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I had to use the snowblower to dig out the antenna base

 I had to take a pass on this year's ARRL CW DX contest I was not happy about it but I wanted to play it smart. I did not want to be looking back and saying "I should have sat this one out". Here was the issue, here in the Maritimes we had an incoming snowstorm which is not an issue. This one had the potential of freezing rain and high winds. On Friday the storm had passed and we did not get much freezing rain and the Hustler 4BTV was fine. Around 9 am on Friday, the winds began to pick up, and then there were powerful gusts of wind. These were the speed of the maximum rating for the antenna and were not forecast to be this strong. I have the luxury of being able to take the vertical antenna down which I did. The plan was to put it back up on Saturday if the winds died down, come Saturday they had lessened but not by much and on Sunday another storm was headed our way with wind gusts of 90km or more. 

Removing ice coating

DX Heat Cluster

One of my morning routines is to check on the clusters to see what's happening. I check DX Heat, DX Summit, and Holy Cluster. This morning, I noticed the same station was being spotted over and over nonstop. Holy Cluster was not as bad as the other two, but it still had issues with continued repeat spots. I noticed on Holy Cluster the same station is spotted on SSB, CW and Digi all at the same time. A sure sign of a hack I believe.  I'm not sure how long this has been going on, as I just checked this morning.  

 I put my WSPR transmitter to work over the past 24 hours to get an idea of the conditions of the bands before the ARRL CW DX contest. The Kp index was anywhere from 3-4, not the greatest but it's something we have no control over. In this contest, North American stations can only contact DX stations. Below is a 24-hour breakdown of the activity on the bands that I can operate on (10m-40m) and also the Kp index over the past 24 hours as well. I did check the solar weather and it looks as if things are going to calm down slightly over the weekend. In a nutshell, 20 and 40m will be my go-to bands with sprinkles of 10 and 15m. 

The new extended hours were a nice addition to the contest, and for me, it's a very relaxing event. At VE9KK, this was a CW event, and I kept my speed in the 22-26 wpm range. It was not a very busy event, and I checked in now and then on Saturday and Sunday. One nice surprise was that on Saturday evening on 40m, I had a call from 4Z4DX from Israel.

This weekend is the annual Winter Field Day event, and I have only started participating in it within the last few years. I am one of those who participate from my nice warm shack and not the wintery outdoors. I have worked outside all my life and feel I have had my fair share of the winter wonderland. This year, Winter Field Day has some major changes. 

1. The event was previously 24 hours long but has now been updated to 30 hours, from 1600 UTC to 21:29 UTC. 

2.  Your location does not have to remain in the same place throughout the contest. If you are set up at a certain location you can now pack up and move to another location. For some winter means snow and very cold weather. Let's say conditions change (or whatever the reason) you now can pack up and change location. 

3. In the past, there were objectives that could help your score, such as operating 100% on alternate power. The new change is that these objectives are now multipliers. Also, check the Winter Field website, as some new objectives have been added. 

I hope to make contact at this weekend's event with some of my readers.

I got up this morning to -14F that good old Arctic air flow doing a number on the thermometer. Our heat pump was doing its best to keep up and keep the house warm. I did need to put on the space heater in the shack as it was just a bit too chilly for this old guy. I set up for the morning CWops mini-test at 9 am local time....well, I thought I did. I started my Win4icom radio control software and it would not connect to my rig, all settings were gone! I entered all the comport and settings again and got it a go and things connected. Great ready to go.... not so fast, now N1MM+ could not connect and seems all settings were gone there too. I fixed that and seems all things were a go....not so fast, I went to log a contact and was greeted with "cannot log contact no frequency is indicated" Sure enough N1MM+ was not tracking the radio frequency at all. I restarted N1MM+ and all was well and I finally was up and running about 15 minutes into the contest. Now this rarely ever happens, in fact, I can't remember the last time it did. I am willing to have a trade-off like this now and then for the excellent support these programs give my contesting adventures. 

In the end I made 70 contacts and had an enjoyable time. 

Faulty connector

Two years ago I made a 1:1 isolation choke with some RG316 coax and wrapped it around an FT240-31 core. At one end of the RG316, it was fitted with a proper mini UHF to PL 239 connector. At the other end after wrapping the RG316 coax around the FT240-31 core, I soldered a regular PL-259 connector....Kinda Gerry rigged it. Today I installed a new monitor arm for the monitor that displays my Icom 7610 screen and while mounting this arm I had to move some wires and connectors at the back of the radio. Everything was done I wanted to ensure the monitor was working correctly and displaying my Icom 7610 display. While doing that I bumped my keyer and noticed my SWR went off the scale! I tried it again with the same results. 

Opposite end.