes.

It was another nice day today with us being located outside the northeast edge of a closed low pressure system that's dumping a deluge of rain on Ohio and Kentucky and a couple other places. It looks like it is going to continue missing us as it swings around us to the south out into the Atlantic Ocean in a few days. It was so nice I cut my grass today and watered my tomatoes and bean seeds. I hope the seeds will sprout well this year unlike last year when I had to replant a couple times. -30-

Mon May 18 2020 8:31PM - Not much going on again today. I did some work on my American Flyer train, cleaning the wheels and the track. I got my hopper car in the mail today, but it had the wrong kind of couplers so I'll either have to do some modification or perhaps return it. First I want to check and see if the error was on my part or on the part of the seller on Ebay.

I also helped my neighbor fix his front porch steps. Other than that, still just the same old same old.

Took a while to get my QSO tonight. Lots of stations around, but no one I could work, so I called CQ and after a while got an answer from KC3MIO for a short QSO. -30-

Sun May 17 2020 8:07PM - That is at least a tie for my fastest streak QSO. I turned on the rig at 0000Z, saw a signal almost exactly where I got my QSO last night, tuned to it, found it was KP4TF Eddie calling CQ. Got him on my very first call with no repeats. That was good, because I'm doing my laundry now to get that out of the way so I can do some train work tomorrow. I got some CRC Contact Cleaner in the mail today, and I want to clean out the reversing unit on my American Flyer train along with some other things.

It looks like Mike and I will be getting together the next couple of Saturdays. First just a regular visit, then the following Saturday we'll do a tag team effort in the CQ WPX contest. Only on Saturday though. We won't be doing the whole two days. That will be fun.

I said a couple entries ago I was going to see how many countries I've worked so far in 2020. I did that today and found there were 54 including W and VE. I think 49 of those were in the ARRL DX contest which Mike and I also did as a tag team effort incidentally. I doubt I'll make a DXCC this year unless I hit all the big DX contests - WPX, IARU, CQWW DX, and maybe a couple smaller ones here and there.

The laundry is about ready for the dryer so I'll close for now. -30-

Sat May 16 2020 8:56PM - I worked a couple stations (USA) in the EA KOS contest this evening, then worked WW0SS on 30 meters for a rag chew. The bands continue to be good.

I paid some middle of the month bills this morning. This afternoon I planted out the two Better Boy tomato plants I bought a couple weeks ago. I'll still wait some more before planting out the tomatoes and peppers I started from seed. They were very slow to develop this year and are still pretty small. -30-

Fri May 15 2020 8:17PM - More DX. I worked CT3MD on 20 for the streak this evening. Easy QSO although I did have to repeat my call a couple times before I got greeted by name. We worked before three times, all in 2018. Since I've been getting more DX lately, I think I'm going to have to see how many countries I've worked so far in 2020. Not right now though.

I did a few different things today for a change. I planted my bean seeds since it was such a nice warm day. Our first 80 degree day this year, I believe. We hit about 82 or 83 degrees.

I also built a little cradle for my American Flyer cars to work on them. I had one for other scales, but not for AF until today.

Then my neighbor and I took Roscoe to Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone. Now we are going to order a couple subs for ourselves. Roscoe will probably get his share of them also. In fact we will be ordering them pretty soon, so I better close now. -30-

Thu May 14 2020 8:29PM - Our up and down weather of late was up today. Increasing clouds and mild getting up near 70 in late afternoon as a warm front pushed through from the SW. Some lite rain mixed in, but that was better than a lot of the days of late.

Still not a lot going on besides the usual routine of late. Work on and run my trains, do some work and play games on the computer, take care of Roscoe, and the like. I ordered a hopper car for my American Flyer layout today, along with some contact/wheels/track cleaner. I've really enjoyed using PayPal/Ebay since I signed up early last year after saying for years I'd never get into any kind of electronic financial transactions. I guess time changes a lot of things. Plus ordering on-line is pretty much essential in the current situation.

The bands were fairly good this evening. Although I heard a fairly strong MM0GOR station on 20 and he never heard a peep out of me the several times I called him. I gave up and went to 40 and called CQ. I worked Art VE3AIH for the streak QSO. -30-

Wed May 13 2020 8:46PM - A nice day today with lots of sunshine and mild temperatures in the 60s. A good day to shop and stock up on groceries which I did with my neighbor. Just a bit chilly with a breeze, but I did sit on the porch for a while.

I gave my American Flyer loco, tender, and caboose a good wheel cleaning today and ran them for quite a while along with my Lionel Berkshire engine. Now with the AF running very good, I'm going shopping on Ebay for some rolling stock.

When I turned the rig on tonight right there on 20 was LZ50BFRA whom I worked last night on the same frequency. I didn't work him again, but could have. I just thought it interesting to find him still at the exact same spot on the dial as when I turned the rig off last night. For my QSO I called CQ on 40 and worked Dick WB3AVF.

Oh, it only got down to 32 last night even though it was clear and calm. I don't think it cleared early enough to reach record territory. -30-

Tue May 12 2020 8:20PM - Some more DX this evening. LZ50BFRA wasn't all that strong, but he heard me the first call. Then a few repeats of my call till he got it right and I had my streak QSO for another day. That was on 20 meters and the call is for the 50th anniversary of the Bulgarian Ham Radio Association BFRA.

It was a mild, but breezy day. The breeze took away the mildness and the wind chill felt just that, a chill. Still I did a little yard work tying up my rose bushes and digging the grass out between some bricks. It looks like another cold night tonight especially if the skies clear and the breeze dies down. We might get down in the 20s if that does happen. -30-

Mon May 11 2020 8:30PM - I got my American Flyer caboose in the mail today. I thought I'd show a picture of my layout featuring it and the 322 loco and tender. So here goes with some notes to follow.

That's the AF loco, tender, and caboose just below center in the picture. At the very left is my Lionel Berkshire # 736. At top, left to right, Mike's Hudson, his Big Boy, [my gang car (orange), my Navy shifter (blue), my Lionel 1060 all three in a row], my Lionel F3 Santa Fe ABA, right above the AF are my NKP 782 diesel and my Lionel 2037 and tender. At bottom a MPH chart and an S scale ruler I made just today. Over at the right a couple Menard's cars Mike gave me.

As far as ham radio, I took the easy route tonight for my streak. I found and worked 4A60M on 20 a couple minutes past 0000Z. It was about a month since I worked them so I didn't mind making a repeat QSO.

It was an encore for winter today after a nice day yesterday. It could have been another daytime low maximum reading, but I keep only midnight to midnight and 9PM to 9PM records and it was rather warm last night at those start times. At 12M it was 47 and in the 50s at 9PM, so those will go down as the highs for today. However I never saw anything above about 43 when I occasionally glanced at the temperature during daylight hours. -30-

Sun May 10 2020 8:28PM - Sometimes (most of the time?) it is so frustrating having this strong local noise. I hate being unable to copy someone well, even to the point sometimes of having to cut the contact short because of the noise. Tonight for example, K5OO called me using QRP and I could hear him under my noise but couldn't get good copy. After I asked him to repeat his call a couple times, he switched to 90 watts and still it was rough copy although I did get at least half of the info and we had about a rough 8 minute QSO. Mark is a regular diary reader and made some nice comments on the diary entries. So if you're reading tonight's entry Mark, I apologize for the tough time my local noise was giving me during our contact.

It started out cold again today at 32 degrees, but warmed slowly to the lower 60s. Now it's supposed to get a few degrees warmer each day until at least Friday when it may be near 80. That will sure feel good.

I found a great American Flyer Ebay store today that seems to have just about everything American Flyer with very reasonable prices. I'll probably be getting a lot from them as I build my American Flyer setup. Today I ordered a smoke fluid funnel which should help with the very small fill tube inside the AM smokestacks. -30-

Sat May 9 2020 8:44PM - Caution, this entry contains pictures that may be offensive to some.

Before that however, some other info. The CQM contest this evening aided my getting a couple of quick streak QSOs. One was VE3TM on 20 and the other on the same band was R9PA. Except for 4 Asians in this year's ARRL DX contest, that is the first Asian I've worked since May 27, 2018, nearly two years ago. And it was an easy QSO as he was quite strong and I got him right away after he worked a few other (stronger) stations. Another sign that things continue to pick up on the bands.

I got my American Flyer track connector along with the American Flyer Repair and Operating Guide in the mail today. So now I've got a good connection to the track instead of some old clip leads.

We had an unusual weather day today. We didn't make the all time low temperature overnight last night as it clouded up during the night and only dropped to 29. So the record of 26 set 7 times still stands. We also came close to the all time low maximum daily temperature for May. The maximum today was 43 on my shelter thermometer and 42 on my AcuRite remote unit. That ties today with 43 on May 7, 1989 for second place behind 41 on May 9, 1966. The mean of 36 today does tie May 9, 1966 as the lowest daily mean temperature for May. All the above refers to my records here in Kittanning since I began keeping records in January of 1959. It also s#$wed today as shown in these pictures taken this afternoon.

-30-

Fri May 8 2020 8:27PM - Anytime Mike visits, you can count on it being a good day. Today was no exception. Mike arrived at about 10AM just when I was finishing up taking care of Roscoe.

We started out with our trains. I showed off my new old American Flyer 322 locomotive. After that, we tried out Mike's repaired Hudson locomotive that he picked up at Hobbyspeed in Indiana, PA on the way here. Thankfully it worked beautifully in the long run we gave it. Then we did the Big Boy for a bit. That was running them conventionally. Later we hooked up Mike's DCS control system and gave them an even longer trial. They passed with flying colors.

Next we just ran all the trains for a while before going to the shack to check out the bands. There was some activity on 20 meters including some DX which we couldn't seem to work. Then it was on to another of our favorite activities, eating. We got two pizzas from Vocelli's via curbside pickup and polished off most of them when we got home.

Watching some train related videos occupied some more time until we went back to the shack again with a bit more success this time. Mike worked KP2M on 20. I had worked Phil a couple days ago so I didn't bother trying to work him this time. Next up was HG20ST. Mike persisted and worked him after trying many times. I then said I might need the HG20 prefix, so I sat down at the key and got him on my very first try. Funny how that works. I just happened to be at the key during a peak in propagation and a lull is stations calling him. Then I worked Ben DL6FBL whom I've worked many times. I then went to walk Roscoe while Mike tried unsuccessfully to work Ben.

Another hour or so of videos and trains closed out our day. Mike headed home and I headed for the shack to get my streak QSO which I did from Eric NM5M in Dallas on 20 meters.

Oh, Mike and I also talked about some ham radio plans. We wondered what we would do for Museum Ships on the Air. That was quickly decided when we checked and found out it has been cancelled. We also talked about FD, and it seems like our regular operation the past few years of setting up on my porch with temporary antennas would fit the guidelines being proposed by ARRL in this unusual year would be ideal. We've pretty much given up on our other planned activities involving railroads and ham radio which will probably also be cancelled this year. However we still plan to get together, just the two of us, for activities like we did today.

A final note. There is a possibility we will set an all time record low temperature for May overnight tonight. At least since 1959 for here and in Pittsburgh since I believe, 1871. It's predicted to be 24 which is two degrees below the current record of 26. Right now it's 37 degrees already at 9PM. -30-

Thu May 7 2020 8:27PM - Good bands again but I couldn't seem to find anyone to work and couldn't get an answer to my CQs, so I settled on working CR2STAYHOME again on 40 meters. I don't like to have dupe QSOs with special stations like that so as to not deprive someone else of a chance to work them, but I was getting tired trying to work someone.

Well, finally something different tomorrow. Mike is going to pay a visit after he stops in Indiana, PA to pick up a locomotive that finally came back from repairs. We'll probably do a lot of train stuff and check the bands a couple times plus who knows what else. I think this is the longest we've gone without a gettogether in a long time now. -30-

Wed May 6 2020 8:50PM - Again tonight I got an answer to my 40M CQ from Roger W9BZ. Tonite we chatted for 36 minutes so I'm running a little late with my web updates.

I got my American Flyer 322 today and I'm very pleased with it. I'll talk more about it in tomorrow's diary entry when I have more time.

It was a nasty day today with rain and chill most of the day. It was in the 40s until the sun came out early this evening and gave us a little time in the low 50s. A good day to be inside with my trains anyway. -30-

Tue May 5 2020 8:48PM - Good bands again. Not quite as busy on 20 and 30 though and I wound up on 40 for my streak QSO with W9BZ. We had a nice 33 minute rag chew with a little QSB now and then, but pretty much solid copy all the way.

Not a lot going on as usual today. I ran my trains quite a bit. It got a little warmer late in the day so I sat on the porch for a while early this evening. I see my American Flyer loco is in Warrendale, PA which is usually the last stop before being delivered so I may be getting it tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that. I honestly don't remember much about the American Flyer I had as a kid, and the only remnants I have here are a couple pieces of track and the 322 engine and tender which are really just a pile of parts with many missing. Maybe when I get this one set up and running it will trigger some memories. I remember running the old Lionel 736 quite well with my dad on the living room floor which incidentally is just where I have it set up now. -30-

Mon May 4 2020 8:27PM - More DX this evening as the bands continue to improve pretty much daily now. Tonight it was Phil KP2M whom I've worked many times. We chatted a bit about a new remote station he is setting up down in the Caribbean. Then I called CQ on 30 and was answered by C6AFV, another station I've worked a lot.

It was a chilly day today so I wasn't outside much except for a short walk and walking Roscoe. Oh and I did deadhead my tulips as they had lost about half their petals. They lasted pretty good this year since blooming just before Easter.

Inside I did some train work. I got my American Flyer transformer in the mail today. I checked it out and used it a bit to run my Lionel Berkshire. It's in good shape and now awaiting arrival of my American Flyer 322 locomotive later this week. I also set up my AF track oval in preparation (anticipation?) of the 322 getting here. -30-

Sun May 3 2020 8:43PM - The bands were lively again tonight with a lot of activity on 20 and 30. I never even made it down to 40 after working N4ARY in GA on 20 and AE4YP in FL on 30 for my streak QSO(s).

It was a warm day today. Perhaps the warmest of the year so far according to my recollections without checking my records. Well, let me take a quick glance at my AcuRite data. Well, it's a tie. 78 today and also back on March 29. It sure felt good for a change. We took another shopping trip this morning to get Roscoe's food. I also picked up a couple Better Boy tomato plants. I usually don't get the bigger tomatoes, but I didn't see any Rutgers or Early Girl where I looked so I grabbed the Better Boys. We have some lows in the 30s coming up this week, so I think I'll wait till next weekend or so to plant them out. My seed started tomatoes and peppers are progressing very slowly and it may not be until June that they are ready to go out.

I ordered an American Flyer 322 locomotive and tender today and also made some room for my AF layout. I'm shooting for next weekend to have an up and running AF setup. -30-

Sat May 2 2020 8:11PM - Good bands again tonight and with the W7 QSO Party in action, it was easy to work K7M in AZ on 20M at 0001Z to quickly solidify the streak for another day.

Otherwise it was a nice weather day with a high around 70 and no rain. I did some porch sitting, some lawn trimming as my outdoor activity. My neighbor and I went shopping early this morning again. Two more trips tomorrow and Monday and we should be caught up and stocked up for a while now.

I ordered an American Flyer power supply today. Tomorrow I think I'll go for the locomotive. I have an old 322 loco here, but it's way beyond easy repair with a lot of missing parts. So I think I'll order a 322. I found several on Ebay today and now I just have to narrow it down to one and go for it. -30-

Fri May 1 2020 8:47PM - Yep, it's May. I feel like I've been kind of cheated out of March and April this year and at my age, I can't afford to lose too many more months.

