Category: DX

Pretty Poor Last Night

I got on for a while last night, but didn’t have much luck. I did work a couple of stations on 80 meters, but although 40 and 20 were pretty active on FT8, I just couldn’t buy a contact. I was running 15 watts, but there were some humongous signals on the waterfall. Either they had multi-element beams or were running some serious power.

I tried to connect with a British station /portable on St. Pierre et Miquelon on CW. He was up and down in the noise, but on the peaks he was about S5. No luck there either. Ah, well … I can always talk about “the one that got away.” It’s like fishing … sometimes you get a bite … sometimes you don’t.

Keep on tryin’ de Dick N4BC

A Feeble Effort

Yesterday evening, around 0200Z I flipped the rig on and tried answering a few JT CQs on 40, 30, and 20. No reply. Just couldn’t seem to conjure up an answer from anybody. I finally just gave up.

I wish I had looked at PSKREPORTER to see where I was being heard. Europe, Asia, North America, South America … pretty much all over the world. Had I known that, I would have cranked out a few CQs myself. I think I just gave up too soon. Live and learn!

73 de Dick N4BC

Oh my aching blood pressure!

***RANT ON***

I sat and listened to a DX station working split last night. Most of those calling listened to the instructions and were calling above the DX’s transmit frequency. I never DID hear the DX, myself. There were so many calling on his TX frequency, and of course, the self-appointed traffic cops sending “UP … UP” (without IDing, of course), that I couldn’t hear the DX. There can’t be THAT many clueless people out there, can there? Oops … silly question. Of course there are! Don’t people LISTEN anymore? Where’s my blood pressure medicine?

***RANT OFF***

73 de Dick N4BC

Some CW Action this evening

I’ve had some luck this evening working CW. There were some pretty strong signals coming out of the Caribbean and Central America … ZF2, HR9, PJ4 … etc. They were working pileups (mostly into Europe with some North Americans – me being one of those). All good operators, and just knocking them off, one after another. Not the most leisurely QSOs … more “Slam, Bam, Thank you Ma’am”. BUT … a contact in the log on an otherwise poor evening is a contact in the log!

Had a little lightning and thunder in the area this evening, too. I would think that as cool as it was today, that’s unusual.

Our repeater trustee wants me to give him some help setting up and interfacing our new Yaesu Fusion repeater with our RLC-2 Controller this weekend, so I guess I will give him a hand with that. We’re finally getting it installed SOON, I hope. Seems like it’s been forever since we lost our old tower site.

73 de Dick N4BC