Another Digital Mode

I tuned across an Olivia QSO in progress last night on forty meters, and spent a while “reading the mail.” Just a couple of guys having a nice, pleasant, unhurried ragchew. The band was a bit unstable … up and down … but mostly strong signals. I must have monitored for almost twenty minutes or so.

When the band DID dip, though, it sometimes went so far down that the Olivia signal disappeared from the waterfall … not even a faint trace showed at times. But guess what? The letters on the display just kept on printing. Good solid copy even with no detectable signal on the waterfall. I was impressed. I’m gonna have to try this mode more often. It DOES seem to be gaining in popularity, and I’m all for trying new things.

73 de Dick N4BC

Unbelievable!

Ya know, I note that as of today, I have had over 33 thousand visits to this website since the start of the year, and that’s either scary or wonderful. I don’t know if they’re looking for something specific or if they’re randomly searching. That makes me humble and wanting to do better. Guess I’ll have to up my game.

73 de Dick N4BC

Club Stuff

Club meeting last night! After a dutch-treat dinner, where I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of Brunswick stew, we all met in the Community Room at police headquarters for our monthly meeting.

This was one of the better ones. We had a couple of prospective members attend (Bill and Phil) , and lots of interesting discussion about lots of different things.

Lots of discussion on our repeater woes. We’re still looking for a site since we lost our previous site, and several new leads were proposed. We also talked about this year’s upcoming Field Day, digital radio systems, public service, 60 meter operation, and several other subjects of interest. Lots of information shared made for a great, fun meeting.

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