The bands continue good anyway. Tonight I chatted a bit with Angel KP4ARR on 20, then worked SE station W5L in LA celebrating the Louisiana Purchase.

I did the April weather stats today, and the bottom line is it's a rare cool month of late. The average temperature was 0.9 degrees below normal. Even stranger perhaps was there was only one daily record and that was a greatest daily precipitation one day early in the month when there was 0.83 inches of rain.

Other news briefly. I received my American Flyer 40" x 60" loop of track today. Now it's on to getting a power supply, locomotive, rolling stock, etc. I also did some shopping with my neighbor Bruce today. We got some stuff for Roscoe and some food and other things for ourselves. Time now to get the weather records then a little later walk Roscoe. -30-

Thu Apr 30 2020 9:25PM - Another DX station tonight. IK5MEJ on 30 meters. Lots of DX on 20, but couldn't get any of them there.

My end of month chores kept me busy today and I still have a couple I want to get done before bedtime so I'll cut this entry short for now. -30-

Wed Apr 29 2020 9:10AM - I didn't get a chance to finish it for yesterday's diary entry, so here it is now. I mean the data about the ages of hams I worked. I only did the ages so far. I'll do the years licensed another time. I did one set of data for 2020 so far and one for all of 2019.

Number of QSOs where an age was obtained:
2019 - 82
2020 - 33
I made no attempt to check on duplicate QSOs where I got the age each time. However there were very few if any.

Youngest and oldest age:
2019 - 39 86
2020 - 43 82

Average age:
2019 - 68.5
2020 - 70.9
Although the ham age is increasing, this is too small a sample to know if that stat shows that or is just an anomaly in the stats due to the small sample size. Also of course this only shows hams who use CW.

Most "popular" age:
2019 - 66 (5)
2020 - 75 (7)

Hams under 60 and 80+
2019 - 11 3
2020 - 3 7

Bottom line is that hams who use CW are OLD, yours truly included. HI -30-

Tue Apr 28 2020 8:37PM - Another DX station added to the streak this evening. XE1YZY on 20 meters made the streak now 9,400 straight days.

A few days ago I talked about perhaps getting an American Flyer train setup. I took the first step today and ordered some AF track, a 40" X 60" loop of it. Next I'll get a power supply if I don't have something I can use here. Then a locomotive followed by some rolling stock. Then I'll have to find a place to put it. I think it should fit inside my Lionel loop which would save some space. Stay tuned for more details as they unfold. -30-

Mon Apr 27 2020 8:39PM - DX at the stroke of 0000Z tonight. I heard KP4ARR calling CQ on 20 meters and got him with one repeat of my call. Since that was so quick, I tried some CQs on 40 meters and after a few minutes, W9BZ answered my call and we had a 20 minute solid QSO although there was some QSB in our last round. He is 81 years old and been a ham for 66 of those years. Makes me feel a bit younger now. HI.

When someone gives me an age and how long they've been a ham, I note that in my paper log, but not in my computer log. Some time ago, I analyzed those figures and gave a report here in the diary. I think I'll do so again, and if I can find the previous diary entry, I'll compare then and now. I'm guessing the figures will be about the same, but the current averages might be a little higher as the ham population continues to age. I only brought one log page down from the shack here to the computer and don't feel like going back up to get more pages so I'll put off the report for now. However here are the ages from this page: 81, 59, 81, 75, 81. Looks like 81 is a popular age. They are three different hams. The years as a ham: 65, 47, 65, 60, 66. The three 81 year olds were first licensed within a year or so of each other. -30-

Sun Apr 26 2020 8:40PM - Would you believe it. I made 2 2XQRP QSOs this evening on 40 meters. That's quite unusual for quite a while now as I deal with this high local QRN. Thanks to Joe W4HH and Art WA1GOV. Copy on both stations was pretty solid both ways but it was a bit rough on this end.

Otherwise I spent a lot of time today doing computer work. I got caught up on logging my LoTW and eQSL records. Let's see, I now have 22,727 QSOs verified on LoTW and 13,739 via eQSL. Somewhere between 6,499 and 9,727 verified on regular QSL cards. The wide variance is because at one time I only put a Y in my log to note a card received - that's the 9,727. The 6,499 I logged a date I received the card. 9,727 is probably closest to an accurate total since the ones with a date received for the most part also have the Y. Then I also have another column that supposedly counts QSOs that are verified by one, two, or all three methods. It shows 35,148 QSOs verified. That seems kind of high to me. I'm going to have to check into that sometime. I wrote the formula for that in my Microsoft Excel log quite some time ago. That will give me something to do also. HI. Oh as far as total QSOs go, it's 91,627 only counting QSOs using K3WWP, excluding KN3WWP, WA3IXO, N3AQC, NY3EC, etc.

I also did some work on my weather records and family tree records. Speaking of weather, it's about time to go out and get my readings for the day, so I'll close here. -30-

Sat Apr 25 2020 8:08PM - I knew the FL QSO Party would give me a quick streak QSO. It wasn't quite as quick as I thought as the stations I called all seemed to have pileups. But I did work N4S at 0005Z on 40M pretty easily.

Like most days lately, nothing out of the ordinary went on. It was another 70+ degree day with some porch sitting. Other than that and some train operating, that was about it. -30-

Fri Apr 24 2020 8:23PM - Same station, different band. See the first paragraph of last night's diary entry and just change the band from 40 to 30. No use typing it all in again tonight. HI

Still really not much to write about here in the diary. -30-

Thu Apr 23 2020 8:18PM - DX Part II! I guess the II Roman numeral 2 is appropriate since my QSO was with II5MPI on 40M. He was kind of up and down the first few times I called him, so I tuned away looking for someone else. However I then went back to him and he was booming in and I worked him easily with one repeat of my call. It's the Mediterrano DX Club station 10th Anniversary. Look them up on QRZ if you want more info.

It was a nice day that approached 70 degrees so I did a little outside work and also put the screens in my front storm door. Hope that wasn't too premature. HI. It was nice to get some fresh air into the house anyway. -30-

Wed Apr 22 2020 8:17PM - DX! Yes, I worked some DX for the first time in about 10 days. I heard 9Z4Y in Trinidad calling CQ on 20. He wasn't very strong, but I tried anyway. It took a couple minutes to make the QSO with rough copy both ends. However it was definitely a good QSO because I am in his QRZ on air log already. It felt good to get my RF out of the USA again.

Once again it's the same old story with the rest of my life's daily routine. It's still cold here, and windy which makes it feel even colder. So I can't even sit out on the porch to at least do something different. I did a little more work on my train layout. I also was watching some videos about old American Flyer trains. I'm getting the itch to maybe get an AF setup going. I only have a couple short pieces of track and parts of an old locomotive though. So it will take some Ebay shopping to get to the point where I can have a layout and something to run on it. At least I do have the time to do it though. I'll also need some ambition and some space to set it up. We'll see what happens. -30-

Tue Apr 21 2020 8:53PM - A couple interesting (different) things to write about in today's entry.

The weather was a bit strage today. The maximum and minimum temperatures were just under two hours apart which is unusual. The low was 38 at 5:03AM and the high was 49 at 7:00AM after which it dropped a couple degrees then stayed pretty steady the rest of the day or more accurately fell slowly. Then this afternoon when it was at 44 degrees, it s@#ed for a little while. Of course no accumulation, but I've only seen s#$w at that temperature a couple times in my life.

Then this evening I heard my friend Jock N1JI calling CQ on 30 meters. He was quite weak and faded badly at the end of his CQ, but I thought I'd give him a call anyway. I never heard him come back to my call. However when I got down here to the computer there was an email from him saying he heard my call, but nothing after that. I blame it mostly on my still bad local noise here. Anyway I then went to 40 and got my streak QSO from W2QE in NJ. -30-

Mon Apr 20 2020 8:46PM - I thought of this a few months ago, but don't think I ever mentioned it in the diary. You know how some nations give names to the years like Year of the Cat and so forth. I think this should be the Year of Good Vision. You know like 20-20 vision. And that's definitely the end of that. I think I'm getting cabin fever.

Conditions on the bands about medium this evening. Nothing to write home about nor anything to complain about. I got my streak QSO at 0010Z from W8AJU in MI on 80 meters.

Today was laundry day and I also did some house cleaning, played with the trains, and worked a jigsaw puzzle with my neighbor. We've been working a lot of them lately to pass the time while under "house arrest". -30-

Sun Apr 19 2020 8:34PM - As usual of late, not much to talk about here. Just the usual stuff. Getting my streak QSO in the evening after working/playing with my trains during the day along with working on some computer records and ham radio records.

It was a comparatively nice day weather wise for a change. We made it to 60 without any rain or strong breezes. Not much sun but we did see some blue sky now and then. Hopefully it will stay nice like that for a while now.

I also did some work on my family tree after discovering a new branch. I almost forgot how to use my genealogy program after not using it for quite a while. That should be another thing to help pass the "stay at home" time for a while now. -30-

Sat Apr 18 2020 8:09PM - I'm sure those of you into contesting are very familiar with K3LR. Some of you may be familiar with the Skyview Radio Society. The two are going to be combined for a streaming video tour of the K3LR station for Skyview members of whom I am one. It should be interesting, to say the least. At the very least it is a way to pass the time in these times of virtual "house arrest". I'd give more info, but the viewership list is very limited. If you are really curious, perhaps a Bing search for Skyview might turn up some info.

Meanwhile life 2020 style goes on and on and o......

I did some work on my weather records today and sorted some pictures on my computer. This evening it was the MI QSO Party, so an easy quick streak QSO was had from W8MJ on 80 meters. -30-

Fri Apr 17 2020 8:38PM - I had a QSO this evening that kind of took me back to my Novice days many years ago. I couldn't seem to raise anyone. I didn't find any CQs nor get any answers to mine. Finally though I heard a station calling CQ slower than 10 WPM, I would estimate. He was a good 599, so I dusted off my straight key, so to speak, since I can't send that slow on a paddle or bug, and gave him a call close to his speed. I had to repeat my call a couple times before he got it. He had a good fist. It took a little while to exchange RST, QTH, and name because of the speed, but it was solid copy. We didn't go beyond the basic info as he said 73 after that. I am kind of curious as to the slow speed. I don't know if he was just new to CW or some other reason. He used good procedure like he had used CW for a while. I guess it will remain a mystery unless he happens to read this diary report and emails me.

At least that was something a little different. Things like that do make a difference in these boring (sort of) daily routines of late.

As expected, I learned today that the Breezeshooters Butler hamfest scheduled for June 6/7 has been cancelled. So another event has been shot down for 2020. Sigh! -30-

Thu Apr 16 2020 8:43PM - The bands seem to have backslidden a bit tonight. There was nowhere near the amount of activity on 40, 30, and 20. In fact I only heard one weak signal on 30 and none on 20. A few more on 40, but couldn't find any CQs and no one answered my CQs. So it was back to 80 for my streak QSO from Larry W8VLN. That's the first time I've had a QSO on 80 since April 1. The higher bands have been great since then.

Pretty much the same routine here except my neighbor Bruce and I went for a stocking up shopping trip early this morning and now we're bot set for at least a few weeks if all goes well. It was nice to see the stores pretty empty in the 8AM hour. The one store had more employees than customers. They were all busy stocking the shelves. -30-

Wed Apr 15 2020 8:48PM - While I was on the air this evening, I was looking at the date on my log (4-16 UTC) and I think that was the day back in 1969 that I was interviewed to work at WPIT, although in looking at my log, I still was on the air quite a bit for 3-4 weeks after that. I'll have to delve into my material from WPIT to figure out the discrepancy if any. Probably there was just a period between interview and actually starting to work. Whatever the exact dates, that's 51 years ago now. Wow. I guess I'm getting old. HI

At least that's still six years less than the time I've been a ham. But then, that makes me even older in a way. HI

I made two easy QSOs for my streak this evening as the bands continue in good shape. I answered a CQ from WA0USA on 20 for a short QSO, then went to 40 to call my own CQ and got an answer and a 23 minute QSO from K8EK up in Michigan. WA0USA was in Florida. I heard one of the special 4A60 Mexican stations on 30, but much to weak to even call. -30-

Tue Apr 14 2020 8:44PM - Still another good night for the bands. I was even hearing several QRP stations in our NAQCC sprint on 20 meters. I only took time to work one though as I have other things to do. Before that I had a nice chat with K2HYD in VA on 40 meters.

It was a chilly day today and as on most days lately I just spent my time in the house except for walking Roscoe. I ran my trains quite a bit today and did some more work on the layout, mainly widening one road I have running through the center of the area. -30-

Mon Apr 13 2020 8:27PM - Another 0000Z QSO this evening thanks to Jim K4AOA on 40 meters. The bands were quite good again this evening with a lot of activity on 40, and a few good signals on 30 and 20. Since my QSO came so quickly, I decided to tune around and look for DX. I heard some very weak stations, not even strong enough to try since I wouldn't copy well enough to know it they answered me or not. Next I tried some CQs and I got one answer, but he was too weak and too far down in my noise to even get his call. I think it was WB3 something. I hate it when I can't copy someone. Even more so than when someone can't copy me.

We had a high wind warning today with predictions ranging from 45 to 60 MPH gusts. Fortunately it didn't materialize. Perhaps we hit 30 MPH or so and that was it. So I took in my hanging plants and wind chimes for nothing, but it was better that it didn't happen. We have enough problems without wind damaging things on top of it all. -30-

Sun Apr 12 2020 8:30PM - Happy Easter everyone:

tulips

My tulips timed their blossoming quite well this year. This is how they looked on Easter Sunday afternoon. Looks like about 2/3 to 3/4 are in full bloom and the remainder will get to that point in another day or two. I counted around 60 flowers this year, up a bit from last year.

I got a quick streak QSO again this evening when I found and quickly worked CR2STAYHOME through a small pile up at 0002Z on 40 meters. If you look up CR2STAYHOME on QRZ, there is a nice video posted there about the current World situation.

Still nothing much new or different around here. I did go out for a walk in the nearly 70 degree weather late this afternoon. -30-

Sat Apr 11 2020 9:03PM - Pretty much the same old story today, except my neighbor and I took a trip to Walmart to get dog food for Roscoe. So he's set now for about a month and a half as far as food goes.

This evening I got one of my quickest streak QSOs ever. It was only a couple seconds past 0000Z when I called and worked WW4LL in the GA QSO Party. And I know that is an accurite time since my shack clock is set regularly with WWVB and is always within 1 second of the exact time. I wanted to get a quick QSO because my neighbor and I ordered a couple of subs to come a little past 8PM or 0000Z.

I hope you all have a blessed Easter tomorrow. I'm sure you will although it may not be quite the normal happy Easter this year. We'll just have to make the best of it. -30-

Fri Apr 10 2020 8:54PM - Once again nothing really to report. Just another boring day. I'm very grateful to at least have Roscoe to walk 5 times a day. There's nothing else much to do outside. I'm sure missing a lot of the good things like our parkpeditions, trips to the Requin, hamfests, and so forth. Hopefully things will improve at least by late summer or early fall if not sooner.

The bands seemed pretty good tonight with strong signals on 80, 40, and 30 and some weaker signals on 20 where I worked WB5LPN in Texas for the streak.

