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A good day today. Not much operating as I had to install a new PC monitor here in the shack and then a new Freetime Freesat receiver down in the living room. It’s one of the new ones with WiFi support so I don’t need to run a network cable down to the living room which all existing boxes have required.

After that I came up to the shack to see if I had installed any new QRM generators. Switched to 10m PSK31 and heard a single solitary station – TO7BC  from Mayotte!

I’m not a DXer but this signal on its own in the clear was too much to resist. It took about 15 minutes to break the pileup. I couldn’t hear any other callers so I used XIT to dial in 0.5kHz up and hoped for the best. After a while with no success I decided to go up another 100Hz and he came right back! I must have been the only station who received a 579 report.

I shall check the website later to see if I got in the log. I will also have to find out where Mayotte Island is! I don’t often get to work DXpedition stations so I’m quite pleased with this afternoon’s work. I’ll check for QRM generators another time.

It’s called the Music Bullet.

In honor of Holy Week, I will be charitable and not refer to certain ops the way I might normally be so inclined.

I had two nice rag chews on 40 Meters busted up by inconsiderate ops.  The first QSO was with Howard K4LXY.  This was a 2X QRP QSO. Howard was using his KX1 and I was using my KX3. We were going at it pretty well until a certain W2 station (I will refrain form posting the suffix, although I certainly made note of it) came on frequency and called CQ right on top of us. Before that, another station came on frequency, but had the decency to “QRL?” and politely moved when he discovered that there was a QSO in progress.  Unfortunately, this W2 station didn’t bother with such niceties.

The second QSO was with Hank K1PUG.  Hank had answered my CQ, which I sent AFTER listening to the frequency to make sure it wasn’t being used AND after sending a “QRL?” with no response. Our QSO was evolving into a rather nice discussion about the Ten Tec equipment that Hank was using.  Again, this chat was going nicely until some digital mode (not familiar with the sound enough to know which mode it was) user came on and just put the complete kibosh on things. For crying out loud, we were on 7.035 MHz.  Can’t digital stations stay above 7.060 MHz? It’s bad enough when they practically come down to the Extra portion of the band on contest weekends. Can’t they leave CW ops in peace during a weeknight?

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon OF …… back in the 90’s when I was doing A LOT of digital mode work, we made sure to stay above 7.060 MHz on 40 Meters – EVEN during contest weekends.  Has civility been completely thrown out the window?  Man, I hate sounding like some bitter old man; but now I think I can begin to understand how they get that way.

Anyway, I jumped on over to 30 Meters to escape the madness and worked HC1MD/HC2, Dr. Rick Dorsch in Ecuador.  Rick is operating from the Fallaron Dillon Lighthouse through Friday, according to his QRZ page.

Although Dr. Rick was 599 here, I didn’t know whether or not to expect that I was going to be able to get him with QRP.  For some reason, I don’t always have the best of luck working South American stations.  I guess maybe my antennas don’t radiate all that well in that direction.  But I did indeed, work Dr. Rick with 5 Watts with the 88′ EDZ antenna.  According to the QRZ page, Dr. Rick was using a Yaesu FT-857D at 100 Watts to an Outbacker vertical.  When I read that after our QSO, I was even more impressed! I wonder if he’s an ear doctor, because he has to have a good pair of ears to have picked me out of the pack!

And so ends my night.  Have to turn in so I can get up and go to work tomorrow.  But Friday is a day off as it’s Good Friday.  The bad news is that W3BBO e-mailed me today to inform me that the Easter Island DXpedition ceased operations today.  Another one missed!

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

I was fortunate enough to work both 40 Meter QRP-L Foxes tonight.  Jimmy WA4ILO and Jerry N9AW are superb operators, both with good ears, so that had a lot to do with it.  But I used the KX3 tonight and that made it all the easier.

The “Dual Watch” feature is something else, and makes working split a snap!  You go into the KX3’s menu until you get to “Dual RX” and you turn it from “Off” to “Auto”. What happens next is that you hear your quarry on VFO A in your right earbud.  VFO B is heard in your left earbud, so you can tune around VFO B until you hear the Hound the Fox is currently working.  Once you know where the Fox is listening, it’s just a matter of time!  The only caveat is that the Dual Watch feature will only work with splits less than 1.5 kHz.

Anyway, I nabbed Jerry N9AW at 0106 UTC, six minutes into the hunt, and Jimmy WA4ILO at 0139. For the last hour, I was just listening to the two Foxes work my friends.

