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The radio waterfall showed a static snowstorm with a Kp index of 7 and the Bz dipping to -22! While all this was going on this radio operator had his hands on the keyboard home row, headphones on and eyes closed listening for a unique noise that would weave its way among the static ripples. Then there was something that had more intensity than the jagged static...N4 was all that was heard as the invisible static currents dragged the rest into the unknown. Grinding out the static I waited for the next opportunity when the static currents would let go of more Morse code.

Almost hit 14,000...

Once again it's year in the rear-view mirror time at the shack. I do want to start by saying I am thrilled that 2024 has come and gone with no health issues for our entire family! To me, that is the best gift of all our health. As for me I am finally getting settled into retirement and feeling the "normal" feeling. In 2025 I will hit the milestone of turning 65...funny as I get older it seems that those older than me are "old" until I hit that age and the "old" timeline moves further ahead. One area I will be working on in 2025 is my mindset. I find with all that has been going on in our globe it has started to slant me in the wrong direction. I want to make the effort to re-balance, reset or see the other side of things. I guess more of the bright side is what I am saying. 

Ok, enough of that and on to the hobby end of things......I had a great year of CW contesting. I am now very comfortable calling "CQ contest" or running as it is called. I have improved on my pileup skills, being able to pick out a call from the many that are coming at me. I have gained the art of coping ahead but it's still new and if I do not practice for a few days it slips. 

There was no real improvement of antennas here as I do live on a small lot and not much space at this time to go crazy. I did however do some computer upgrades such as an M.2 SSD  which turned out to be a great upgrade. I did have my share of RFI issues over this past year BUT finally forking out the money for quality toroids from Fair-Rite did the job. There was some fine tweaking along the way but I am confident I have now worked out all the bugs and am RFI free.....famous last words. 

Looking ahead into 2025 at this point radio-wise it looks like the same old same old but I am very happy with that. The funny thing I have noticed over the past 2 years or so around the time I changed the focus of the blog to CW only basically the readership and comments have taken a dive. I will continue to look into this and over the course of 2025 see if it is time to close the door or refocus on the content.

My path around the globe

I entered this contest as a single operator, Low power (100 watts or less) and unassisted (Did not use any spotting clusters). The radio was the Icom 7610 along with the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. The solar weather was great and the 24 hours came and passed with Kp1 and the Bz in the positive direction. I had zero issues with my software, radio, RFI and antenna so I am a very happy camper. The only issue I suffered from in the past has been RFI and I now feel with a few major contests in the books and no issues that the problem is in the rearview mirror.
At this point in my CW contesting ambitions I am not too concerned about my score, I want to polish my CW running skills. To do this I am not in the assisted category which means my band map is not populated with cluster spots, no decoding programs and I do very little search and pounce. I just stay on frequency and dit dit  "CQ CONTEST". I was running at 32 wpm which I find to be the sweet spot for contacts. In this contest, the exchange is 5NN and my province, which in all contesting programs would be prefilled at the listener end. If it was a progressive serial number then would program into the macro code for the number portion of the exchange to be sent slower. Stations from outside of Canada would send a serial number as their exchange and some would send at over 40wpm and that is fine by me. 

The ARRL 10m contest during the high solar cycle is always a pleasure and as 10m has done in the past it surprised me with some nice DX...7Q2T in  Malawi! My contacts were Europe and the U.S. with some South  America sprinkled in. The solar conditions were good with a K index from K1 to K3 but the Bz was in the negative numbers for most of the contest. This gave way to deep fading of signals to the point that if you did not get the contact information on the first try most often the signal was gone. This year I increased my contacts by 200 plus over last year and came close to doubling my score. I found each day the band opened to  Europe around 8 am local time and at around 11 am local it began to shift to the U.S. As the afternoon came South America would trickle in along with Hawaii Once again I was able to put PE4BAS fellow blogger Bas in the log.

The ARRL 10m contest happens this weekend (I got the date correct this time), and as we all know, 10m can be a band full of surprises. I once again put my ZachTek WSPR desktop transmitter to work for 24 hours. Below is a snapshot from Wednesday 19:00 UTC to Thursday 19:00 UTC. 

The graphs indicates that 10m becomes active around  1100 UTC, peaking at 14:00 UTC and staying decent until 21:00, when the band begins its fast closing for the day. 

Antenna pattern of the Hustler 4BTV

Kp index at the time

The band begins to open at 11:00 UTC

The Band peaks at 14:00 UTC

The band begins its sharp drop off starting at 21:00

The RFI black book

 At the beginning of November, I posted regarding the journal I was going to start regarding my RFI. I wanted to log ideas to try, results from the ideas and detailed records of the RFI. In the past, it was scribbled on a paper here and there and when needed to refer to I could not find the notes. This was a great help and allowed me to track what did and did not work. 

I then blogged on December 1st regarding ferrites I had purchased. They were bought and arrived in mid-November and I had a chance to give them a go. Now in my post on the ferrites, I did mention I purchased a brand called Fair-Rite, which I felt where a very good brand. I wanted to make the first test for this product an easy access one. I have mentioned in the past our electronic Maytag washing machine always had issues with RF from my operating. When I transmitted the washers would stop and just hummed. If the machine was not being used but still plugged in and I transmitted all the LED  lights would come on and it would start to buzz. The only solution while operating was to turn off the power to the washer. In the past, I tried some snap-on chokes from MFJ and put them on the washers AC power cord, which did not work. I snapped on 2 of the Fair-rite chokes and to this day I  have had no issues at all with the washing machine. The machine can sit there powered on or doing a load of laundry and no issues at all. 

Fair-Rite with 4 loops (4th on backside)