I woke up today to s#$w covered ground. I guess maybe around 1/2 to 1 inch or so. If there is any s@#w to be good s@#w, it's that which comes in April as it is gone pretty much as quick as it came. There's none to be seen now. -30-

Thu Apr 9 2020 8:32PM - Conditions seem to have bounced back tonight. 40 was pretty full of stations, and I got my QSO immediately at 0000Z when I answered the CQ of WD9DWE on 40 meters. 30 and 20 also had some good signals again including KP4TF on 20 whom I probably could have worked, but I didn't try.

As usual of late, not much else to talk about outside the usual routine things. We had lite rain off and on today. At one point early this evening I saw a little s#$w on my neighbor's porch steps. No where else, just there. It was around 40 degrees and it didn't last long. We might get some small accumulation overnight though. But like all April s#$Ws, they melt as quickly as they lay. Thank goodness. -30-

Wed Apr 8 2020 8:47PM - Remember Sherman, Peabody, and the Wayback Machine? Well, I think someone used the machine this evening to go back a couple months. At least conditions sounded like they did back then rather than how they have sounded the past few weeks. The bands were quite dead, or at least lightly occupied. There were a few strong signals, with the key word being few. I heard nothing on 20, one strong signal on 30, a few signals on 40 and 80. At least I managed to work K0ZU in TX on 40 for the streak. It was a minimal change of info, but enough to qualify as a legit QSO. I hope tonight is just a slight setback and things will go back to how they have been recently very soon.

Otherwise not much to report. Another 70 degree day so I sat on the porch a while and walked to the grocery store to get a few items. Inside I worked on my HO train layout a bit. -30-

Tue Apr 7 2020 9:03PM - I had a tough time getting a QSO this evening for some reason. I answered several CQs, but either wasn't heard or the CQer answered someone else. I finally did get KC2RG for a brief QSO, but never could get that second QSO. I listened and listened to our NAQCC sprint and didn't hear a single station. Almost like the sprint was cancelled or I had the wrong night.

Otherwise nothing much to report. I did go for an outside walk for the first time in a few days. The weather wasn't bad after a little rain earlier in the day. -30-

Mon Apr 6 2020 8:50PM - Seems to me that band conditions are definitely on the mend. Every evening since April 1 forty meters has been very much alive with many good signals. It's almost getting hard to find a spot to call CQ if needed. For the past 5 evenings I've gotten more than one QSO on 40. As I said, I'm going to see how long I can keep that up. Tonight it was AC4KS in VA and AF5WR in MS.

This was a busy day today with doing my laundry and mowing the grass in my backyard as the two biggest jobs along with a few other smaller things. The weather was very nice again in the upper 60s with a lot of sunshine earlier but increasing clouds as the afternoon wore on. I guess the next few days will be rainy though. You know, April showers.

I received my first The Lion Roars today, one of the publications of the Lionel Collectors Club of America I joined about a month ago. Looks like some nice reading in bed tonight. I always read something for about a half hour before going to sleep.

Now it's time to go out and get my weather readings. -30-

Sun Apr 5 2020 9:13PM - Kind of a strange night on the bands tonight. The bands were good up through 20 meters. But for quite some time I couldn't find anyone calling CQ and couldn't get an answer to my CQs. Finally after about a half hour I found and worked VO2NS on 40. Then went back to calling CQ and got an answer from KD2ITZ. However on his first transmission, the band did a quick change artist routine and he went from a solid strong 599 to nil in just several seconds and never did come back up. I tried to raise him a couple times, then gave up and went back to calling CQ. The somewhat strange part comes now. Who should answer me about 10 minutes later and 9 kHz removed, but KD2ITZ again. This time we had a solid 16 minute QSO. He was running 5 watts also now. He's also the youngest ham I've worked in a while at 43 years of age.

Otherwise it was a typical day of late. Other than the routine, I did some spring cleaning of various things in the house. It was a nice weather day hitting 70 degrees so I sat on the porch for a while in between my cleaning and walking Roscoe. Now it's almost time for another Roscoe walk, so I better close here. -30-

Sat Apr 4 2020 8:22PM - Something a little different today. We took Roscoe to the groomer after a few postponments for this or that. He really needed that, and he looks and probably feels a lot better now.

Other than that not much different today than the last good many days now. I did do a little lawn clean up. It won't be long now till I'll be cutting my grass. A couple neighbors have already cut theirs.

I'm not too happy with my tomatoes and peppers. They seem to have grown so far, and then stopped growing. I think the same thing happened last year also, if I remember right. I might have to transplant them into bigger pots and see if that helps.

I turned on the rig at 0000Z as usual and saw a lot of activity on 40 meters. There were at least two state QSO parties going on. I made one QSO in each of the MS and MO parties. That's 3 evenings in a row now I've made multiple QSOs. Maybe I'll see if I can keep that up for a while. -30-

Fri Apr 3 2020 8:47PM - Pretty much the same old same old... here today. The bands were good again this evening, and for 3 days in a row, 40 meters has been very useable and very busy. I guess because ham radio is a good way to handle the unfortunately all too universal social distancing and still converse with and visit people. Also it's something to do when we all have to stay indoors. Who knows? I might even be getting in some activity on the bands during the daylight hours. It might be interesting to see how those higher bands are behaving during the daytime.

Other than that, it's mostly been working on my computer and trains. About the only time I go out is to walk Roscoe, get the mail, or do some necessary shopping. Not much just plain walking or other outside things. The only person I really see is Roscoe's owner Bruce and sometimes his brother when he is there. Not much of an exciting existence, although when you get right down to it, I really never have been much of a socializer so there really isn't all than much change for me, like there is for a lot of other people.

I have been going through my weather records here and looking up some data like what is the coldest temperature for the 60 or so Januarys, Februarys, etc. since 1959 when I began keeping records. For Jan it's -21 on 1/19/1994 for example. For June it's 35 on 6/3/1986 as another example. Right now it's time to go out and get the current day's weather records, so I'll close here. -30-

Thu Apr 2 2020 9:05PM

That's what greeted me in the mail 57 years ago tomorrow after an agonizing wait of a couple weeks after passing my Novice test. Seems like a lot longer ago than that somehow. In other ways it seems like yesterday. Funny how the passage of time seems to change depending on how you look at it.

I haven't been active all of those 57 years as regular diary readers know. Let's review my activity a bit.

1. 4/3/1963 (Actually my first QSO came on 4/8/1963) to 4/20/1970. 18,561 QSOs Then I was inactive due to work at WPIT.
2. 6/6/1972 to 12/4/1973 when time and work permitted. 52 QSOs Busy with work at WPIT again.
3. 6/17/1981 to 9/23/1983 again when time and work permitted. 752 QSOs Another work gap till I was near or at retirement from WPIT.
4. 2/15/1993 through the present. 72,230 (as of tonight) and counting QSOs

There were significant changes during and in between my periods of activity. During the first period, incentive licensing came into being and after being a Novice during part of the first year, followed by General until mid-1968, I quickly got my Extra to have access to those segments of the bands that were no longer available to anyone but Extras.

During the third period of activity, the addition of the so called WARC bands started with 30 meters. The first three periods of activity and the fourth until September 1, 1999 saw me using homebrew transmitters and a few different commercial receivers. Then I got my first transceiver, a Kenwood TS-570D.

During the fourth period, a company called Elecraft came into being, and some of the best rigs ever, at least for my style of operating with only CW and QRP, became available. It took a while for me to get on the Elecraft bandwagon, but I did with a KX1, K2, and now the fabulous KX3. The rest is history.

I have mentioned all the above before in the diary. I just wanted to rehash and update it on the eve of my 57th anniversary of becoming a ham.

Good bands again tonight. I had a couple of 40 meters rag chews with W9VC and KI0F to keep the streak going and to complete 57 years of being a ham. -30-

Wed Apr 1 2020 9:24AM - March 2020 was a very warm and very wet month, although there were not a lot of overall records since I started keeping statistics in 1959. Here is a list of the major monthly records.

High daily mean - 68 on the 29th (tie with 2012)
High low daily mean - 32 on the 1st (tie with 2000 and 2012)
High low daily max - 46 on the 6th and 7th
Greatest monthly precipitation - 6.83 inches
Greatest daily precipitation - 2.56 inches on the 28th

And the daily records.

Greatest precipitation - 0.92 inches on the 20th and 2.56 inches on the 28th
High min temperature - 48 on the 20th
High mean temperature - 68 on the 29th
Least daily temperature range - 6 on the 17th
Greatest mean departure from normal - +24 degrees on the 29th
Overall the monthly departures from normal min, max, and mean were: +9.2, +7.2, +8.2 degrees
Precipitation departure from normal was: +3.56 inches

If not for the extremely hot month of March 2012, 2020 would have more records, I'm sure. For example 2012 averaged 51.7 degrees compared to this year at "only" 46.7 degrees.

When describing weather records, the terms can be ambiguous such as High Low Maximum, etc. If any are confusing, please ask, and I'll try to clear them up.

I hope those of you who share an interest in meteorology found the above of interest.

Should anything of importance or interest occur later today, I'll update this entry this evening. Oh, just heard from Mike and he is visiting this evening for a bit. -30-

Tue Mar 31 2020 8:44PM - Here it is April Fools' Eve. I wonder what tomorrow will bring. It can't be much worse than what March brought to us.

The bands were back up again tonight with signals up through 20 meters. I tried a couple DX stations but didn't have any luck as they really weren't all that strong as they were a couple nights ago. So it was back to the old standby 80 meters where I worked VE3BXG up in Ottawa.

Later tonight I'll be getting my final March weather readings and either tonight or tomorrow, I'll figure the averages for March. I suspect it will be another month in the range of 5 degrees above normal with above normal precipitation as well. I'll report here in tomorrow evening's diary entry.

I think Mike will stop by for a short visit tomorrow evening, but he hasn't confirmed that yet or his email went into a black hole. -30-

Mon Mar 30 2020 8:21PM - Back to normal weatherwise today after yesterday's preview of summer. Today was cloudy with a bit of drizzle and a high in the 50s.

Since it is now the 31st UTC, I just completed another month of the streak, and will be uploading my March QSOs to LoTW and eQSL either later tonight or during the day tomorrow. Since I had a few multiple QSO days, there will be maybe around 40 or so QSOs in March. Tonight I worked VA3SB on 80 meters. I didn't hear anything on 30 or 20 this evening like the past few evenings. 40 had some activity. -30-

Sun May...er Mar 29 2020 8:34PM - Well, it felt like May today with a high of 78 under partly sunny skies. Sure felt good. I sat out on the porch for probably over an hour today just enjoying the warmth.

For the third of the past four days I've worked DX. Tonight it was Ger HK7AAG on 30 meters. It took but a single call to get him even though he wasn't all that strong.

Otherwise it was the same old routine of the past couple weeks now. I did some organizing of pictures on my computer and updated a couple programs.

We got about another half inch of rain during the night last night for a total of around 3 inches. Right now though with the warm day and no additional rain, it looks like it never rained. Well almost but there is one low spot a little ways down the sidewalk where it was still muddy this evening, but that's about it right around here anyway. -30-

Sat Mar 28 2020 8:57PM - Good bands again this evening. Maybe too good as everyone I heard was involved in a QSO, and no one calling CQ or answering my CQs. At least until I found K8BZ calling CQ on 40 and had a nice 18 minute QSO with him.

I glanced at my rain gauge a couple hours ago after taking care of Roscoe and saw 2.5 inches of rain there since last evening at 9PM. Most of that fell late this afternoon in a couple drenching downpours. There's more rain out in Ohio headed this way also. It is hard to tell if it will hit us or pass us by just yet. Anyway it is time to go out and get my weather readings now. -30-

Fri Mar 27 2020 8:25PM - Two nights in a row. A quick DX QSO at 0001Z on 20M. Tonight it was 4A60M in Mexico. Let's see what the special event call is for. The 60th anniversary of ARARM. Hey, only 1,978 more days of DX and I'll tie my streak of 1,980 DX days that ended back in 2018. HI.

Otherwise the same old story here. I'm getting a case of cabin fever only going out to walk Roscoe and an occasional grocery run. I guess it can't last forever though.

Some more work on my HO train layout today occupied some of my time. I also got caught up on logging my LoTW and eQSL records. And I trimmed down my much too large Microsoft Edge Favorites list and organized it a little better. Still a ways to go though. -30-

Thu Mar 26 2020 8:07PM - Seems like old times. Turn on the rig, go to 20, find a DX station quickly, work him, and the streak is intact for yet another day. That describes this evening. The station was T42DX in Cuba on 14011. Took two calls to get him.

I'm glad it was quick too. I'm doing some work on my HO train layout and I want to get back to it. I haven't run anything on the layout in quite a while as I've been concentrating almost exclusively on the Lionel O layout for some time now. You can tell that by the looks of the dust on the HO engines and rolling stock. HI So I'm going to close here and get back to that.

Before I go, just a note on the weather. It got close to 70 today when the sun came out in the afternoon and before the clouds increased this evening.Now it's back down to 60 as I type. Now we've got a few days of rain coming up again. -30-

Wed Mar 25 2020 8:25PM - Mike and I decided to postpone our visit this evening. We'll try again another evening.

When I was on the air getting my QSO, I decided to look out the window and I noticed a very thin crescent moon close to setting. I think it was one of the thinnest crescents I've ever seen or at least seen in a long time now. So I looked up to see just when the new moon was to see how young a crescent it was. The new moon was on March 24 at 5:28AM EDT. That would make it about 38 1/2 hours old when I saw it. Nowhere near a record, but maybe a personal one for me. I don't know and don't have any way to reseach it as I have never kept records of crescent moon sightings. Maybe one on the few things I never have kept records of. HI

The bands continue to be good this evening. No DX worked tonight, but it didn't take long to get my streak QSO in the log. It was KD3KO on 80 meters at 0005Z.

It was a nice day today with a high in the mid-50s and bright sun late in the afternoon. I went for a couple walks/shopping trips today and of course walked Roscoe as per schedule. -30-

Tue Mar 24 2020 8:35PM - DX!! Quite easy DX! After working W4MY in NC on 80 for my streak, I tuned around a bit and found LZ3ND calling CQ on 40. I gave a call and got WP? I sent my call twice again, and lost his sigs in my noise. Not knowing if he came back to me or not, I waited several seconds and he came back with K3WWP K3WWP. This time we completed the exchange of info for a legit QSO. As I've been saying, the bands have awakened. They are still sluggish, but getting better and better, it seems.

I talked to my friend Tom WY3H on the phone today for about a half hour. He is doing well, but dealing with a bout of the flu right now.

Hopefully Mike will be paying a visit tomorrow evening for a regular pizza dinner. At least that's what we planned when we found we couldn't do a Requin Subpedition on Thursday.

Not much else going on. I've mostly just been staying here at home except for Roscoe walks and some grocery shopping. -30-

Mon Mar 23 2020 8:36PM - It seems the coming of spring has helped the bands a lot. For several nights in a row now all the bands up through at least 20 have had lots of good signals, some of them from DX stations. I haven't had much luck working the DX yet, but I will, and in the meantime it is nice to be hearing it again. Tonight's QSO was K4AOA in NC on 80.

Yet another quiet day today. I expanded my train layout a bit making it about 10 inches wider. I use cardboard as a temporary base for the layout so I can change it easily to decide on (if I ever do) how I'm going to make my permanent plywood layour. It's much easier to make the changes plus it beats just laying track on the carpet with its fuzz, lint, etc. that can get into the locomotives and rolling stock. -30-

Sun Mar 22 2020 8:51PM - The bands took a couple steps backward tonight. Still pretty good, but not up to the past couple nights. It took a little while to find and work Larry WB9ICH on 80 meters.

