"There are many pursuits which men and women follow, outside of their regular business or profession. No hobby is more suitable for people in general than radio."–Charles William Tassig, The Book of Radio, 1922.
Bart, VE5CPU, just surprised me with a certificate for my entry in the 2015 Radio Amateurs of Canada’s annual Canada Day contest. With 10,640 points, I was first place in the 8th US call area.
I always enjoy working the RAC’s two contests each year – the Canada Day contest, always held on July 1st, and the RAC Winter Contest, usually the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Continue reading “Wallpaper: Canada Day Contest 2015”
I’ve been listening the last few nights to the pileups on 40 meters for the VK0EK DXpedition to Heard Island in the south Indian Ocean. Propagation hasn’t been the greatest on 40 and I haven’t been able to hear them, though I can hear everyone trying to work them (they’re usually listening down from their transmit frequency, rather than up).
Tonight, though, I tried 30 meters, and found them at 10.116 MHz, sending VK0EK DN, so I tuned down, didn’t hear much, and set my transmit frequency to 10.114.5. Gave a few calls and heard them send ZM? a couple times, so I tried again, heard 8M? and with one more call got the reply I was waiting for. The usual 599 exchange, and I’m in the log, as shown in the screenshot of their live on-line logging:
Nice to be able to add another all-time new one. Thanks guys!
My Kenwood TS-690S has served me well for over a dozen years, but it was time to move into the 21st century and upgrade the HF portion of my shack.
After reading the reviews and consulting with some of the world’s top contesters, I decided on one of the 690’s successors, the highly-regarded Kenwood TS-590SG.
Now that some of the initial bugs have been worked out of the 590, and a few features added, it made perfect sense. Continue reading “New rig in the NF8M shack”
Saturday resulted in an all-time-new-one and a QSO with a friend I haven’t worked in several years.
After answering a CQ from an EA7 and having a short QSO on 17 CQ, I checked the spots on DX Heat, hoping to find VP8SGI while I still could. In doing so I stumbled upon 3B8HC calling CQ on 12 meter phone. Continue reading “Saturday’s interesting QSOs”
I don’t normally expect much out of the January VHF contest, so working just seven stations on six meters Sunday afternoon was all right with me. The best DX was only the other side of the state, but I managed three grids (woo-hoo!) for a score of 21 whopping points.