DX | N4BC

A Bit of Nostalgia

Good Morning, everyone!

I was just looking at my QSO confirmation rates … not too bad, actually. With the advent of electronic QSLing, the percentages are really pretty high, I think.

I track QSLing on two sites, primarily … Logbook Of TheWorld and QRZ. I also upload to EQsl and ClubLog, but seldom visit. I do that mostly for others. On LOTW my confirmation rate is a bit over 66% and on QRZ.com, it’s a whopping 76%.

Obviously, for the “biggie” awards (ARRL and CQ), the LOTW logbook is the major one, but just look at those percentages. I don’t have any numbers, but I guarantee you that I never approached that before electronic QSLing … maybe when I was rare DX, but not as a lowly US ham.

Looking back on it, as a DX station with US managers, I was pretty isolated from the confirmation part of the hobby. I really didn’t care about that aspect of hamming. I just had a blast operating. Without the burden of LOTS of cards arriving in my mailbox, I was continually on the air when I was free. That being said, I still got a LOT of QSLs sent directly to my overseas mailbox … mostly foreign hams and HUGE stacks of bureau cards. I remember getting an entire mailbag of VQ9 (Seychelles) cards one time from the Russian Bureau at Box 99, Moscow (I was the VQ9 bureau). They got answered, but it took time.

Nowadays, it’s a lot cheaper. Essentially free. Back in the “good ole days”, all QSLs went either via the bureau or direct. With the cost of postage now, it’s just not a viable method for most hams.

Times change and we just have to change to keep up. I think LOTW was a great idea, and I’ve never had any problem, either setting up an account or using it, but I DO miss all the paper QSLs. Sigh … times change for sure.

73 de Dick N4BC

A Couple of New Ones!

I worked two new countries this evening, both on FT8 … Oman on 40 meters and the Falkland Islands on 30 meters. Yes, Virginia, there is life left in the ham bands.

I also went ahead and updated the firmware on my IC-7300 with no problems noted. I don’t know why so many people have difficulties with this … if you follow the manual step-by-step, it’s hard to mess it up. DO remember, however, to save your configuration before upgrading, unless you want to go menu diving and setting up your whole operating environment again.

I downloaded MMTTY and integrated it with N1MM+ in preparation for the RTTY contest tomorrow. I haven’t tested it live on the air yet, but it should work fine. Tomorrow will tell!

Wow … three posts today! Maybe I should have saved up and dribbled it out more slowly. Oh well, I hadn’t posted for a while so I guess this makes up for it.

73 de Dick N4BC

Good Props …

Last night was pretty active on the bands. The lower bands were pretty noisy, but conditions were good on the higher frequencies. I could hear a lot on six meters, but my vertical just won’t load properly there. I’m going to at least put up a dipole for six this week.

As you can see, there were contacts to be had for the picking. I definitely stayed busy. I was sort of keeping an eye (ear?) out for the Baker Island DXPedition, since they were working FT8. I did see stateside stations calling them in Fox/Hound mode, but never saw any of the DXPedition’s transmissions on my screen.

Everyone laments that “the bands are dead … Woe is me!”, but as you can see, they’re there. As an example, twelve meters … there was not a single signal in the FT8 portion of the band when I checked. So, I said “What the heck … let’s try a CQ and see what happens.” It took several CQs, in fact, but eventually I had a mini-pileup going … two or three stations coming back to me on top of each other. Dick’s sage advice #1 — “If you’re gonna’ catch fish, you gotta’ put a line in the water.” Everybody listening = no QSOs!

So, the moral of the story is … put a signal on the air! Fling yourself out there! “CQ, CQ, CQ … This is <you fill in the blank>”. Be BRAVE! Any mode … Any band. JUST DO IT!!!!

73 and Good Hunting de Dick N4BC

60 Meters and upgrades

Sixty meters is an odd band. Last night, I worked a station in Paducah, KY, and a station in Poland. I was being heard in both North America and Europe. Sixty is still an underutilized band, but I’m finding more and more users.

Forty last night was hot! Solid wall to wall FT-8 and CW signals … strong, too! I upgraded Windows 10 with the big Spring 2018 update with only one minor problem … when I opened WSJT-X it would key the transmitter, but there was no output power. I suspected an audio problem, and I was right. For some reason, the audio source changed from USB Audio Codec to Speaker in the WSJT-X Audio setup screen. Two mouse clicks pretty much solved that. No more problems noted and all works OK now.

I read an interesting article last night (don’t remember where, though … somewhere on the internet). Seems the scientist was saying that the new sunspot cycle has just begun. Something to do with the change in polarity of a new sunspot. If this is true, it would make the last cycle one of the shortest. We can only hope …

Spring has sprung, it seems. We’re finally having days in the 70s and 80s. Nights are still pretty cool … in the 40s and 50s. As far as I’m concerned, it’s about time!

73 de Dick N4BC

A Weird One …

I worked an odd callsign last night … 9A18WARD. The 9A1 part tells me it’s Croatia, but you have to admit, it’s a weird call. I can’t find any info on QRZ or searching on Google, other than lots of people have worked that station.

Oh, well … work ’em first and worry about them later. Have a great weekend!

73 de Dick N4BC