The weather also took a couple steps backward today. Still nice with sunshine and 50 degrees but that felt chilly compared to the 74 degrees we had recently.

I heard from Art of the USS Requin and it looks like we won't be having our subpeditions for a while yet this year. The sub is closed now and Art has some health issues that will keep him from the sub for a couple more months. More on that as time goes on. -30-

Sat Mar 21 2020 8:41PM - The Hills (Bands) are alive with the sound of Music (CW). What a joy to hear the bands so active. Largely due to contesting, but also propagation is improving, and my noise seems a little quieter. At any rate, I actually worked a couple DX stations on 20 meters in the 0000Z hour. HI3Y and PS2T are in my logbook for the first DX on 20 I can recall since the ARRL DX contest last month. The longer period of sunlight now is also helping the bands to stay open later. I also worked N4HB in the VA QSO Party on 80.

That about covers the excitement for today. The rest of the day was again routine. I did do some rewiring on my train layout and ran my trains for quite a while. -30-

Fri Mar 20 2020 9:03PM - I'm running late tonight so this will be short. The bands up through 20 were good this evening and I was just enjoying listening to them. I worked WB3DSJ in FL on 20 and my train friend Lane N8AFT on 80. I met WB3DSJ at Butler a few years ago and he mentioned that in our QSO. I think he lived in Erie at the time if my poor memory serves.

Other than the good bands, nothing much else out of the ordinary today except the warmth. We had a high of 74 today which may be a record for May.... er March 20. Let me see. Nope, not even close. It was 84 on March 20, 2012. Still it felt good to be out there in it. -30-

Thu Mar 19 2020 8:26PM - Different day, different band, same station sums up my streak QSO this evening. I worked K1P in ME again this evening, but on 80 instead of 40.

After I got K1P so quickly at 0001Z, I decided to check out the bands a bit. 20 had one station in a rag chew, 30 had one weak signal, 40 was full of stations, and 80 had a lot of other signals besides K1P. I tried some CQs on 40 for a while, but didn't get any answers at all. It continues to be nice to hear the bands more active though. Hopefully it won't be long till 30 and 20 join in the activity in the evenings.

Another quiet day today. I did do a little shopping and also did my Federal and State taxes. That was about it out of the ordinary. I did change the picture on my computer desktop. I now have a great picture of the Union Pacific locomotive #844 which almost looks like it is coming right out of the screen at me. That Living Legend is really a beauty. It's the only steam locomotive on any Class 1 railroad that has never been retired and it makes a great UP pair with the Big Boy #4014 as their two active steam locomotives. Of course 4014 was retired for many years until it returned to active duty last year. On the other hand, 844 has been on the active UP roster ever since it was built in 1944. I'm just sad to see that the UP Challenger #3985 has been retired now with no plans to make it active again. It is great that there are quite a few other active steam engines in the USA and around the World.

I've just been trying to remember the active steam locomotives. There are a lot of them. I hate to try to list them here because I'll leave someone's favorite out, but here is a partial list.

UP 4014 and 844
NKP 765
Pere Marquette 1225
SP 4449
N&W 611

I think I'll just stop there for now. Maybe someday I'll expand on the list. Right now it's time to end the diary entry and get my weather readings. -30-

Wed Mar 18 2020 8:09PM - A quick QSO tonight from a special event station K1P who was sending ME 200 which I'm guessing is the 200th anniversary of statehood for ME when it split from MA. Now let me check my guess. Be right back. Correctamundo! There are several special event stations including one for each of the 9 original counties when ME became a state in 1820. Also for a couple other locations important to ME at that time. See QRZ for more details including earning a certificate for contacting the stations. Maybe I'll go for it.

Otherwise it was a run of the mill day until this evening. The weather was nice so I went out for a walk late this afternoon. Then this evening the girl next door came and brought me a big bowl of spaghetti. Then she stayed and visited for about an hour. We talked about various things including how school is going with the schools shut down for a while. They are doing lessons via the Internet. I was just getting ready to play some computer games when she came. I asked her if she ever played Griddlers and she didn't. Then I remembered she once told me she played Sudoku and I asked her about it. She said she never really got the hang of it. So I told her I'd teach it to her. She caught on to it and we played a couple games of it before she had to go home.

Tonight is our NAQCC sprint in a few minutes. I may try to make a couple QSOs in it. I haven't entered for a couple months now. The bands seemed pretty good in the brief listen I took before working K1P. -30-

Tue Mar 17 2020 8:28PM - Hope you had a good St. Patrick's Day. Nothing special here. Just another mid-March day. The bands were up and down tonight. I started with a 2X599 QSO with KA1FXK on 80, but he quickly faded into my noise and I guess my signals did the same there as I heard him not long after losing him and he was calling CQ up the band a bit not nearly as strong. Oh well, it was a QSO for the streak anyway

I guess the highlight of the day was cutting my hair. I haven't had a barbershop haircut since 1972. I've cut my own hair ever since then. I wonder how much money I saved over the years that way. I've gotten pretty good at it. The hardest part is trimming at the back of the neck. You have to be a contortionist more or less to do that using two mirrors so you can even see to cut. I don't really go for looks anyway, just for comfort and I definitely get that. -30-

Mon Mar 16 2020 8:40PM - It took a little while to find and work someone this evening, but finally I did find and work W8HOG in Ohio on 80 meters to keep the streak alive. Forty was nowhere as good as last night. I guess it was a fluke thing. Oh well.

It was another pretty quiet day today with not a lot out of the routine. The weather was good, but except for Roscoe's walks, I spent most of the day inside.

I did get my membership number in the Lionel Collectors Club of America. I spent quite a bit of time exploring the members area of the club's web site. There is a lot of good information about Lionel trains there including most if not all the Lionel catalogs going back to 1900 in digital form. I had to look up my Berkshire just to see what it cost back in the early 1960s. It was right around $50.00 which was quite a bit back in those days. I'll be doing a lot more browsing on the web site in upcoming days. -30-

Sun Mar 15 2020 8:41PM - The Ides of March. A quick 0001Z QSO on 40 meters with N9EP. I haven't seen so much activity on 40 outside of contests in a good many moons. Could be propagation is improving because the sun is setting later and later each day now. Whatever the reason, it is great to see all the activity. I called CQ on 40 after working N9EP and got an answer from K9QAG in IL.

The nice weather continues also. Sunny skies with a high of 54. Nice day for walking. I also filled out my census report and mailed it along with some bills this morning. I think tomorrow I'll do my taxes then I'll have most of the paperwork out of the way for March. -30-

Sat Mar 14 2020 8:08PM - It's the weekend of the OK QSO Party. That's Oklahoma, not Czech Republic. So my streak QSO was very easy. I worked W5CW on 40 meters. Although I didn't listen much, the bands sounded pretty good once again.

This was a pretty quiet day. The weather was a little chilly, but still pretty nice for mid-March. I did some more cleaning of my trains. Today it was the wheels on the tenders. The one tender was particularly dirty. I got it last year, and it looks like I never did clean the wheels on it. I also did a little general house cleaning and took care of some correspondence. That was about it. -30-

Fri Mar 13 2020 8:18PM - It was another nice day except for one thing, the wind. It was fairly steady at 20-25 MPH with gusts into the low 30s. That made it feel much colder than the actual high of 65 degrees. The high did occur early this morning and the temperature was steady to falling slowly the rest of the day to 49 degrees right now.

So I spent a lot of time inside, mainly cleaning the wheels on my Lionel rolling stock. I did help my neighbor work on his van outside and it did feel really cold even in the sunshine.

I got a pretty quick QSO this evening at 0004Z on 80 when I worked K5LC in TN. Had things gone according to plan, I'd be in CT this evening with Mike and other Skyview club members after visiting ARRL Headquarters. We had a plan to keep my streak going while there. We'd both have taken our KX3 rigs, etc. and made a QSO between us in the hotel using our dummy loads. That would be CW QRP and very simple antennas which would qualify it as a QSO for the streak. However that didn't become necessary when Mike and I cancelled our reservations for the trip. I hope those Skyview members who did make the trip are having a good time, and keeping well, and will return home safely and well also. Mike and I hope we can still visit W1AW in the future when conditions are better. -30-

Thu Mar 12 2020 8:46PM - While sitting at my rig in QSO with K4LXY, then W3CFE, I was wondering when the first QSO with my KX3 was. I made sure to remember to look it up in my diary and log when I got to the computer. It was on October 21, 2012. The QSO number was 77,319. My last QSO tonight was 91,569 which means I've now made approximately 14,251 QSOs with the KX3. I say approximately because 1 or 2 were made at Skyview using their equipment. I need to figure out how many QSOs I made with other gear someday. Not now, though.

It was another nice day today with a high in the upper 60s so I did some more outside work. I got a new plastic garbage can (how's that for something exciting?) and fixed up a place for it to replace an old metal one that was rusting away. I also did some inside work cleaning up some things and adjusting my train layout a bit more after the changes Mike and I made yesterday.

That pretty much sums up the day along with the many other ordinary household tasks done most every day. -30-

Wed Mar 11 2020 8:30PM - A quick QSO with AC8RG continued the streak this evening. Bands, especially 80 seemed good again tonight as they have been lately.

Of course another great day with Mike again. Pretty much an all-trains day. We made some modifications to my layout. Also we tried out a couple accessories. Of course we ran my trains a lot, the NKP diesel, 736 Berkshire, 2037 steamer, 1060 engine, little gang car, and #50 navy yard shifter. We also ran Mike's Big Boy quite a bit. All the engines ran like a charm. We took time out for eats at Wendy's, of course. We also watched a couple good train videos showing a lady's set up with dozens of tracks and trains plus a show called Railway Roundabout featuring BBC films from the late 50s and early 60s about steam trains. The day went by all too fast, and we closed out with some computer gaming before Mike went north to home. -30-

Tue Mar 10 2020 8:37PM - Although it rained off and on most of the day, it was another nice spring day. Any day it rains instead of s#$ws is a good day in March. I did get out for a pretty good walk in between the showers and did some shopping.

80 meters was good again this evening with a lot of strong signals and it didn't take too long to find and work Tony N2ATB whom I've worked several times before.

Tomorrow Mike will be visiting for what will probably be a trains day. Instead of getting ready for a train trip to CT Thu-Fri, we'll be working with model trains instead.

I've finished the two easy ways of finding members of the "50 Years Club" and didn't do anything further on that today. The next stages will be a bit rougher and I may wait a bit before tackling them. There's no hurry so it doesn't matter. -30-

Mon Mar 9 2020 9:02PM - Tis the season to get out and enjoy the beautiful spring days. It just touched 70 here today under sunny but increasingly cloudy skies. So I cleaned up a lot of leaves from my back yard. About three big garbage bags full. Most of that total was from the leaves I cover my garden and flower plots with in the fall. I found my daylillies sprouting under the leaves. I also sat on my porch alone and then with Roscoe later on. It sure felt good to be able to be outside in shirt sleeves again. It's still 55 degrees at this hour.

Last night I had trouble uploading my web site pages. Thanks to those of you who missed them. I finally was able to upload this morning after talking with Bill WA4FAT from my web site host Cahaba Internet. He also increased my web site space to 500MB. I'm currently using about 140MB so I've got a lot of space I can fill up.

I also got around finally to putting up a forwarding page on my old Windstream web site for those who use old URLs/Links. Now they know to come to k3wwp.com for my web site.

I've gotten quickly used to the time change this year. Only one thing seems funny. Not getting out of my shack until it's almost time to go get my temperature at 9PM and then update my web site, do a couple other things before walking Roscoe at 9:30PM. However it sure is great shifting that hour of daylight from early morning to evening. Regular diary readers know I have a pet peeve about calling it daylight savings time. Nothing is saved, just shifted around. Should be called Daylight Shifting Time. It's like the old Indian saying it's like making a blanket longer by cutting a foot off one end and sewing it on the other end. There's still exactly the same amount of daylight be it Savings or Standard time. Oh well, just another of many peculiarities in the accuracy or inaccuracy of the English language, I guess. -30-

Sun Mar 8 2020 9:07PM - A lot to talk about tonight but little time to do it so I'll condense things

I added more members to my "50 Years Plus" club today and am now up to 29. See the past few diary entries if you don't know what I'm talking about.

The plans that Mike and I had for later this week fell through today. We were going to take a train trip with the Skyview Radio Club to ARRL HQ in CT. However after we analyzed the coronavirus situation we decided this was not a good time to travel so we cancelled our fare, hotel room, etc. Instead Mike and I will just get together on Wednesday to as Mike put it, "See what kind of trouble we can get into".

For the fourth time this month, I had a multiple QSO evening which tends to show, I think, that conditions are getting better. Tonight it was KD3KO in PA and WB8WUA in OH.

Time to run now and get ready to walk Roscoe. More in a future entry. -30-

Sat Mar 7 2020 8:01PM - I added a method to my checking for "50 Years Plus" members. If I work someone with a 1x2 or 2x1 call who says they were first licensed more than 50 years ago, I ask for their original call or check QRZ to see if they have an older call. Then I look that call up in my log to see if I worked them when they had that call. So far I've added 8 more members that way and am now up to 22 such stations.

Tonight I worked AA8V and asked him his original call which was WA(N)8ZVC. Let's see if that call is in my log. Nope, so he's not a member.

Mike was down for a visit today. We 'played' with my train setup for a while. Then we walked to Subway and got a sub there. After that we did a mock-up of the train layout he will be using at his home to get an idea of what size and shape it will be. Then we watched some train videos, played a Sherlock Holmes computer game and did a little work for an event we have planned for later next week. I'll have more about that in an upcoming diary entry. -30-

Fri Mar 6 2020 8:02PM - As long time diary readers know, I often work a DX station before I'm sure just who he (she) is, then listen to find out for sure who it was. That happened tonight. I was tuning on 40 and heard a DX station. I knew it was DX from the MO. I listened a bit and thought it was a Bahamas station as I heard a C6A in the call. I thought it was C6AAE but wasn't sure. Then he seemed to disappear so I tuned around some more, then saw his peak on the PX3 and went back to him. I waited till he finished a QSO, then called and got a K?. I sent my call twice and got a K3WWP 599. I sent my exchange then settled back to see if I could figure out who it was for sure. I listened and listened, but every time he sent his call, I'd get some QSB or a burst of QRN. Finally I heard his call again, but it sounded different than AAE, more like ARN or ARK. Now I'm really confused so I resort to another trick and check the DX Summit spots on the Internet. Turns out it was EC6AAE on the Balearic Islands, although one other station also erroneously heard him as ARN, but there were about a half dozen or so spots listing him as EC6AAE. I went back to the shack and listened some more and finally heard a definite EC6AAE and that settled that. Funny thing also was that I was one of his easiest QSOs. As I was listening, he sent quite a few question marks to a lot of the other stations he was working. I guess I was right in the strong heart of the path to him. Anyway it was fun working some DX again. I think the bands are very slowly improving with the coming of spring and a slight increase in sunspot numbers.

