dick | N4BC

Easter weekend

Lots going on last weekend … church and family related. Saturday, I spent several hours at church for a dress rehearsal for our Easter Cantata (I’m a bass, in case you care!). Sunday morning I was up at 5:30 AM for a sunrise service, then back at 11 for the cantata. After the service, it was out to lunch, returning for a 3 PM Thomas Pandolfi piano concert. Finally, back home for an early bedtime.

My wife was off on Monday, so I took the day off as well to spend some time with her. So, she and my daughter went shopping most of the day. Hey, shopping with that pair is torture, as far as I’m concerned, so I passed on that. Not much on the bands at my QTH, but I did work WL7CG, Alan, on 20 meter FT8 around 2000Z .

Well, it’s now Tuesday as I’m writing this and I only have another hour until I finish work. Hopefully there will be a bit going on the bands when I get home. Just gotta keep trying!

73 de Dick N4BC

One Bright Spot …

The bands have been sort of lackluster the past few evenings, with not much activity noted from my humble shack, One bright exception was a short, contest-style contact with PJ4/M0SDV, Jamie, last night on 40M CW. He’s vacationing and DXPeditioning in Bonaire, and must be having a great time! He’s a first-class operator and was doing a great job of managing the pileup.

Brings back memories of my DX days in the Indian Ocean. Every time I got on the air, I created pileups. remember, this was back in the days of very active sunspot cycles. I remember huge pileups to the USA and Europe when I was running 5 Watts SSB or CW, using a TenTec Argonaut. Ahhhh … the good old days!!

73 de Dick N4BC

Who …?

While I was dressing for work this morning about 5:15AM (EDT), I turned on the rig, just to see what might be on. There was a station on 40 meter CW that was a good 599. He was answering stations with their callsign, a 599, and then “UP.” He was going back to primarily JA’s and Europeans. Ya’ know … I listened for at least ten minutes and never heard him identify his station. I guess everybody else knew who he was. Never did find out, myself …

73 de Dick N4BC

This Digital Stuff

The bands have been a bit sparse the past few days, but you can just about always find signals on FT8 frequencies when nothing else can be heard. Last night was a bit lean, but I did work nine North American stations on FT8 … all on forty meters.

There were a few CW stations participating in a CWT Contest, but I have my paddles disassembled at the moment, so I’ll make it a priority to reassemble them and get them back in action. There weren’t a lot of stations there, but several were quite strong. Nothing exciting, though, unless you were actually participating in the contest.

We dodged the bullet on this last Nor’easter … we only had a mix, with no accumulation, mostly rain, and above freezing temperatures. Further north, they got the brunt of the storm. This coming Saturday, we’re looking at some sleet and rain overnight, but the temperatures are supposed be be in the upper forties. I’m ready for Spring!

73 de Dick N4BC

Woops!

I was all fired up to work the Virginia QSO Party last weekend. I got comfy at the operating position, tuned to 40 meters, and … didn’t hear a single Virginia station calling! Scratching my head, I wondered if propagation could be THAT bad.

Oops … turns out that the QSO party is this coming weekend, not last weekend. I managed to transition to Daylight Savings Time correctly, but managed to be a weekend off for the VQP. Oh well, I’m too old to be embarrassed!

Got on last night and worked a bunch of FT8 stations … some DX but mostly USA … 80 through 18 meters. I even heard some FT8 signals on 15 meters, but couldn’t make the QSO. Kept trying to get Easter Island, but never could connect. I tried. Most of the stations he worked were tailending, and I’m not quite sure how that works on FT8. I’ll Google the answer later to see if I was doing it right.

It snowed again here last night. Wasn’t supposed to be any accumulation, but we got 2 or 3 inches at my house. Meteorology is obviously not an exact science!

73 de Dick N4BC