The past few days, I have been getting very few e-mails.  I subscribe to quite a few QRP e-mail reflectors and I was wondering what was up.  I thought that maybe it had something to do with that Microsoft / arrl.net thing that was going on last week, as I always use my arrl.net address for e-mail.

This evening, I checked my Web-based Verizon e-mail page.  Everything was in the spam, folder!  All the spam was in there; but also a ton of good e-mails, too! For the longest time, Verizon’s e-mail spam filter was doing an excellent job and I never really had to give it a second thought.  Looks like for the next while that I am going to have to regularly check the spam folder until the e-mail client “learns” what is spam and what is not.

I got an e-mail from my good friend Bob W3BBO, telling me that he was fortunate to work the Easter Island DXpedition on both 12 and 15 Meters today.  I haven’t had much luck hearing them loud enough to work them, and when they have been loud enough – they have been calling for EU stations only.  I don’t know how much longer they are going to be there; but I do have this Friday (Good Friday) off; so maybe when I’m not in church, I just may get an opportunity.  I’ve worked Chile many times, both QRP and QRO, but I have NEVER worked Easter Island.  It would be appropriate to work them this week, wouldn’t it?

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

I managed to break the pileup on 40 Meters tonight to work Vlad in Senegal for a new band. This makes for contacts now on 40, 20, 17 and 12 Meters, all via QRP. I also worked Vlad once on 20 Meters with QRO power, think it was 85 Watts.

Spring must be on the way though, as the band was super noisy tonight. Lots of QRN made it tough for two QRP rag chews (2X KX3 QSOs, by the way) that I had earlier in the evening. There were static crashes galore! Someone must have been getting some pretty bad thunderstorms.

20 Meters was decent this afternoon, as I was able to work SP6CEW in my ancestral country, Poland. I was also able to work S57KW in Slovenia.

When I spoke with Bob W3BBO on Echo link this afternoon, he told me that he had pretty good success on 17 Meters today. When I was tuning the bands this afternoon, 17, 15 and 12 Meters sounded pretty sparse to me with very few loud signals.

Tomorrow, we are forecast for more snow. Hopefully, it won’t be much. In any event, the ground has had a chance to warm up, so any snow that falls should melt pretty quickly. Spring officially began a few days ago, but it sure hasn’t felt like it.

One of my first radio goals for 2013 is to get about another couple dozen radials down for the HF9V. My Butternut is my “go to” antenna, so it will not be wasted effort. I want to get them down early, so that come late May or early June, they will have disappeared into the grass.

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

The other day, I received a request from Terry WA0ITP, to post the monthly Run For the Bacon announcements on the Four States QRP Group e-mail reflector.  It would seem that quite a few “Four Stater’s” have built Pig Rigs and want to be kept abreast of when RFTB is held.  So I went about the process of joining the Yahoo group and subscribing to the e-mail reflector.  I was approved and started receiving e-mails yesterday.

Immediately, one hit my eye.  It’s entitled “QRP till death do you part?”, and it was written by Gust ON6KE

The premise of the post is, that in addition to all your QRP only gear, you own a 100 Watt rig, or perhaps a barefoot rig and an amplifier.  At the same time, a DXpedition is underway to Tromelin, Peter I, Kerguelen, or some other very exotic place that has not been on the air for years (and perhaps might not be on again for many more years). If you have never worked that entity before, do you:

 1)      Try to work them QRP until they’re just about ready to pack their bags, and then if unsuccessful, go all out with everything you have?

2)      Try to work them QRP for a few days or a week perhaps, and then if unsuccessful, go QRO (well before the departure time draws near)?

Gust ends his post by saying, “I guess this question is about how “fanatic” one is about QRP”.

Interesting question to say the least! In my head, I guess I would add another possibility:

3)      Try to work them QRO and get them in the log and THEN try to work them QRP at another time, before they leave?

Personally, my primary interest (my passion, if you will) in Amateur Radio is QRP and CW.  If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know that. I have been interested in and have dabbled in QRP since I was licensed as a Novice in 1978. I joined QRP ARCI back in 1979, back when QRP was considered to be 100 Watts or less.  I became a “QRP only” station, under the current understanding of the term, in 2003.  From 2003 to 2013 (Wow, 10 years!), I have not had a rig that was capable of going past QRP levels (OK, my K2 could go up to about 15-20 Watts – that’s technically not QRP, but it ain’t QRO, either!).