I did some checking for "50 Years Plus" club members as described in yesterday's diary post. I am now up to the following:

K4WOP - 8/19/1965 - 3/1/2016 - 3/3/2020
K4BAI - 5/10/1964 - 5/22/2014 - 6/13/2018
WA8REI - 8/25/1966 - 8/25/2016 - 1/12/2019
WA4FAT - 5/30/1964 - 5/30/2014
WA2YSJ - 4/15/1964 - 3/5/2020
K8CIT - 7/23/1964 - 12/18/2018 - 11/5/2019
K1ZJA - 6/22/1964 - 6/26/2019
WA9CWX - 6/11/1967 - 5/11/2019
W3EEK - 12/23/1964 - 3/4/2019
K2HYD - 1/13/1968 - 5/2/2018
K8EHE - 11/19/1966 - 1/13/2018

The first date is the first QSO with the station. The second is the date of the qualifying QSO. If there is a third date, it is a more recent QSO. I'll continue to check via the listed method, then I'll have to dig more deeply into my log after that. I enjoy doing things like that as you diary readers probably already know. -30-

Thu Mar 5 2020 8:17PM - I received my "50 Years Plus" club QSL from K4WOP today and mailed off the 5YP card to WA2YSJ today. I also thought of a way to quickly check some of my QSOs to see if they qualify. In my paper log, I note the ham's age and year he was first licensed or how many years he has been a ham if he gives the info in the QSO. So I just need to check those who have been licensed more than 50 years by having Excel list all QSOs with that person to see if I worked him before over 50 years ago. I only checked my most recent page and didn't find any qualifiers, but there's a lot more to check on my past log pages and I'm sure I'll probably find some here and there.

I got a quick QSO at 0003Z this evening from a SOTA operation, NK8Q who was just about to QRT. I threw my call at him and he gave me his last QSO of his operation. Since that was so quick, I looked around the bands a bit and then tried some CQs on 80. I got an answer from K9VPL. Marv served on submarines for 30 years and I told him about our operations on the Requin. He was familiar with the Requin. He told me some stories about his sub operations. It was a quite interesting 27 minute QSO.

It was another nice spring day today and I did some yard work. My tulips sprouted several days ago and I cleaned out the leaves and weeds from the tulip bed. It looks like they really multiplied from last year to this. I'll have to count them and see. I'll probably have to divide them sometime before next year. Inside my tomatoes and peppers are doing well. I've got about a dozen tomato plants and about a half dozen peppers. I had to replant one pepper pot as they were just not sprouting, and the replanted ones haven't sprouted yet either. Anyway I should have enough plants even if no more sprout. -30-

Wed Mar 4 2020 7:40PM - Life is full of coincidences and I always enjoy when they happen. What happened tonight qualifies, I think. Two evenings ago, my QSO was with K4WOP whom I first worked over 50 years ago in 1965. Tonight I worked WA2YSJ whom I first worked over 50 years ago in 1964. So that's another addition to my "50 Years Club". It also gives me a little more incentive to do some log exploring to find other members. As with K4WOP, WA2YSJ and I are exchanging new QSL cards for the "club". In fact I just took a break from typing here to make out his card. I added his 1964 card to the envelope and will mail it either tonight or tomorrow. Things like this are just another facet that makes ham radio such an interesting hobby. I'm sure glad I got into it in large part due to a high school friend. I've mentioned this before but his name was Larry and we took our Novice tests together. He got KN3WWW and I got KN3WWP back in April 1963. Unfortunately I learned fairly recently from his son that he became a silent key at the young age of 29 in a plane crash. That was back in 2017 I got the letter from his son so he would have died around 1974.

It was another day in the 50s today. I hope I didn't jinx things, but I put my s@#w shovel back in the basement today after it sat virtually unused on the front porch all winter. I think I only used it once, or maybe twice but no more than that. I didn't even use the broom all that much. This winter will go down as one of my favorites for sure. -30-

Tue Mar 3 2020 8:03PM - The bands continue to sound pretty good. Even 20 this evening had a couple strong signals. It was back to 80 for my QSO though. I worked KA4KSB for a 20 minute QSO.

We had our first, as far as I know, sound of thunder and flash of lightning this late afternoon or evening. A cold front moved through with the thunderstorm and brief heavy rain. Looks more and more like Spring is here. The AccuWeather outlook for March shows a high in the 50s or 60s every day but one, and I love that. -30-

Mon Mar 2 2020 8:12PM - When you've been a ham for 56+ years as I have been, having been first licensed on April 3, 1963, you have the chance to have a QSO with someone you first worked more than 50 years ago. That happened tonight when K4WOP answered my CQ. We first worked on 8/19/1965. I have his card right here from that QSO. We are going to exchange cards for tonight's QSO also.

As we were talking, I was thinking it would be nice to start a list of hams with whom I have had QSOs more than 50 years apart. It would take a bit of work, but is entirely possible since my log is in Microsoft Excel with which you can do just about anything at all with statistics. So perhaps I will work on that when I feel like it and have some time to do it.

I know of four hams who qualify for what I may call my "50 Years Club". They are WA8REI, WA4FAT, K4BAI, and now K4WOP. Actually K4WOP qualified back in 2016, but we didn't make anything of it at the time.

It was another nice spring day today even with some light rain showers now and then. It's still 47 degrees now and was in the 50s earlier. -30-

Sun Mar 1 2020 7:55PM - The first day of spring (Meteorological) was pretty nice. It was sunny most all day with a high in the mid to upper 40s. That was sufficient to melt just about all of the s@#w except in some spots that were in the shade all day or piled up a bit from sweeping or shoveling. As Snoopy would put it:

Yep, and that's pretty much how I feel except I'm no longer as agile as Snoopy. I did go out for a nice walk today to welcome in Spring and say Good Riddance to winter.

I went to the shack this evening with the knowledge that it wouldn't take long to get my QSO since the North Carolina QSO Party runs until 0100Z. At 0003Z I worked NC4KW and the streak goes on.

I put my February weather records in my Weather Excel spreadsheet this morning and it turned out that February was yet another warm month with an average temperature 5.7 degrees above normal or 35.8 degrees. Not as close to a record as January was, but warm nevertheless. My record for February happened just a few years ago when it was 39.0 degrees or 8.9 degrees above normal. It rained on a good many days in February - 15 days with measureable precipitation and 14 of those above .04 inches. Yes it was mostly rain with only a little melted s@#w included in the 3.82 inches which is 1.24 above normal for February. For the winter as a whole (Dec-Feb) it was roughly 6.4 degrees above normal. That's the second warmest to the 2016-2017 winter which was 6.8 degrees above normal. So this winter was close to a record. Third place looks like 2015-2016 at 6.3 then 2011-2012 at 6.2. Those were the only winters among my 60 years of records that were 6 or more degrees above normal, and all were within the past 8 years. -30-

Sat Feb 29 2020 7:38PM - It was one of those 0000Z streak QSOs this evening thanks to the SC QSO Party and participant AC4MC. Actually the bands were quite good again this evening as they have been the past several days now. Good signals on 160 up through 30. LZ5R was strong on 40, but QRT or QSY before I had a chance to call him. Then I heard him a little later on 80 as well, but not as strong. I then called CQ on 160 and got a quick answer from W4TJE in VA, but conditions, mainly my local QRN, cut the QSO short.

It was a cold windy finish to February today, but tomorrow March will be much better with a high near 50, and even warmer the couple days after that, but with quite a bit of rain which of course is much better than s@#w.

I've got to get back to some more end of month / first of month things now. -30-

Fri Feb 28 2020 7:28PM - Well, one more day of winter to go. We got that extra winter day this year because of Leap Year. Then it will be spring and looks like here in West PA the spring weather is arriving right on time and according to AccuWeather and others it looks like it is going to stay throughout March. That will be great.

I closed out my February log with a QSO with Tony KD8BBK on February 29 (UTC) and after I finish updating my web site, I'll be uploading my February log to eQSL and LoTW. That won't take long as I have a simple setup to convert my Microsoft Excel log to the ADIF format required for eQSL and LoTW. It will be interesting to see how many DX matches I get from my DX QSOs in the ARRL DX Contest. So I think I'll get ready to do that now. -30-

Thu Feb 27 2020 7:57PM - This is the time of year when s@#w is not as obnoxious as it is earlier in winter. It doesn't overstay its welcome now. We had perhaps an inch of the stuff today and I thought it was rather nice since part of it has already melted and the rest will be gone post haste in a couple days or so. Actually one computer model outlook says it will be 70 degrees by Tuesday. Another says only in the 50s, but I'll take either one.

I had an unusual happening on the bands tonight. After I finished a QSO with Mike N1MX on 80, I got a tailend call from W1EAT who had been 'reading the mail' and wanted to make some positive comments on my CW and my QRP setup. I haven't had a tailend call probably since early last year or maybe longer ago than that. Once again there were a lot of good signals on 80 and those conditions seem to be hanging on now. -30-

Wed Feb 26 2020 7:58PM - Just a couple days now till meteorological spring. Ain't it great. And we didn't really even have a winter.

The bands were good again this evening with a lot of strong signals on 80, and some on 40. Still nothing on 30 or higher though, but I suspect as spring arrives, at least 30 and 20 will start showing some activity in the evenings.

Some train work today. I worked on an old blue New York Navy Yard shifter. Cleaned and lubed it, and it runs better now after I also replaced some worn brushes.

And that was about it for the day when you add in all the (boring?) regular daily chores when you live alone and own your own house. -30-

Tue Feb 25 2020 8:55PM - Let's see, when was the last time before this evening I had a QSO that lasted for 1 hour and 32 minutes? I have no idea, but it's been a long time for sure. There's no quick way to find out from my Excel log, but it can be done if I want to take the time to do it sometime. I have fields for the beginning and ending times of all my QSOs and writing a formula field should give me the length of each QSO. Just thinking out loud now, it may not be as hard as I first envisioned it.

Anyway I did chat with Bob K1WGM about a multitude of subjects for 1 hour and 32 minutes at 21-22 WPM on 80 meters. The band was good tonight and it was close to (if not at) 100% copy both ways the whole time.

Another beautiful day today with a high in the 50s and some sun although it did rain a bit late in the day. It looks like winter will take an encore late this week and weekend then pretty much exit the picture. Of course it has been absent most all season anyway. I wish I kept s@#wfall records so I could know just how little we had this season. I'd estimate less that 10 inches total as a moderately educated guess.

Well, time to get my weather observations now. -30-

Mon Feb 24 2020 8:22PM - It's picture time. Here are pictures from yesterday with a brief comment below each:

Quite a busy hamfest.

Some of the NAQCC members (WC3O,?-forgot his call,N3RDG,WB3FAE,K3WWP,KC2EGL).

Overall view of part of the train show.

Typical table layout of unboxed stock.

A classic GG1 Pennsylvania locomotive.

One of several layouts.

Another layout.

Some old (1940s) tinplate passenger cars.

Union Pacific Challenger 3985. -30-

Sun Feb 23 2020 7:35PM - As expected, Mike and I had a great time today. He arrived here not too long after 8AM and after I walked Roscoe, we headed off to the South Hills hamfest. As has happened a couple times lately, his GPS led us astray and we had to readjust the unit and try to find the place which we finally did. We weren't really looking to buy anything outside of a couple connectors to use on my train layout. I found and bought them rather quickly, then we just wandered around meeting folks and looking at what was on sale. Mike arranged with the Breezeshooters club to set up a NAQCC table at their hamfest in June as we do each year. We also saw Art from the Requin and confirmed that we could continue our fourth Thursday subpeditions on the Requin in March. After wandering around, we gathered up some NAQCC WPA Chapter members and took a group photo which I will try to post in tomorrow's entry along with some other photos.

We then left the hamfest and headed on to the train show in Monroeville. This time the GPS got us a bit closer after a couple missed turns on our part due to some poorly located road signs. I've been thinking of a way to sum up the show briefly, and the best I can do is liken it to kids going into the biggest candy store in the country and deciding what to buy with Mike and I being the kids and the train equipment being the candy. My goodness!!! Neither of us have ever seen so many trains, locomotives, rolling stock, scenery, accessories, etc. in one place before. As with the hamfest, we really had no plans to buy anything and didn't. We did scout out just about everything they had there with plans to go back to a repeat of the show in July and then probably purchase several items then. I'm sure that counting each piece of equipment, the count would go well over several thousand and probably more than that.

We stopped at the Golden Corrall Buffet Restaurant in Monroeville on the way back home to Kittanning and stuffed ourselves royally. Back home again for some playing with trains, a good sized walk to walk off some of the food, some train videos, and then Mike headed home.

Shortly after that, I went to my shack for my QSO which only took 3 minutes to find and work Bob K8JPM until a DX pileup swallowed us up some 25 minutes later.

BTW, I also have some photos from the train show that I hope to post in the entry tomorrow. -30-

Sat Feb 22 2020 7:55PM - Not much going on today. It was a beautiful weather day with virtually cloudless skies all day. A bit cool, but not bad for late February for sure. The high was in the upper 40s, but it was a bit breezy which made it feel cooler than that.

I did some train work and got a better mesh of the gears on my NKP diesel. It didn't really make much difference, but still it's more like it should be now, and that's a good feeling.

There was some sort of British Isles contest this evening with everyone working everyone else. So I worked AA3B for my streak QSO.

Tomorrow Mike and I engage in our two favorite hobbies. A hamfest and a train show within a fairly small area. That should be another fun day. We'll have some kind of report in the diary tomorrow evening. Maybe with pictures. Till then, 73 and GE. -30-

Fri Feb 21 2020 7:28PM - As usual a good day with Mike. He arrived around 9:30AM just as I was walking Roscoe. Roscoe barked at him until he gave Roscoe a couple treats. After that we did some train work including testing out his Big Boy in conventional mode on my track. It performed well. After a while we packed up our things to be checked out at the Indiana train store. Then we headed off to there.

At the store I first showed Brett a little problem I had with my NKP diesel whereby a couple gears weren't meshing properly. He looked at it and gave me some suggestions to try at home. The store is not really a repair shop, but Brett does like to work on trains and is always very helpful to us. Next he checked out Mike's Hudson locomotive and determined that it would have to go back to the MTH shops to be worked on. Then he replaced Mike's defective MTH TIU and would send the old one back to MTH for them to do what they wanted to do with it.

Back home again we set up Mike's new TIU and the rest of his DCS system on my track and tested it with the Big Boy engine. It workde just fine with the suggestions and help from Brett. I then checked out my diesel to make sure nothing got disturbed on the trip to Indiana. It worked fine, but I still need to try some suggestions from Brett to get the gears to mesh better. It doesn't really impact the way it runs, but still I would like to get the gears meshed as they should be.

Next on the list was taking in the first Fish Buffet of Lent at a local fire hall. That was a delicious meal, and I'm still filled up. HI.

Then to close out the visit, a Sherlock Holmes computer game and a couple of train videos

After Mike left for home, I went to my shack and got my streak QSO from Lou N2JPR on 80. Now here I am typing this. -30-

Thu Feb 20 2020 7:23PM - A quick QSO this evening as soon as I turned the rig on. I saw a strong peak on the PX3, tuned to it and found it was W8EDU calling CQ. He returned my call and we chatted for a few minutes. That call sounds familiar, and I'm going to look to see if I worked it before. It's a club call now for a University in Cleveland. It looks like it may have always been a club call. I've worked it 10 times before going all the way back to 1966 and each QSO is listed as Cleveland or Cuyahoga county with different operator names. Interesting. Having been a ham for almost 55 years now, I'm finding more and more hams I first worked over 50 years ago. Not a whole lot, but there are now several. I'll have to make a list as I find them.

Tomorrow will be a train day with Mike. We're going to the Indiana PA train shop for one thing and maybe work on an HO building kit I've had sitting here for a few months now. -30-

Wed Feb 19 2020 7:34PM - A beautiful sunny day today. Although it wasn't all that warm in the low 40s, it was nice to be outside. At one point, the air had sort of a nice fresh spring feel to it. Could be more than just my imagination as spring is only about a week and a half away now. See the countdown above for the exact time remaining as you read this. It's actually light now past 6:30PM here and when I walked Roscoe about that time it sure looked nice. Venus was shining brightly in the dark blue sky.

