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I had a real good time during the 1st Annual Skeeter Hunt today, although the outlook appeared bleak from the very beginning.  Just as I was heading out the door to go to the park, our vacuum cleaner decided to give up the ghost.  It made a real funny noise and a burning smell.  I tried troubleshooting it quickly; but it turned out we needed a new one.  Of course, my XYL didn’t want to wait; so it was off to Target to buy a new one.

That chore taken care of, I headed to the park (dressed in my WGØAT “Old Goats Rule – QRP Adventures” T-shirt!) – nearly an hour and a bit into the contest.  Fortunately, everything after the vacuum cleaner incident went as smooth as butter!

The weather here in Central NJ was gorgeous!  A high of about 84F with sunny, blue skies and lots of white, puffy clouds.  The humidity was not bad, and the only Skeeters that I had to worry about were the ones on the airwaves.

The wrist rocket got a line up over a pretty high tree branch on my first attempt.  The PAR antenna went up without any trouble at all and and didn’t even cause the KX3’s autotuner to even so much as burp – 1:1 SWR on both 20 Meters and 40 Meters.  The little box to the right of the KX3 is the PAR matchbox.  I used my Whiterook single lever paddle today.  And of course, you can see Ol’ Blue, my battery, up there in the upper left hand corner of the camping table.

And the good SWR on 20 and 40 was a very good thing, because unlike the Flight of the Bumblebees, I was to find a lot of activity on 40 Meters.  In fact, a little after 20:00 UTC, 20 Meters became dominated by European stations and I was barely able to hear any Skeeters on that band after that point.

In all, I managed 28 QSOs – 13 were on 20 Meters and 15 were on 40 Meters.  Best DX was working Mike DJ5AV from Germany on 20 Meters at 18:55 UTC.  I only got a 529 from him; but there were a lot of strong signals on both bands and I received quite a few 579s to 599s in addition to the “normal” 559s.

Tear down was just as easy as set up.  After the contest ended, I was able to pack up things and be out of the park in less than 10 minutes.

I would like to thank all of you who took the time to participate in this first ever NJQRP Skeeter Hunt.  I think a good time was had by all; and this will definitely become an annual Summer QRP event.

Remember, logs are due by September 12th, after which I will post results.  Log summaries are fine – details of each QSO are not necessary – but if you want to send a log in that way, that’s OK, too!  And any pictures, especially those of you who home brewed keys for the event will be greatly appreciated!

I’ve gotten a few logs in already and I hope to get many, many more.  In fact, Jim W1PID, posted another of his great stories today – this one about the Skeeter Hunt:

http://www.w1pid.com/skeeter/skeeter.html

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

posting Jim W1PID’s accounts of his portable ops on my blog.

http://www.w1pid.com/hike/hike.html

This is a report on his latest trip to Knox Mountain and the DX he worked while there.

I am sorry for not being original and I certainly don’t mean to steal Jim’s thunder in any way.  He posts these to QRP-L, but these are always so good, they’re worth sharing with those of you who might not be subscribers to QRP-L.

These little reports that Jim posts are a huge inspiration to me; and I hope they serve that purpose for you too.  You don’t need to be stuck in your “normal” shack all day in order to make contacts or work distant countries.  You know it as well as I do – a radio, a battery, a key and some wire is all you need for a passport to the rest of the globe.

Thanks Jim, for sharing again!  These keep me wanting to do the same. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

“There’s nothing better than a QRP radio, some wire and the great outdoors!”

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

Steve WGØAT posted this to the KX3 reflector this afternoon – as usual, Steve’s videos are super cool!

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

As of tonight, we are up to 93 brave souls who have volunteered to be Skeeters for the inaugural NJQRP Skeeter Hunt this August 12th.

You don’t have to have a Skeeter number to participate – but it’s way more fun to have one!  Get yours by e-mailing yours truly at [email protected].

Two places to view the rules:

http://w2lj.blogspot.com/p/njqrp-skeeter-hunt.html

and

http://www.qsl.net/w2lj/

Still plenty of time to get a number, so don’t be shy!  Was there something that you did during FOBB that you would like to try and improve upon for next year?  New antenna?  Different location?  Different key?  Use the Skeeter Hunt as a “proving ground” – we certainly don’t mind!