But since my Novice days, I have also been drawn to working DX.  I’ve worked my share of DX with 5 Watts or less, enough to earn the ARRL’s QRP DXCC award.  There have been many DXCC entities where the only way I have worked them is with QRP, but I’ve also had many, many disappointments.  There have been many times during that ten year period where I limited myself to 5 Watts only, where I failed to get a DX station or a DXpedition in the log, even though I tried until the cows came home.

I would consider myself to be fan and aficionado of QRP, but not a foaming-at-the-mouth QRP “fanatic”, where it’s QRP and CW to the exclusion of everything else.  I am enough of a DXer NOT to marry myself to the idea that using something more than 5 Watts is heresy.  That’s why I went and sold my K2, so that I could purchase the KPA3, 100 Watt module for my K3.  For the first time in a long time, I have been able to increase my power in order to work DXCC entities that I have never worked before.  This just bore fruit a few weeks ago when I worked Egypt SU9VB for the very first time in my Amateur Radio career, and I did it using 85 Watts.

And that’s why I would subscribe to possibility number 3, above.  For instance, if I’m fortunate enough to hear Spratly loud enough to even attempt to work them before they leave?  Like any other DXer, I am going to be there with my 100 Watts trying to break that pileup and get them in the log, Baby!  But once they’re in there –  I just might try to work them again (not the same sitting) with 5 Watts only.  I am also enough of a practical QRP DXer to want to be able to claim that I got them with low power, too.

In the end though, you have to go with what works for you.  What works for me, may not work for you.  Amateur Radio is a big enough tent where opposite slogans such as “Life’s too short for QRP”  and “Quit Running Power” are cute; but really have no place.  There’s room for every thing and every one.  If there’s one bit of advice that I would subscribe to, it would be “Life is too short to pigeon hole yourself”.  Or as Cicero said, ”Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide”.

I have done QRP, I have done QRO, I have done CW, I have done SSB, I have done Digital, I have done HF, I have done VHF/UHF, I have done satellites – they were ALL fun.

I would still like to do more satellites and some PSK31, I would love to try meteor scatter and EME, someday.  I would LOVE to have a tower and a yagi someday. There’s so much to try and do – don’t cheat yourself! Amateur Radio is like being at a sumptuous buffet, it’s perfectly fine to try a little bit of everything!

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

I was piddling around on the bands today.  Since there were a lot of contests going on, and I did not feel like participating, I exiled myself to the WARC bands – 30, 17 and 12 Meters.

There was enough DX to be had and I worked just about all of it QRP.

On 12 Meters, I worked Andy SP9KR. There was a lot of QSB there, and I’m not 1000% that he got my call right.  So at the very end, when I sent my call sign for the very last time, I bumped up my power to 55 Watts  (for insurance) but I’m not sure that even then that I was heard correctly.

On 17 Meters I worked Serge R7AY in Russia.  After our QSO and I got Serge’s info in my log, I heard him continue to call CQ.  So I spotted him on the TelNet Cluster. Almost immediately, as he was working other stations I heard him send “W2LJ TNX SPOT”.  I guess he had his computer on! I thought that was so cool.  You’re very welcome Serge, I hope it brought you lots of DX!

I also worked OT4A in Belgium and GW100C in Wales.  Of course the GW100C call stuck out like a sore thumb.  After working him, I looked up the call on QRZ and it turns out that GW100C is one of several UK HQ team members of the RSGB.  These calls, GW100C, GM100C, GD100C, G100C, GJ100C are meant to be used by the HQ members so that they get practice in learning how to handle pileups for when they are taking their turns as G100RSGB, GW100RSGB, GM100RSGB, etc – the RSGB Centennial Stations.

On 30 Meters, I was able to work PJ7/N0TG and PJ7AA, both on Sint Maarten. J34G in Grenada who has excellent ears – and as it turns out, an FOC member, so no surprise there.

The last station that I worked for the day was Ivin 5N7M in Nigeria.  I ended up having to bump up the power to 85 Watts to work Ivin.  I was getting nowhere with 5 Watts and it actually took a fair amount of doing to get noticed at 85 Watts.  The pile up wasn’t fierce, so I have no idea what the problem was, although for this QSO, the EDZ ended up being the antenna that worked.  I have worked Nigeria before with QRP power, but not on 30 Meters.  Nigeria was new for me on that band.

Geez, it almost sounds like I’m starting to pay attention to 5BDXCC matters!

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