The bands were also good tonight with a lot of strong signals on 80 and a couple on 40 as well. I found and worked K4UX down in VA at 0016Z for the streak QSO. -30-

Tue Feb 18 2020 10:38PM - As you see from the time stamp, it's another late night here, so I'll just have a short entry. I will refer you to my CONTESTING section though and the Stories page where I've posted the story of Mike and I in the ARRL DX contest.

Mike and I had another good day mostly working on trains and after a meal at Wendy's we closed out the day at the Skyview Radio Club meeting this evening.

For only the fourth time in about a year my streak QSO came in other than the 0000Z hour at 0321Z since I didn't get home from the meeting until late. I did work N4HAY down in NC on 80 meters in a QSB/QRN shortened QSO. -30-

Mon Feb 17 2020 8:31PM - 80 meters sounded really deserted tonight or maybe it was just because I got so used to the crowded bands in the contest over the weekend. I've started the write-up of the contest but haven't gotten very far yet. Maybe I'll get it finished by the end of the week. I did finally find and work Doug WA4LJJ tonight and we had a solid 33 minute QSO so it wasn't that conditions were bad, just a lack of activity, I guess.

I'm looking forward to another day with Mike tomorrow. He'll be coming around 9:30AM or so. It will be mostly a railroad day followed by a good meal and the Skyview Club meeting in the evening. Look for more info in tomorrow's diary entry. Maybe I can get Mike to write it although we will be home late and he may want to just drop me off here and head on North. We'll see. -30-

Sun Feb 16 2020 8:23PM - It may sound like a broken record, but in this case it's a good break, maybe even a great break. Here goes. Mike and I had a great time together, this time for a whole weekend from Friday through Sunday. Most of the time was spent in the ARRL DX Contest where we had a real ball. I'm not going to say a lot about it here, but instead I'm going to add a story of the contest to the stories in my CONTESTING section. I haven't written up a story since the 2018 ARRL DX contest, so I'll have to re-hone my story writing skills for what they are. I'll probably do that this week sometime, perhaps even tomorrow depending on how other things go.

Just as a teaser to the contest story, we both got a contest WAC out of our some 200 QSOs.

Besides the contest, we also spent time with our trains/railroads. Of course we ate some good meals. We watched some train videos and since the weather was good, we went for some walks as well.

My QSO this evening came shortly after the end of the contest when I worked W1GF on 80 at 0005Z. I was going to wait till later, but Mike said might as well go for it now since we're here in the shack anyway, so I agreed. Thanks Mike.

We'll be getting together again Tuesday for the Skyview club meeting, and before that do some railroad work. -30-

Sat Feb 15 2020 7:32PM - Now with tonight's diary entry, here's Mike.

Good evening everyone. Our day started around 8AM getting back into the swing of things in the ARRL International DX Contest. We are doing one of our tag team events. We operated for about an hour before heading out to breakfast, where the kitchen misplaced our order slip. We patiently waited just over an hour and a half for our order. We should have gone elsewhere after noticing two other tables who arrived after we did finish their meals before we received ours. A lesson learned. If there is a next time for this place we will go elsewhere if they are busy like they were today.

After our breakfast debacle we headed back to John's place to see if we could catch some European action on 20M. We found a few but also found the window to EU closing quickly. We followed that by searching the other bands to see what was out there. We took a break for John to walk Roscoe around 3:30PM and to strech the legs. All this sitting gives one a stiff back and legs. After our break we operated until 5PM so we could grab dinner (Vocellis subs for a change of pace) so we could be back in time to try to catch the window for Asia. John did log a station from Japan. Unfortunately the conditions went south during my attempt. We then continued to search for other targets of opportunity. Which leaves us to me typing this. We decided on a break before our late evening run at the bands.

Until next time de Mike KC2EGL -30-

Fri Feb 14 2020 11:28PM - Yes, 11:28PM. Mike and I just closed down our ARRL DX effort for the night till we get up tomorrow morning. We both got around 20 or so stations. Conditions are quite poor and it's been a struggle, but nonetheless a lot of fun. It's too late to write a complete entry tonight. Tomorrow's entry will get us caught up on our activities including the contest and our railroads as well. -30-

Thu Feb 13 2020 7:49PM - Took a bit of doing tonight to get my QSO, but I finally found and worked Dave K1DSM on 80 at 0021Z. The 0000Z hour continues to be productive. Just to update, I've gotten my streak QSO in the 0000Z hour all but three days since March 23 last year. Two of those 12/11/19 and 1/22/20 I was at a Skyview Radio Club meeting and the other was Christmas when Mike and I were out driving around looking at Christmas lights. I think that speaks well of something although I'm not sure what. HI

It looks like my new AcuRite remote weather station can't hear WWVB to set the time each day. Oh well, I can easily manually set it when it needs it. All the settings on the unit are very user-friendly and easy to use compared to a lot of other electronic gear that has settings.

We're still waiting for our second day in February when we didn't have any precipitation. It's rained or s@#wed every day so far except for the 4th. It looks like the next 3 days may be dry though, although cold with a single digit low Friday night. There's only a couple minimal traces of s#$w on the ground now, and you have to look hard to find them. Although why anyone would want to look for them is beyond me. HI -30-

Wed Feb 12 2020 7:51PM - It was a pretty nice day until this evening, but now we are getting some light s#$w. I don't think it will amount to much though and that's fortunate if so. Speaking of weather, I updated my AcuRite remote weather station to a newer one which arrived in the mail today. It's not a lot different, but does have a few extra features like a heat index and dewpoint readout. Also it is supposed to have an automatic time setting from WWVB. That will be nice if it works. I have a few devices that are supposed to use WWVB, but only one works perfectly. I think it's the valley QTH here that doesn't receive WWVB all that well. I'll see later tonight if it works. It checks every hour or so for a few hours starting at 0700Z.

Something else new today was an update to my other laptop computer. It now has the latest feature update to Windows 10 which is 1909. It took forever for the update to complete mainly because I hadn't done any updates to that laptop for a long time. Actually I guess it was around 7 hours or so, but it went as smooth as silk with nary a single problem.

My QSO tonight came quickly from a CQ I called at 0006Z. N2AK Mario answered me and we chatted for a little under 15 minutes. The bands didn't seem all that good although there were some strong signals chasing DX stations getting set up for the ARRL DX test this weekend. -30-

Tue Feb 11 2020 7:50PM - Mike just left so I'll have to do the diary entry myself tonight. HI.

Mike arrived just as I was walking Roscoe this morning around 9:30 or so. We chatted a bit, then took off for Pittsburgh. I'll have to explain a bit on why we went there. In mid-March, the Skyview Radio Club is taking a train trip to Newington, CT to visit the ARRL Headquarters. Since Mike and I are now members, we decided to go along. Today we went to Pittsburgh to scout out just where the railroad station was, and also to check out nearby parking places. That's all I'll say now except we now have a good idea of the layout there. It was a bit confusing with some major construction going on in the area. More about that as the event gets closer.

On the way home we stopped at Wendy's for lunch. At home we set up and worked on some of Mike's railroad equipment. I won't go into much detail about that, but we both did learn a lot of things about his set up which differs from mine in that mine is pretty much 100% Lionel while his is a mix of Lionel and MTH. Probably because I know next to nothing about MTH, it took a while for me to figure things out and get it set up. Once we got it set up, we couldn't get it to work with the MTH DCS system. Mike called our Indiana PA train store to see if they could help. They suggested a couple things we already tried that didn't work. So we're taking it back to the store this Friday. Brett who works there thinks it may be a circuit board problem that either continued from or developed since the engine was back at the MTH factory last month for other repairs. More on all that later. We did figure out the setup of the various MTH components so Mike can get his railroad set up at his home after the engine problem is fixed.

After that we played with my railroad setup for a while, then went for a walk. Back home again to watch some railroad videos, and at 0000Z it was up to my shack where I got my streak QSO from Bob NR8M on 80 meters. Then Mike headed home until Friday when we get together again for the weekend for the trip to Indiana and then doing a 'tag team' contest effort in the ARRL DX Test. -30-

Mon Feb 10 2020 7:52PM - Another nice "warm" day today and virtually all the s@#w from a couple days ago has now melted. Hooray! It sure has been a great winter so far and it's winding down rapidly as you see from the counter above.

A rather quick QSO (0012Z) tonight on a very poor band. Thanks to Jim K8MPH in Kalamazoo MI on 80 meters.

Looking forward to tomorrow with Mike. It will be a combo ham radio trains day. Tomorrow evening's diary will have full details on the day either written by me or Mike. So check in to see what we accomplished. -30-

Sun Feb 9 2020 7:43PM - A quick QSO this evening even though the bands seemed to have taken a step back. There were fewer signals tonight and what there were turned out rather weak. I did catch KA1FXK easily, but a band change ended the QSO quickly.

It was a nice day for watching the s@#w melt with temperatures in the upper 30s and periods of sunshine. Good to see the green peeking through again. Spring is looming closer and closer and that's great.

I noticed 3 more tomato seeds have sprouted now for a total of 6. Still no action from the pepper seeds yet, but they are usually slower to sprout. -30-

Sat Feb 8 2020 7:40PM - Another of those days when there is s@#w on the ground that makes one want to stay inside. At least some of it did melt off today when it was sunny earlier in the day and the temperature was in the mid-30s. Still it is depressing.

My neighbor ordered a pizza this evening so I was hoping for a quick short QSO at 0000Z. I called a couple CQs and got answered by the same ham who answered my last night, Tom W3TF. We chatted a bit then I said I was waiting on a pizza, so we cut the QSO a bit short.

That's about it for today. Nothing else but the regular daily routines. This Tuesday Mike will be visiting again. We'll be going to Pittsburgh to check out some things that I'll talk about later here in a diary entry. Then he wants me to look over his shoulder as he works to get his model railroad set up. So that will be a more interesting day. -30-

Fri Feb 7 2020 7:57PM - Winter arrived today a couple months late. I woke up to about 3 inches of ugly white stuff everywhere and perhaps anothe inch was added during the day. So I hibernated most of the day except for shovelling my sidewalk and walking Roscoe for his regular walks. Enough said about that.

Some good news, although a bit strange today. My first tomato seeds sprouted. I have 3 pots of Siberian tomatoes and 3 pots of pepper seeds. There are 3 to 4 seeds in each pot. However only one pot sprouted and all 3 seed in it sprouted. Nothing at all in the other 5 pots. Hopefully they will catch up or I may have to re-plant.

The bands continue good tonight with a lot of good signals on 80 and several on 40. I called CQ on 80 and it only took a couple CQs until K3TF answered me and we had a 14 minute QSO before he had to QRT. Signals 599 for most of the way. Things are getting better (I hope). -30-

Thu Feb 6 2020 7:58PM - Seems like old times. Several good signals on 40 meters with my local noise at a reduced level for a change. My QSO came on 40 when I worked KA2BKG in Bel Air, MD on 40.

Otherwise just a run of the mill day, more like mid-spring than early in the last month of winter. That can be said of most days this winter, actually. Rain, no s@#w and mild winter temperatures. The low 40s today which is above average for Kittanning. A fly in the ointment tonight and tomorrow is possible though. Some accumulating s#$w is forecast, about 1-3 inches. However based on the track record so far this winter, that may or may not come about. Most of the time it hasn't. If you believe in the law of averages, we are due, but if you believe in the steadiness of things, we may get missed yet again. Of course I'm hoping for the latter.

The rest of the day was occupied with the regular daily chores plus some more work on the railroad. I now have a cardboard base which I am painting to try to get an idea of what I want when I hopefully go to a plywood base/table later this year. -30-

Wed Feb 5 2020 8:13PM - We've been keeping close watch on the weather forecasts today. It looked pretty dismal for awhile with mentions of rain, sleet, s#$w, freezing rain, and ice. But now the forecasts have been distilled down to just rain and s#$w which although not good is not really all that bad especially since they only say a slight accumulation of s#$w.

Another good night on 80 meters with several strong signals. As usual though, few CQs so it did take about 15 minutes to get my contact. This time it was with VE3BXG up in Ottawa, ON. A lot of QSB on my end and QRN on his limited it to just a 5 minute QSO.

I did some more work on my train layout today. I'm gradually working on transforming it from just an oval of track on the rug to something more substantial so it looks more like a model railroad rather than just a model train on some track. I need to get some more ambition and talent to really get it going though. HI -30-

Tue Feb 4 2020 7:41PM - Thanks to Mike for being my ghost writer last night. I just want to add that we really had a great trains day yesterday. It was nice to see how well his repaired trains ran on my track, especially his Big Boy. I plan to be getting a Lionel Big Boy later this year which will be very similar to his MTH version. The Lionel is also supposed to run on O-31 curves like his engine did. So I shouldn't have to modify my layout when I get mine.

For several nights in a row now 80 meters has been good with several strong signals. Tonight it took a while to find someone calling CQ, but finally after 15 minutes or so, I found and worked W6OYW (not in California, but Indiana) for the streak QSO.

It was another warm day today with a high of 58 on my AcuRite remote unit. However winter is going to try to horn in the next couple days before it warms up again on Friday. Might have some s@#w and sleet mixed in with some rain before that though. -30-

Mon Feb 3 2020 7:38PM - Good evening everyone. John is taking the night off. He asked if I would fill in for him. Our day started around 9:30AM when I arrived at John's QTH. John had to take Roscoe for his morning walk. When he returned we started on some model railroad stuff. I had 2 locomotives that needed some repair work. They arrived last Thursday. I brought them down for a test run on John's setup. Both run as intended. Shortly after that we headed to the hobby shop in Indiana. I needed to grab a few things and John needed a little help with his new diesel locomotive. We followed that up with a visit to my favorite bicycle shop and then to the bank. Before heading back to John's place we stopped for lunch at Wendy's. After arriving back at John's, John did some testing on his diesel locomotive. It also runs as intended. We then watched a few videos and played a computer game before John headed up to his shack for his daily QSO. That leaves us to me typing his diary entry. I will be heading North to my place in around 15 minutes. Until next time de Mike KC2EGL -30-

Sun Feb 2 2020 7:51PM - Good news from Punxsutawney Phil today!! I certainly am rooting for him to be right with his prediction of an early spring. At least it was right today with a high here of 52 degrees, and no wind chill to speak of. We did have another of those self-cleansing s#$w storms this morning, but the warmth make quick work of it by early afternoon.

80 meters was good again this evening, and I had a 33 minute QSO with Bill W9ZN in Chicago. Bill also works(ed) in BC and has done so for 56 years, over twice as long as I did at WPIT. We've had several QSOs over the years.

Mike and I will be getting together again tomorrow. It's nice that he is retired now so we can get together more often. We're going to the hobby store in Indiana for one thing plus a couple other projects. -30-

Sat Feb 1 2020 7:05PM - Well, January was about 8.5 degrees above normal, but 2006 still holds the title as warmest January in my 60+ years of records. 36.8 vs 35.5. I think this year was in second place. Yes, that's right. There were a couple daily records in January, and one monthly record. This is confusing, so listen carefully. The monthly record was for the highest low maximum of 29 which tied with 2006. All the other months had at least one day with the maximum lower than 29. Whew, that was confusing.

The weather today continued boring, but a good boring with no s@#w and mild temperatures. That kind of boring I can take very easily and hope it continues for the rest of winter.