The goal is to get up, get out and have some fun with that gear that you’ve built (although the use of commercial gear is certainly not discouraged). Come out and play!

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

Ol’ Man Murphy seemed to be my constant companion today!  I foolishly thought I had everything under control.  I was given yet another lesson in humility today.

I got to the park right at about 12:45 – a lot later than intended.  Some home things came up, and I had to take care of them first. Really no biggie, but still, an unintended delay.

So I get to the park, and get out the wrist rocket.  Load the pouch with my 1 ounce fishing weight, pull  back and aim for a convenient branch. Instead of “BWWWWAAAANG”, I got a loud “SNAP”. One of the elastic bands broke.  OK, take a deep breath, examine the situation. Thanks to the Swiss Army Knife that I always carry, I was able to make some field repairs that would hold me over.  I finally got the wire up like I had it last year.  I hooked up the KX3 and could not get a decent match!  I have no idea why; but I figured I would worry about that later as I was already seriously into the first hour of the contest.

ALWAYS have a back up!  I ran over to the Jeep and pulled out the Buddistick.  W3FF’s antenna literally saved my bacon this afternoon.  I got it set up and got going, one hour into the proceedings.

After that, the afternoon went well and was a success.  I’m never in these things to win – just to have fun and rack up some QSOs.  In all, I made thirty contacts. Twenty six were on 20 Meters and four were on 40 Meters.  I was a bit disappointed with the lack of activity on 40 Meters.  I thought there would be a lot more, especially as the afternoon wore on.  I kept checking 7.040 MHz as well as 7.030 MHz, but except for the four QSOs that I made, there was nothing to be heard.

Something to do before the Skeeter Hunt in two weeks.

Figure out why the wires wouldn’t match.  AND, make new wires out of something more flexible and light.  I was using some wire that I had gotten from an SK’s estate sale that would have been more appropriate for a permanent wire antenna.  I need to get something better for portable ops.

The little blue LiPO battery held up great!  No problems with it going low voltage on me.  By making sure the KX3’s LCD backlight was off, I was able to stay at the full “QRP Gallon” of 5 Watts out for the entire time I operated.

The filtering in the KX3 made an easy job out of working stations that were right on top of each other.  In fact, at one point, John K4BAI came back to me informing me that we had already worked each other. John, if you’re reading this, I was working someone else who was so close to you, it was ridiculous. Yet, the KX3 was able to single the other op out for me with no problem.

Even though there was some frustration, the day turned out well.  And, no more than a half hour after I got home, the skies got dark, the lightning and thunder started and we had real heavy downpours.  But by that time, I was already adding my QSOs to AC Log on this netbook.

Hope you had a great time with FOBB today!  Looks like Jim W1PID did – here’s his report:

http://www.w1pid.com/fobb12/fobb12.html

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

I tell ya!

I had a virtual pipeline into Northern Europe tonight on 20 Meters.  I worked Latvia, Denmark and a whole bunch of Ham friends from European Russia.  I was consistently getting 579 reports, and I will take those at face value.  Whenever I don’t get that automatic “599”, I figure any other report is probably pretty honest.

Hey, 5 Watts to the Butternut and I’m getting 579 from over across all that water that’s separating us?  I’ll take THAT any day of the week! If I wasn’t so tired from work, I’d do the Happy Dance.

I’ve got a bunch of yard work planned for tomorrow, so that I can have Sunday free for Flight of the Bumblebees.  Fresh air, trees, sunshine, wire and a radio.  You can’t beat that with a stick!

Since portable ops seems to be the thing that a lot of folks associate with QRP, I’m attempting to boil the essence of that down into a design for a T-shirt.   This is what I’ve come up with so far:

I’ve put this design on some stuff at Cafe Press.  I think I’ll order myself up a few shirts so that I can wear them while I’m Skeeter hunting (too late for FOBB).  I’ll have to see if I can’t find a real graphic artist who can improve on the execution of my idea – but for now – not too shabby (at least I think so!)

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

And from the looks of this video, Mt. Herman in Colorado is as beautiful as ever!