Author Archive
Inspiration
September 26th, 2012 | 
Author: In my links section, I have a link to W6AQ, Dave Bell’s e-book, “Worlds Best Hobby”. I’ve mentioned the book on the blog here, before. I’d like to make a couple of points about it.
Beautiful Autumn Day
The weather was sunny, and mild – not hot. A gorgeous Autumn day with crisp, blues skies and big, puffy white clouds. We spent the early afternoon picking apples at a nearby “pick your own” orchard. We got some great looking Red and Golden Delicious, Winesap, Jonathan and Macintosh apples. Probably about 15 pounds of apples all told. Great snacks for a person (yours truly) who has sworn off junk food in an effort to drop some poundage.
After returning home, I spent some time on the radio and worked some DX as the bands were open. 20,17, 15 and 12 Meters were active and I even heard some stations on 10 Meters, too. I managed to snare the following:
PA6XX on 15 Meters
PA3FQA on 12 Meters
S57DX on 17 Meters
EA8DO on 12 Meters.
I heard a ZL1 station on 10 Meters; but from listening, it was apparent he was running QRO and was only about 569/579 here and there was quite a pileup. Getting him in the log would have been nice, and I gave a few tries; but decided that hanging around too long was not going to bear fruit. As the song says, “You’ve got know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.” And sometimes you do “just know” when it’s not going to work, and sometimes perseverance also means “not today; but some other time”.
I also worked two stateside stations. One was Terry WA0ITP, on 20 Meters, who was working portable from Pioneer Ridge County Park near Ottumwa, Iowa. Terry self posted onto QRPSPOTS and sure enough, I was able to get into his log. That was fun, as I consider Terry to be one of the better known QRPers and it’s always a delight to work a QRP “celebrity”.
QRPSPOTS is (if you’re not already familiar) a QRP Spotting site, sponsored by the Four States QRP Group.. QRPers who are going portable will often spot themselves in advance of their outing in order to let everyone know that they are active in the field. There are a lot of spots posted for SOTA activities and many QRPers will spot juicy DX that they have been able to work with low power. Nothing like spreadin’ the wealth, man! QRPSPOTS is a boon to QRPers and many thanks to the Four States QRP Group for the service they make available to us.
The other QSO was after dinner with Adam N0SSS who answered my CQ on 20 Meters. Adam is a younger Ham (relatively speaking) at 32 years of age and only 4 years as a Ham. But I have a feeling that Adam will go a long ways in the QRP world. He was using his KX1 at 2 Watts with a Moxon antenna that he built himself this summer. When he turned the antenna so that I was in his sites, his signal went from 559 to 599+. We had a very enjoyable chat that lasted for over a half an hour. I sure hope we run into each other again sometime.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!
Oopsy!
Forgot a score. And it affects the Top Ten – mea culpa, mea culpa. mea maxima culpa!
My apologies to Pete W1PNS who came in with a score of 4620 – so let me rephrase this …..
The Top 11 Finishers
W1PNS – 4620 points
Golly gee, and Pete went to so much trouble to post niceness about the Skeeter Hunt on his blog and I went and left him out – truly and purely accidentally with no malice a forethought.
Thanks, Pete, for being so understanding. I’ll get the hang of this yet, I promise!
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!
2012 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt Results
Are in! Well, partly that is!
Skeeter Hunt results delay
I had intended to post the 2012 Skeeter Hunt results last weekend; but alas, some family stuff has come up which has taken away my discretionary free time.
Results will be posted this coming weekend on the Skeeter Hunt page of my blog and at http://www.qsl.net/w2lj/
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!
Whither "DE" ???
Listening to some QSOs on 30 and 40 Meters tonight, I have noticed an increasingly less usage of “DE”.
VERY often, I seem to be hearing (for instance) “W2WK W2LJ” instead of “W2WK DE W2LJ”.
Was “DE” tossed out the window? Did I not receive the memo? I know it’s gone by the wayside in contests. Lord knows, the hour and a half it takes to send two letters will really cut down on the ol’ QSO per Hour rate. But in casual rag chews?
Call me a curmudgeon, call me old fashioned, but I’ll stop using “DE” when I stop using my rotary phone, my 5.5″ floppy disks, my Smith Corona typewriter and stop wearing my spats.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!