For my gardening readers, I forgot to mention that I started my tomato and pepper seeds several days ago. At least I forget if I forgot anyway. HI At any rate I did and none have sprouted yet. At least I wasn't as late as last year when I started them on February 16.

A very quick QSO this evening in the VT QSO Party from K1VMT at 0000Z keeps the streak going. -30-

Fri Jan 31 2020 7:17PM - Here we are entering February and bidding a fond farewell to January. I will be interested to see what my weather stats for January show when I enter them into my Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet late tonight or tomorrow. The last couple days were a bit chilly and that may make the month yield to January 2006 as the warmest January since my records began in 1959. This year should be no worse than second. It must have been the most s#@w free January as well although I don't keep s@#wfall stats here.

I did most of my end of month financial work today. It was a nice day to walk down to the bank and the church so I thought I'd get that done today instead of on the first as I usually do.

I did some more rewiring of my Lionel train layout today and did a lot of train running to make sure all worked OK. It did. I think tomorrow I'll work a bit on rewiring the Defect Detector I got yesterday. It works fine from track power right now, but I want to get it connected to a separate power source so I can easily turn it on and off. It's going to get old quickly if I have to listen to it each lap. It's really intended for a bigger longer layout than mine, but it is a nice little accessory to have.

It was another of those 0000Z QSOs this evening. The bands were good for a second evening in a row and I immediately found and and worked KA1FXK on 80 meters.

I also uploaded my January QSOs to LoTW and eQSL. The 160 QSOs were the most I've had in a month for a long time now thanks mostly to the 130 QSOs I made when Mike and I worked the NAQP a few weekends ago. Later tonight or tomorrow I'll see how many matches I got from the uploads. -30-

Thu Jan 30 2020 7:32PM - The bands were good again tonight. It seems maybe the ratio of good to bad nights is increasing recently. Tonight it didn't take too long to find and work Doug WA4LJJ on 80, but after 8 minutes or so we got wiped out by a pileup chasing some DX.

Mike and I spent the day together. He arrived around 9:30AM or so. We talked for a while about this and that, then we headed out to the first of four stops we had planned.

First it was the Hobby Express store in Cranberry, PA. What a great collection of railroad "stuff" from beautiful locomotives to rolling stock to buildings to scenery all the way down to tiny pieces of wood for scratch building houses and so on. The best way to describe it is "WOW". I think we'll be buying a lot of things there although today as I said it was only a reconnaissance tour of that and one other railroad store. I did buy a Defect Detector for my Lionel layout along with some transition track to go from my old tubular rails to the new Lionel Fasttrack which the detector uses.

Next on the list was a meal at Chick-Fila also right in Cranberry. That really hit the spot.

Third on the list was Best Buy where I needed to get a couple things. I wound up getting one of two things I needed plus one other item. They didn't have replacement blades for a razor I got there a while ago. I did get a laptop cooling fan stand to replace one that gave out on me a while ago. Then as a bonus I got a CD/DVD case to hold my collection of Little Rascals/Our Gang videos. That will replace the very poorly designed one that came with the CD/DVDs.

Our final stop was at another hobby store. Unfortunately they seemed to be in the process of switching from trains to sports cards and only had a meager collection of some rolling stock.

So it was back home again to do some playing with and working on my Nickel Plate Road 482 GP59 diesel. A hidden object game on the computer, a little more with the trains then Mike headed home where his repaired locomotives were waiting for him. -30-

Wed Jan 29 2020 7:52PM - The on again, off again good band conditions were off again tonight. Only a few net stations were heard quite weakly plus CWOps special event station K4O. Fortunately it didn't take long to work K4O once I found him in the noise. So now I wonder when the next good night will be.

Mike will be visiting either tomorrow or Friday depending on when his repaired locomotives arrive. When he does come, one of the things we will be doing will be visiting the Hobby Express store in Cranberry, PA. We watched a video walkthrough of the store recently and their stock of model trains and accessories looks awesome. That should be an interesting experience and a guide to some future purchases. We have no plans to buy anything this visit which will be more of just a reconnaissance tour of the store.

Early spring in January continues here. We did have a trace of s@#w last night, but it melted for the most part today. We're getting to the point where the altitude of the sun in the sky is having an increasing heating effect and that's great.

I did some more train work today. Mostly rewiring of my layout to gather the various controllers in one place outside the oval of track to leave room for some future buildings and scenery, I hope. -30-

Tue Jan 28 2020 8:14PM - The bands (read that as 80 meters) were good again tonight. It seems that 80 opens up nicely about once or twice a week now which may indicate things overall are gradually improving. There were a lot of S9+ signals jumping out of my noise, one of which was Bob NR8M with whom I had a 43 minute solid rag chew. So I hope that conditions are on the upswing and will continue that way. I know the solar flux has been in the 70s since November 20 now and that's a good sign. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

The weather continues to be great with none of that ugly white stuff falling from the sky. There was some hint of a bad winter storm on Groundhog Day, but the forecasts gradually are changing it to just some rain, and maybe not even all that much of that. Let's keep it up during February. -30-

Mon Jan 27 2020 8:19PM - It was down to 160 tonight for my QSO. 80 had nothing to offer but net and DX chaser stations. 160 didn't have a lot either, but it did have K2KRG calling CQ and I snagged him right away. He knew about my KX3 QRP and mentioned he was glad to help with my daily QRP work. We had a nice chat for about 20 minutes until he had to QRT to make a sked.

I was glancing through my weather records briefly a while ago. I was checking on this unusual January and wondered how February turned out after such a warm January. This year, January is just about tied with 2006 as the warmest January in my records going back to 1959. Both months had a mean temperature around 36 degrees. As far as how Jan relates to Feb. I set 3 or more degrees above average for a benchmark and counted 15 Januarys that qualified since 1959. 9 of those 15 years had above average February temperatures also. I may do a little deeper research and see what else I can come up with. Maybe I'll make my own groundhog prediction on Sunday. HI.

As for trains today, I did some work on one of my passenger cars. The lights in the car were going out briefly when it went over a switch. I found a loose wire on the one pickup roller and took the car apart and resoldered the connection. The first time it broke again and I had to do it over. Now it works just fine. -30-

Sun Jan 26 2020 7:43PM - A great day today. Mike and I went to an all you can eat breakfast in North Washington, PA. For the second time we've been going to dinners, hamfests, etc., Mike's GPS took us to a location a couple miles from where we actually wanted to go. Finally we figured out ourselves by watching house, farm, etc. numbers along the route where we needed to be. It was a great meal. We both had buckwheat pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs.

When we got back home here we went to work on our Big Boy kits. They were quite frustrating for various reasons including broken parts, hard to fit parts, parts that didn't really fit as they should, and so forth. We finished the engines, then took a break and watched a couple train videos, tried out a dwarf signal that Mike bought, and then went back and finished the tender part of the kit. It went more smoothly than the engine part. A check of the bands showed pretty much nothing. I did get my streak QSO a little later just before Mike left to head home. -30-

Sat Jan 25 2020 7:27PM - While I don't keep s@#wfall records here, this has to be one of the, if not the most s@#w free January we've had here since I've been keeping other weather records. That goes back to 1959. It's hard to compare Kittanning with other close weather reporting stations like Pittsburgh and Butler because the 30-50 mile difference makes a lot of difference when it comes to s#$w. Still I will check and see how those stations wind up this January compared to other years. I'd estimate that we have not had even a total of 5 inches this month and probably less than that. That is perfectly fine with me. Let's hope February is the same.

Another day without much out of the ordinary going on. I did some track cleaning on my Lionel layout today and added a couple of connectors to my wiring to replace those that just had the bare wire wound around the terminal posts. Then I did quite a bit of running of the trains, especially my new Nickel Plate Road GP9 #482. It's a Legacy engine from Lionel. I'm really learning the Legacy controls now and the more I learn, the more I like it. I think within the next month or so, I'm going to get a LionChief Big Boy which is compatible with the Legacy system. I want to do some more research before I commit to buying one. They are about 700 dollars cheaper than the Legacy Big Boy and they run on O31 curves instead of the O72 curves the Legacy Big Boy requires. That will make it possible to use my current track layout instead of filling the whole room with the O72 curved track. That's more important than the price.

Of course it was a quick 0000Z streak QSO in the 160M contest this evening from NY3A to continue the streak. I don't think conditions on 160 were as good as last night, but still good enough. -30-

Fri Jan 24 2020 7:06PM - I forgot (I do a lot of that as I get older) about the 160M contest. After finding not much at all on 80, I went to 160 and saw a whole swarm of signals there. That's when it dawned on me that this was the weekend of the CQ160M contest. I quickly worked W8CAR and my streak QSO was in the log. I might (but probably not) get on later just before going to bed to see if I might get one or more of the 8 band states I need for 160M WAS. Conditions should be good on 160 at this minimum point in the sunspot cycle. -30-

Thu Jan 23 2020 7:30PM - The bands returned to normal tonight. S9+noise and weak signals. I did manage a brief QSO with Dan KB6NU before he faded into my noise.

I'm getting to wondering if I will ever see good conditions again for more than a very isolated night here and there. It sure seems dismal right now. At least it hasn't gotten bad enough to end my streak (yet). I've still gotten my streak QSO in the 0000Z hour every evening since March 23 last year except for a couple days when I couldn't be in the shack in that hour. I'm talking about the Skyview meetings and I think one other night.

I guess there is nothing much else to talk about tonight. -30-

Wed Jan 22 2020 7:33PM - An unusual night on the bands. My local noise was actually down from S9 or so to S5/S6 on 40 and 80. That hasn't happened in a long time now. It was nice to see signals on the PX3 peaking well above the noise level. I worked WA9VBG in IN at 0003Z. He was quite strong, but had trouble copying my signals. But it was a QSO for the streak. I tried some CQs after that but didn't get any answers.

Mike emailed today and wanted to know if I wanted to go to an 'all you can eat' pancake breakfast on Sunday. I'm sure you know my answer. Then after that we'll try to finish the Big Boy kits.

I said I'd elaborate a bit on our visit yesterday. Mike arrived around 10:30 or so. We played with and worked on my trains for a while. Then it became Christmas and I gave Mike the belated (thanks to the company I ordered it from) gift which was of course the two Big Boy kits, one for each of us. We then got started on the assembly. It wasn't all that easy, but it was a lot of fun nevertheless. Some of the parts were hard to get together. Some fit so tightly we didn't even bother to glue them. They are going to be just display locomotives anyway and we won't be running them. So the snap fit will suffice. I guess we spent about 3 hours on them and finished the boiler and the two sets of driving wheels. That was perhaps around half of the work. We still have a lot of detail work with some very small parts and also we haven't done anything with the tender yet. Perhaps we can finish it on Sunday or we may need a third session.

We stopped work on the kits and watched some train videos until 5:30PM or so when we headed off to Applebee's in the Pittsburgh Mills. I used my Christmas gift card for our two meals. Mike had a club sandwich of sorts and I had one of my favorites, fish and chips. The meal took about an hour.

We left Applebees and headed for the Skyview club house for their meeting which was a 'social' meeting which they have on the third Tuesday of a month. The members broke up into small groups to discuss different subjects. One of the things we wanted to do was find out more about the train trip the club is taking in March to ARRL headquarters in CT. We got most of the details on that and then talked about various things with the members. After that it was back to Kittanning where Mike left me off, then he headed home. -30-

Tue Jan 21 2020 10:53PM - In contrast to the last couple days, this was a very busy one. Mike came down for a visit. We did two basic things. I gave him his belated Christmas present. It was a Big Boy Revell plastic kit for display purposes. We spent a few hours working on that. Then we attended the Skyview ARS meeting this evening. As it is quite late now, I'll elaborate more on what we did today in tomorrow's entry. -30-

Mon Jan 20 2020 7:17PM - Another of those cold dreary mid-winter days today with nothing to 'write home' about. Some more playing with trains and some computer games. Plus the streak QSO this evening. I think if I didn't have this strong local noise 24/7, I'd try getting on the air more during the daytime hours. However the noise makes it very frustrating. Maybe when the sunspots return and liven up the bands, signals will be strong enough to override my noise. That would be nice. The streak QSO? Oh, it was on 160 meters where I worked Bill K4JYS in NC again as I did about 10 days ago. -30-

Sun Jan 19 2020 7:57PM - A bit more s@#w today after the nice natural clean up last night. Nothing to really worry about, but it is cold at 18 degrees now going down to the low teens overnight.

The bands were a bit better tonight and it didn't take long to find and work WC1X who was portable near Montreal in Quebec. They had 10 inches of fresh snow up there from this latest storm.

It was a pretty quiet day today playing with trains and computers plus the usual Roscoe walks and feedings. I also kind of followed the KC/TN playoff game. I didn't have a favorite since I liked both teams since they started up in the AFL in 1960. Of course KC was Dallas then and Tennessee was Houston way back then. It would be kind of nice to see this year's Super Bowl be a re-match of the very first Super Bowl although the game wasn't called the Super Bowl until the merger was completed. Let's see what GB is doing. Well as it looks now, the re-match is off. SF is ahead 27-0 and it's just past the start of the second quarter. GB has a long row to hoe to get back in the game, but there is time. -30-

Sat Jan 18 2020 7:25PM - Now that's what I like. A s@#wstorm that cleans up after itself. It s@#wed this morning, then transitioned to a very brief bit of freezing rain, then to regular rain that started the clean up. After that, the temperature rose to 44 where it is now and melted a lot of the s@#w that survived the rain. NICE!

I figured I'd get a quick contact in the Hungary contest this evening, and started to look for a contest station. However I noted a big peak on the PX3 up the band a bit. It was K8NY calling a regular CQ. I answered him and we had an 11 minute contact from 0000Z to 0011Z. I got him just a couple seconds past 0000Z. That was on 80 meters.

It was kind of a cabin fever day today with the weather as described above. I only got out for 4 brief walks with Roscoe and that was it except for getting the mail. The rest of winter doesn't look too awful bad. The rest of January according to AccuWeather will have highs in the 40s each day. February will be colder, but not all that bad. Best of all, the s@#w days are few and far between. However that's only an outlook, not a real forecast, so things could change. -30-

Fri Jan 17 2020 7:32PM - Just sitting here wondering what kind of weather we are in for this weekend, especially tomorrow. Just about everything outside of sunny and hot has been predicted as we get closer to zero hour. S#$w, rain, sleet, freezing rain, etc. have all been mentioned. At least the freezing rain is predicted to be very minimal (so far) with little or no accumulation.

For the first time in 4 straight nights now I got my streak QSO before 0040Z when I worked KN4ZQ in VA at 0016Z. Conditions seemed to wake up about 0015Z after the band was very quiet with very little activity for 15 minutes. 80 meters has been that way quite a lot of the time lately. -30-

Thu Jan 16 2020 8:19PM - Winter officially started today and looks like it may be nasty for the second half. S#$w, windy, and cold today. Saturday we may have a mix of s#$w, sleet, and rain. I just hope no freezing rain.

The bands took a couple steps back this evening with some really poor conditions and little activity. It took 50 minutes to find and work my friend Carl WB0CFF on 80 meters. But the streak still goes on.

I did some more work with my Lionel SC-2 switch controller today and learned more about it. I think the Route feature on the Legacy controller is really neat. You can press one button and have several switches thrown to set up a particular route. I only have a couple switches right now, but I can see how handy it would be for someone who has a large setup with many switches. -30-

Wed Jan 15 2020 8:10PM - As if to mock me for my statements about conditions last night, the bands, especially 80, were in very good shape tonight. A lot of activity and strong signals. At one point, I counted about 10 S9 peaks on the PX3 in a 40 kHz wide spresd while working my contact for the night, WA3I Chet.

