Portable Ops 4/45: A SKCC Kind of Day!

I have been a member of SKCC for some time now, but never really done anything with it except hand out my number if asked- I’m 8033 if you’re interested.

Anyway, this weekend while I was playing radio from the shack, I worked a few guys in the SKCC Weekend Sprintathon – 5 to be exact.  This lit some type of fire inside me to work more of these guys!
If you are a new CW operator, these Op’s are great to work.  They take it nice and slow typically matching your speed, and tend to be good operators that you can learn from.
So anyway, I decided to really start putting some effort into working more SKCC operators – it seems like in the past I have almost always heard some QSO’s around their calling frequencies.  The first award I will work towards is the Centurion – which requires you to work 100 SKCC members.
So before today I had worked 5 members from the weekend.
Today I listened around 14.050 from the local park.  I heard a few stations, but decided to call CQ.
AA7XP – Herb answered my call and gave me a 329 he was a 459 here. His number is 14525T.
Then I called CQ again and…
KE6OIO answered from CA with a 599 signal, she gave me a 559.  We had several nice exchanges, her SKCC number is 1204T.
So that puts me at 7/100 for SKCC members worked – still a long way to go, but I am going to enjoy the ride.
I do need to get a better straight key!  Right now I have just set my KX3 paddles to work as a hand key.  I just push on one of the paddles to form the dits and the dahs – but I need something better!  I might have to fire up my sons 3D printer and print something off!
  
Burke Jones, NØHYD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Kansas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

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