Thursday, February 28, 2008

CQWW 160 SSB Contest a bust!

Well the 160 meter ssb contest was not to be this year. On Friday afternoon, Feb.23rd we had some strong weather fronts move through which brought some strong thunderstorms. I don't like to be holding a key or wearing a headset when there is lightning in the area. Although the weather cleared up on Saturday I just was not in the mood to get on. On Tuesday Feb. 26th we had more strong weather move through with 60+ mile per hour gusts. A lot of trees broke off on top of the beverage antenna and the vertical portion of my inverted L broke off from the feed insulator on the remote tuning box and is now up in the top of a pine tree. Time for some more repairs. This weekend is the ARRl DX Phone contest. I will have some time to operate in this one except for time away on Saturday and Sunday morning. I will be operating as SOABLP. Hope to hear alot of good DX on with great band conditions.

73, Ed
N4EK

Monday, February 18, 2008

ARRL CW DX Contest

This weekend proved to be a very busy one with lot's of other things happening besides the ham radio contest. I was able to get on a little on Friday night but had an early wakeup call for Saturday morning. I could not get back on till almost 12 noon. The same thing happened on Sunday so operating time was limited. I also was dealing with a high noise level which is very unusual in my area. It was really bad when ever I turned my beams east or southeast. Time to get out the AM radio and do some noise tracking. So i ended up with 185 q's and maybe some new DX countries worked on 80 meters. The beverage RX antenna was playing real well on 80 and countries out of Europe were really banging in on Saturday night. This coming weekend is the CQWW 160 phone contest. Maybe the conditions will be good with no weather fronts moving through the area which should make for quite band condtions.

73, Ed

N4EK

Monday, February 11, 2008

Orlando Hamfest

The 2008 Orlando Hamfest is now history. It turned out to be a great weekend weather wise, not too cool and the sun was out most of the weekend. I managed to pickup all the small goodies I needed for various projects in the shack and a few things I want to build. The Florida Contest Group lunch and meeting was well attended with 69 members present. The group now has a total of 214 members and is growing all the time. All members introduced themselves and the new ones got a chance to tell a little about themselves. The group also received a plaque from the Alabama Contest Group for the most entries into the Alabama QSO party. Now it is time to get ready for ARRL DX CW Contest this weekend.

73, Ed
N4EK

Thursday, February 7, 2008

CQWW 160 meter logs

On Monday I uploaded my log from the CQWW 160 meter CW contest to CQ and to LOTW. I got QSL's for about 25% of the contacts which is a good percentage. I also uploaded the log to my computer which runs WIN-EQF for a general logging program. The ARRL CW DX contest is up next on February 16th and 17th. This weekend is the Orlando Hamcation and we will be heading there for the weekend. I will be looking for a few goodies that I need and attending the FCG meeting. This morning I have some repairs to do on one of the top guys on one of my towers so it is time to break out some tools and get to work.

73, ED
N4EK