I got to the shack a little late because I was helping to get Roscoe to take one of his pills. He takes a flea/tick preventative and a heartworm preventative pill. The flea/tick he usually just eats like a little treat. The other one we have to mix in with his breakfast, but that didn't work today. So we put it in the fridge until this evening, then Bruce made some beef gravy which we added to the food and the pill (broken and pulverized). Roscoe was reluctant, but I finally used a little persuasion and he finished it after a few minutes.

I worked on my Lionel setup today. I got a SC-2 switch controller a couple days ago, and after studying it a while, I jumped in today and hooked it up. It was much easier than I thought. So now I can use my Legacy CAB-2 controller to also throw the switches on my layout. Very nice! I really like the Lionel Legacy system. It seemed very complicated with all the control systems Lionel has, but it turns out that the Legacy system is backward compatible with all the older systems, even the conventional AC one. -30-

Tue Jan 14 2020 7:53PM - Remember the previous sunspot cycle that had twin peaks? Well, I think this may be a twin valley we are in now. I thought a few weeks ago conditions were picking up, but the past couple nights have been absolutely horrible. I still think a lot of it is folks staying away from the bands because of the state of the sunspot cycle. Now last Saturday, the bands seemed great in the NAQP with a lot of activity which extended up through 15 meters. Mike and I made around 250 or so QSOs, most of them easily, on 160, 80, 40, 20, and 15 meters. That seems to indicate that propagation is good, not as good as at a sunspot maximum, but good enough that QRP and simple antennas can get a lot of QSOs. That's just how things seem to me. What about you?

Tonight it took 40 minutes to make my QSO after unanswered CQs and unanswered responses to other stations calling CQ. Finally K9GHD in IL answered my response to his CQ and we had a brief rather rough QSO with QSB and QRN pretty bad.

Otherwise today, we took Roscoe to the vet for a check out and he got a good report except he needs to lose a bit of weight. -30-

Mon Jan 13 2020 8:15PM - The bands again tonight were not all that good, but it didn't take long to get my QSO anyway. I worked Amy KT4E on 80 meters. There was a lot of QSB, but copy was pretty good on both sides for 10 minutes or so.

It was another 'not much going on' day today. I did a lot of playing with my trains. I also finalized all the results from the NAQP on Saturday. I uploaded all 129 QSOs to my on-line logs, and also double checked them all in my Excel log. There were quite a few first time stations that I worked. I would guess around 20-25 or so, but I didn't count them. Maybe I will now. PSE AS. I was close, it was 29. So 100 of the QSOs were with those whom I have worked before. I see there were 47 multipliers. That figures to be a score of 6,063 points.

That's it for now. I'm going next door to watch LSU-Clemson with Bruce and Roscoe in a little bit. -30-

Sun Jan 12 2020 8:03PM - I said I'd talk about yesterday's events with Mike, so here goes. Mike arrived around 10AM not long after I walked Roscoe. We chatted for a while, getting into a new train layout I designed with the program AnyRail among other things. I then asked Mike if he wanted to help me set up the new layout. He said he would, but we better get our contest setup fixed first. We did that, setting up like I described a couple entries ago. Once we felt everything was ready we got to the train layout.

First we got everything out of the center of the layout loop. Then we changed the position of the switches and added track (after checking it to be sure we got good pieces from my old collection) to make a smaller loop inside the big one. After it was set up, we tested it with my engines, and it worked pretty well. There are a couple spots in the track that need some fine-tuning though. I'll get to that some other time. Now the priority shifted to the NAQP contest.

We went up to the shack at 1800Z for the start of the contest. We began on 20 meters which was quite active. But then we decided to check 15 meters, and there was activity there. We made a few contacts on 15, then headed back to 20 again where we stayed until a food break from about 2030 to 2130. We picked up a pizza at our favorite pizza parlor, Vocelli's and ate it here before going back to the shack for some more 20 meters work until 2245Z when we tried 40 briefly, but found conditions very poor there. Next it was on to 80 for most of the rest of the contest except for a foray onto 160 for a half dozen or so contacts. Mike was ready to shut down and head home at 0300Z, so we did and he did. I made 129 contacts and Mike also worked most of the same stations right after I did. Conditions did change or the station I worked developed a pileup and Mike missed out on about 10 or so stations. We worked all USA call areas plus KP2 and VP5.

I must say I really enjoyed getting back into some relatively serious contesting. It was great to work those contesters I hadn't heard or worked for a few years. I was pleased to find I still had my old contesting skills such as copying whatever speed they were using and digging signals out of the noise and QSB. It was just a totally fun activity. I'm so glad Mike suggested doing it. Now I look forward to doing some more of these tag team contests with Mike. Maybe the ARRL DX test next month??

Tonight was a poor night on 80 and I had to resort to 160 meters for my streak QSO, working Bill VE3AUI for about 25 minutes with solid copy both ways despite a little QSB. -30-

Sat Jan 11 2020 11:00PM - Mike and I just ended our NAQP session a little while ago. I'll have more to say about it in tomorrow's entry, but right now I'm getting ready for bed. So tune in tomorrow for the continuing saga of K3WWP and his hobbies. -30-

Fri Jan 10 2020 7:21PM - No ghost writer around tonight, so I guess I'll have to write the diary myself. This marks about entry number 5,325 in the diary which began being a regular daily thing in mid-May 2006. That's a lot of writing and a lot of time spent doing it. Just like the QSO-A-Day streak though, I intend to keep doing it every day (with an occasional break when my main ghost writer Mike does it for me).

Speaking of QSOs, my streak QSO tonight was with KO8L in Cleveland, OH on 80 meters. Tomorrow (today UTC) I should have a lot of QSOs as Mike and I do one of our tag-team contest efforts in the NAQP. That will be our first tag-team effort in quite some time from my shack. Of course we do multi-op outings in our parkpeditions, Skeeter Hunt, FOBB, FD, etc., but those are not really tag-team efforts. As we define it, a tag-team contest is when we use one rig (mine usually) with a key and set of headphones plugged into it for each of us. Then I find and work someone as K3WWP, after which Mike tries to work the same person with his call KC2EGL - or vice-versa sometimes. When we first started the tag-team efforts, we would have just one key and headphones (or speaker), and would just alternate sitting in the operating chair. That was hectic, although it did provide good exercise when we were younger. HI. Now our new system is more favorable for our ages. In looking back through my contest results notes, I see we possibly had our last previous tag-team contest in the GAQP in April 2014. Has it been that long!! Or possibly my incomplete notes left out some later ones? Anyway it will be fun.

It was a mild rainy day today, the kind of day we don't like in summer, but love in the heart of winter. And it should be even milder tomorrow with a high possibly near 70!!! We've only had a couple 70 degree days in January that I can recall from my 60 years of weather records. I just checked my memory and looked it up and it was 71 on 1/13/2006 and 71 on 1/8/2008 and 70 on 1/13/2013 and 70 on 1/13/1972. Looks like January 13th is the winner for high January temperatures. -30-

Thu Jan 9 2020 8:48PM - Thanks in advance to Mike who is now going to switch seats with me and write the diary entry.

Good evening eveyone. The day started when I arrived at John's QTH around 10:35AM. We chatted a bit before John had to take Roscoe for a walk. After Roscoe's walk we started checking out a issue with John's model railroad. That was followed by a phone call to Tom WB3FAE to see if he was up for a little company this afternoon. He liked the idea so we headed over around 12:30PM after I took a look at John's neighbor Bruce's cell phone. It was stuck on a loop of rebooting. We went next door to give Bruce the bad news that his phone was no longer servicable. We then headed over to Tom's QTH. We spent the afternoon talking about trains and radio. He invited us into his shack and we tuned around the bands to see what was out there. There were a few signals working pileups via split operation. No luck for John or myself. After a very nice afternoon visit with Tom we headed back to Kittanning. Stopped at John's place to check on Roscoe before heading out for dinner. Wendy's was our choice of grub for the evening. Then it was back to John's for more checking on his model railroad before heading to his shack for his streak QSO. We followed that up with a few model railroad videos. Which brings us to this very moment. John is getting some walking in by pacing the first floor of the house. Now John is headed out to get his temperature readings. And I will get ready to head North to my QTH.

Until next time, de Mike KC2EGL, 73. -30-

Wed Jan 8 2020 8:17PM - I guess 40 meters was a fluke last night. Tonight it was back to its usual dead self with only a couple very weak sigs to be heard. So it was back to the old standby for the past several months, 80 meters where it took a little while, but not long, to find and work K9VPL Marv in IN.

We didn't get a chance for various reasons to make the shopping trip for Roscoe today, so we're shooting for tomorrow morning before Mike arrives.

It was rather a nasty day today anyway with a bit of s#$w from off and on flurries most of the day. It only totalled about a half inch at most though so that was good. Now we're looking for a warmup for a few days starting on Friday. That will also be good. -30-

Tue Jan 7 2020 7:55PM - Well well, what do you know? There were a lot of signals on 40 meters this evening above my local noise level. So I called CQ and got an answer and a QSO from K5KHK in Rochester, NY. Let's see if I can quickly find the last time I got a 40 meters QSO by calling CQ. Jun 26 of 2019.

Not much else to report on today. Just the usual activities and nothing else special.

Tomorrow among other things, I'll be going along on a grocery shopping trip for Roscoe. He's just about out of breakfasts and we've been improvising on his suppers for a couple days now. Then the next day Mike and I are getting together again. I'll have more to say about that after the fact. -30-

Mon Jan 6 2020 9:12PM - A great day with Mike. He stopped here around noon on his way home from Menard's in Ohio where he picked up the remaining buildings he ordered. We played with my new Nickle Plate Road Diesel for a while. He included in the consist his BN boxcar he got at Menard's to replace the defective gondola he got a couple days ago. Then we tried to light up his buildings and the free cars that came with them. We had no success for a while until we analyzed things and found the plug from and old power cube of mine had the + and - parts of the plug reversed from 'normal'. After we fixed that all the buildings and cars lit up just fine.

After I took Roscoe out, we went to Subway for dinner. We both had tuna subs. Then an unsuccessful search for a power cube at six or seven stores. At one store though, I found a nice dog bowl which I bought for Roscoe. I took it over to him when we got home, then later fixed his supper in it. He seemed to enjoy it. He doesn't like change and I was afraid he would reject the bowl, but he didn't.

Next up on the agenda was watching some railroad videos. In between them, we went to my shack where we both worked KK1CWO on Cape Cod on 80 meters. Then more videos after which Mike headed home just a little while ago. -30-

Sun Jan 5 2020 7:29PM - I finally got around to finalizing my weather records for 2019. In glancing through the data as I was working with it, I didn't really notice anything outstanding, hot or cold, wet or dry. It was a little above normal in both temperature and precipitation. I may go through it more thoroughly to see if I overlooked something when I get a chance.

I worked one of our NAQCC members this evening for my streak QSO. It was KC3MIO Rich in PA on 80 meters.

Mike is going to Menards tomorrow to pick up his "back-ordered" items. Then he is going to stop by here for a while. I guess we'll try out his buildings and also the replacement Gondola that didn't work right. I'm doing my laundry tonight as I'm typing so I won't have that as a distraction tomorrow. -30-

Sat Jan 4 2020 8:46PM - You know how the Chinese name the years, the year of the tiger, the year of the dog, and so forth? Well if we did that, this would be the year of good vision. You know, 20-20. OK, enough!

Another day of delayed winter. Almost at 50 degrees again. Let's hope that continues. AccuWeather seems to think it will at least until near the end of January. They think the Polar Vortex will remain strong and hence remain in place near the pole. Here in the USA the jet stream will provide mostly a Pacific zonal flow which means mild weather.

The streak QSO came quickly again this evening when I heard and worked Mike WQ9H on 80 meters. -30-

Fri Jan 3 2020 9:27PM - And once again here's my ghost writer Mike: Good evening everyone. The day started out when I arrived at John's QTH around 10:30AM. The plan was to head to the train shop in Indiana Pa to exchange three model railroad signals for three I did not know they had in stock. John also made a purchase. He needed some smoke oil for his new Diesel Locomotive. After our stop at the Train Shop we headed out to the Menards in Warren Ohio to pick up a order for a few O Gauge structures, an order that I placed last week. This was a first trip for both of us to a Menard's. Best way to describe it is Walmart and Lowes metamorphasized into one store. It was very impessive. Unfortunately they only had one of the items I ordered. I had received an email earlier today saying that my order was ready for pick up, only to find out that the rest of it had only shipped today from Wisconsin. I received another email just after we left that the rest of my order should be in tomorrow. I will wait until Monday to make sure that everything is in before heading back to Warren. I did purchase four pieces of rolling stock to complete a frieght train set up. One of those has to be returned because it has an issue staying coupled when going around a turn. I'll exchange it for another item when I go pick up the rest of my order. The other three items (a box car, a coal hopper, and a covered hopper) all work very well being pulled by John's new diesel locomotive.

Before heading back to John's QTH we stopped at Pondeosa for a late lunch/early dinner. After arriving back at John's we tested out the new rolling stock that I purchased, and went up to John's shack for his streak QSO, which he will tell you about a bit later.

That brings us to this moment with me typing away and John checking his weather readings and taking Roscoe for a walk. It's time for me to close this entry out and head north to my QTH. Until next time this is Mike KC2EGL, 73.

Thanks Mike. My streak QSO this evening was with my old friend Bob K9OSC on 80 meters. I heard him calling CQ and we hooked up for a 22 minute QSO. There was some QSB and QRN, but copy was still pretty solid. It's always nice to hook up with someone you've gotten to know pretty well after several QSOs. -30-

Thu Jan 2 2020 7:29PM - I spent a part of today getting some more first of the year things done. Paying some bills, getting some computer work done, etc. It turns out December was yet another warm month with the average temperature at 5 degrees above normal.

I got a QSL card from Gene AA8MI for our visit (eyeball QSO) on December 28. Thanks Gene.

I got two QSOs this evening. The first was with KK1CWO whom I believe is some special event station as he told me to check him out on the Internet. I'm going to do that right now. Oh, it's for a chapter of the CWOPS Club on Cape Cod. Always nice to work Cape Cod as I visited there a couple times many many years ago. That QSO was so quick, I decided to follow up with some CQs of my own, and I got an answer on the very first one from K8EG in OH. My first multi-QSO of 2020. Hopefully conditions will improve this year and will permit more multi-QSO days in between playing with my trains and other activities. -30-

Wed Jan 1 2020 7:23PM - It was a good first day of the year for the most part. There was a little s@#w on the ground this morning, but it melted off the sidewalks and roads pretty well during the day. Otherwise, I had a good New Year's Day meal from each neighbor on both sides of me. Also my new NKP 482 loco seems to be running well, hopefully breaking the jinx Mike and I have had with locos of late.

The bands seemed good tonight, especially 80 meters. So I decided to try a CQ since all the other stations I was hearing were in nets or rag chews. It didn't take long to get an answer from AA2AU Dave in NJ for a 10 minute QSO.

I'm getting caught up on my end of month/year work. I put the stats from 2019 in the QRP section of the web site. Certainly a come down from the past few years in every category. I have a few more updates to the site which I'll do in the next few days. Tonight I'll deal with the weather stats from December 2019, and later the stats for the full year of 2019. It will be interesting to see how 2019 compares with previous years. Most all months were above normal in temperature so it should turn out to be a very warm year overall. Kind of like the years in the 1930s perhaps, although not that extreme. -30-