However, there was no 6M net last Thursday due to technical problems. In other news,
- I purchased a RigBlaster Plug and Play sound card interface and got that installed in about 10 minutes, then started playing with PSK-31 and made several QSOs including one to Cuba and one to Italy. Today I just barely got a response out of the W1AW/4 station on 20M PSK-31 before he faded into the noise, and later I worked W1AW/1, again on 20M but this time with SSB. I also made a 20M SSB contact with one of the Georgia QSO Party stations, KT4ZB in Savannah. If you are noting that I'm talking about 20M to the exclusion of other bands, that's because that's the only band that really seems workable with my current antenna.
- I purchased a Yaesu MD-100A8X for the FT-450D from R&L, which through no fault of theirs and entirely the fault of the USPS managed to take a Hawaiian vacation before it was delivered to me late Saturday afternoon. Yeah, it somehow was routed from Cincinnati to Honolulu, where it seems to have spent three days. I can't even get three days in Florida until June, let alone three days in Hawaii, ever. Seems unfair that my microphone has been there but I haven't.
- I signed up for eQSL but I'm not sure if I'm going to use it or not. I am using LoTW and QRZ's logbook, and I banged out some quick'n'dirty QSL cards with Adobe Pagemaker. I will probably register with the bureau, too.
Looking back, I guess I alluded to the fact that I have my EARCHI end-fed matchbox antenna hanging from the top of a 31-foot Jackite pole right now. It seems to be doing the job, although if I really want to work DX I'm going to have to either get it up higher or put a longer wire on it and run it over to a handy tree to make an inverted L. Depending on how much tree work I have to have done this spring, I'm either going to have the tree guys hang me some pulley sheaves way up in the maples so I can hang the G5RV that's been sitting here since last summer, or (if the tree in the front has to go, and I think it does), I'll probably spring for a multiband vertical like the DX Engineering/Hustler DXE-HSR-6BTV-P system. But I was thinking this afternoon that I really, really, REALLY need a beam on a rotator. And a tower. Yeah. Like I have room for that and the XYL will approve…
73.