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Spring officially begins in about 5 hours from right now.  But the weather here today had to be record breaking, or darn near close to it.  As I left work today, for the drive home at 5:00 PM, it was 77F (25C) – on March 19th!

The extended forecast for the next week is informing us that daytime high temperatures will be in the upper 60’s and into the 70s’ and that on Thursday, we may even break 80F (27C).

I was telling Bob W3BBO during our weekly Echolink chat the other day, that we will probably pay for this with a Memorial Day holiday weekend in the 50s (13C).

Ah yes, W2LJ is ever the optimist!

On a radio note, I tried getting on the bands a few times over the weekend only to hear not much of anything.  The bands seemed to be dead for me.  BUT ….. the bands have been real good for my friend Jim W4QO, who announced that he finished working the countries he needed to accomplish Diamond DXCC – all QRP.  Way to go, Jim – a hearty hand shake and slap on the back for you!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

This appeared on the QRP e-mail reflectors today:

I would like to announce that the complete collection of QRPp, the NorCal QRP Club Journal that I did from 1993 to 2004 is now on line. Chuck Adams has scanned in every page of every issue and has it on line at http://www.k7qo.net/NorCal_QRPp.html. This is a temporary site, as we want to make sure that all of the bugs are out of it before we place it on the NorCal page where it will have a permanent home in about 3 weeks. This material is for the education of QRPers, and it will always be free. No one will ever have to pay anything to access it. We ask that no one makes it available on CD for distribution in any way. Everyone is granted permission to make an archival copy, but no one is granted permission to post any part or portion online. We want there to be one site where it is available. Some of the schematics will be redrawn and Chuck is coordinating that effort. I have struggled for years on how to make the information available and decided that this is the way to do it. Every article was donated, no one was paid anything for writing any article. So, I wanted to make it available for free. Enjoy. Thank you to Chuck Adams for doing the work to make the pdf’s, to Dean Davis for his future work in
putting it on the NorCal web page, and especially to all of the contributors over the years. 72, Doug, KI6DS

Thank you Doug and Chuck for making this available to all of us online.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Sometimes I think Pavlov would have done better using Hams rather than dogs.  There seems to be a lot of salivating going on in Elecraft land.

As we get so ever closer to the KX3 shipping date, the KX3 reflector is going wild.  You get a palpable sense that some of the guys are literally jumping out of their skin, waiting for their radios to ship.

For me, it was harder to wait for the ordering process to begin.  In addition to not really knowing when it was going to happen, I was conflicted for a while wondering whether or not I would have the funds needed when things actually started rolling.  Fortunately, that turned out not to be a problem when the Order Page finally opened up.

When the original forecast for shipment was stated to be mid-February, my mind immediately told me “March or April …… maybe”.  I remember reading the stories that accompanied shipping the K3 when it first came out.  I figured that while that experience might have helped with initially shipping the KX3, it would not entirely eliminate unforeseen shipping delays TO Elecraft of materials needed to manufacture the rigs.

So here we are at March 14th, Pi Day, and the official line on the Elecraft Website is that shipping will commence somewhere between March 16th and the 26th.  I’m thinking that if I am very lucky, I will see mine somewhere right around Easter time.

I’m just hoping that I get it in plenty of time to build it and have it for QRP To The Field., which is usually the last Saturday in April.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

This post will probably get me thrown off QRP-L for all eternity.

The other morning, I was trying to send an e-mail and Thunderbird started acting flookey. I was getting error messages that said my ISP “Cannot send message due to possible abuse” and then I also got this: “The message could not be sent because the connection to SMTP server smtp.verizon.yahoo.com was lost in the middle of the transaction. Try again or contact your network administrator.”

The situation was like this all day Saturday, so when sending e-mails, I had to use the Web based client that Verizon Yahoo offers.

No big deal really, in the scheme of things.  But later on that day, I saw that Terry KQ5U was experiencing the EXACT same problem and he posted about it as an Off Topic on QRP-L.  Wishing to communicate with him about it, but not wishing to tie up the e-mail reflector, we shared a couple of direct e-mails.

Thunderbird started acting normally for me on Sunday morning; but then gave me the same error Sunday afternoon and evening.  For the record, it seems to be all right today.  And I would have to say that in all, there were less than a half dozen posts about this on QRP-L.

Then I saw this today, and quite frankly, it rubbed me the wrong way.

“QRP-L mailman list,

Just a reminder, we don’t use OT in the subject or have Off Topic posts on this list. Especially when it comes to computer operating systems. Please take that elsewhere please.

This list is to be use for QRP and ham radio related topics. Some think this is a fine line since many of us have computers attached to our rigs, it is not.

Antenna modeling, SDR’s, logging and control are OK to discuss on the list, but I draw the line on operating systems. Guys that want to continue pushing this will be moderated without warning.

If you have any questions on this contact me direct and NOT to the list.

Thank you and 73 qrp-l moderator.”

Now, first off …… this is a private list that is run by someone.  Who that someone is, I am not sure and really, do not even want to know.  That said person sets rules and that we are expected to follow them is also fine.  I have no qualms with any of that.  That this notice was posted didn’t even bother me.

Here’s what bothered me, this one single, line:  “Guys that want to continue pushing this will be moderated without warning.”

There were a grand total of less than 1/2 dozen posts regarding this; and the originator, Terry KQ5U was looking for assistance.  And he came looking for that assistance to  a group of guys that are very knowledgeable on a wide variety of topics.  The fact that there were so few posts about it didn’t warrant the reaction, in my book.  And the “challenge” to anyone who might have offered some valuable information or tips seemed to be way off base in my most humble opinion.

In the past years, I have seen some really mundane topics that had NOTHING to do with QRP, just beaten to death on QRP-L, without one iota of comment from anyone.  This one, where someone was looking for some help with regards to an e-mail client (and NOT an operating system as was erroneously pointed out) so that he could continue posting to the list, just seems rather arbitrary and heavy handed to me.

Like I said, if this gets me banned from QRP-L in a snit of retaliation – so be it, but what’s right is right. The list owner’s announcement was correct and reasonable – the implied threat wasn’t.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Jim W1PID was at it again today:

Prepare yourself for some beautiful photos as well as a good story.


http://www.w1pid.com/spring/spring.html

On a side note, some of you may have noticed that I removed the “Capcha Code” from the blog comments area.  I did that in response to a couple of you out there that were having difficulties posting comments.  It’s a good thing that comments are on moderation and that Blogger has a good spam detection process.  Since removing the Code, I have been averaging about 15 – 20 spam comments a day!  Don’t people have better things to do?

Today was more like the end of April than the beginning of March.  Around lunchtime, the high was 68F (20C).  We really shouldn’t be seeing temps like this for another 4 to 6 weeks; but you know what?  I’ll take it any day.  Unfortunately, tomorrow is supposed to be more seasonable with highs only in the upper 40s (8C or so).

Tonight is the 40 Meters QRP Foxhunt.  I managed to get both Foxes Tuesday night in the 80 Meter hunt.  I worked Lee AA4GA quite easily; but was having a devil of a time with Ray KX9E in Illinois.  Turns out I had the K2 set to 1 Watt. When I bumped it up to 5, Ray was able to hear me a bit more easily.  I had forgotten that I had set it to 1 Watt over last weekend, and forgot to reset it.  That means I worked AA4GA in Georgia with only 1 Watt as it turns out. Cool!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!