Month: October 2014

Maybe.  LoTW is truly screwed up right now.  I uploaded several QSOs right about the time they came back up on Tuesday and those QSOs appear to have been counted, but not actually applied to my account.  So I uploaded them all again today with TQSL and they now appear (but my total QSO count displayed is off by 10).

Anyway, on Monday I finally got Alabama on 40m phone with W1AW/4.  And last night I got West Virginia with W1AW/8, also 40m phone, and my God was he booming here.  I can't figure out why I've never heard anyone from WV before; I've always chalked it up to mountains being in the way.  This operator must have been on top of Spruce Knob or some shite.  Once these portable operations upload to LoTW that should take care of that.

Also I noted that AC5O had uploaded to LoTW so that took care of Louisiana.

Which leaves Missouri.  And I can't figure Missouri; there's nothing but flat land between here and there.

Apparently the number of the counting is now three, except that I am still awaiting a LOTW upload from AC5O to get Louisiana off the list.  I also worked N0GR in Iowa and he did upload to LOTW.  I just need Missouri, Alabama, and West Virginia.

I tried several times to work AL and MO stations last night but was not successful.  I'm more than a little irked that every time I get on the air, W1AW/4 is either working CW or working SSB phone in the low bands where I have trouble tuning right now.  The other night there was a W1AW/4 station doing JT65 on 20 meters, but he was getting swamped by higher-powered stations and most of the time it was impossible to decode him.  I could probably get him on RTTY or PSK31 but I haven't seen him there.

Anyway I will be out at Camp Belzer tomorrow to help where I can with WD9BSA's JOTA operation.  I had hoped to have a go box ready to take out there with me so I could operate a third HF station at the camp, but the "box" itself, ordered last week through a third-party Amazon affiliate, apparently never actually made it out of the vendor's door (although a UPS label was apparently generated and they thought it had gone out the door) and I ended up with an unsolicited refund yesterday after they missed their guaranteed delivery date of Tuesday.  So this time I ordered one from Amazon themselves (not a "fulfilled by Amazon", just "sold by Amazon"), and it's supposed to be here tomorrow.  How nice.

Getting out to camp tomorrow ought to be interesting, because we were told that we had to be there before 6AM or we wouldn't be able to get into camp down Boy Scout Road until around 10:30.  Why?  Because the City of Lawrence is having a damn 5K run tomorrow and apparently Boy Scout Road is on the route.  It's almost enough to make me go out there and camp tonight.  Almost.  Because my bones are too creaky to camp out in this weather.

Although — I just looked at the road closures sheet for the 5K and it looks to me like the only Boy Scout Road closures listed are

Boy Scout Road from 56th Street to Fall Creek Road 8:30am – 9:55am

Boy Scout Road from Camp Belzer to Fall Creek Road 8:30am – 3:00pm

and I don't see any closures of 56th Street west of Boy Scout Road at all; they seem only to be from Post Road to Boy Scout Road, which suggests that 56th will be open from 465 east to Boy Scout Road all day.  I'm thinking that as long as I get there before 8AM I should be OK.

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* For me, the W1AW/0 portable operation in MO last week was a total wash.  I never heard a single station.  I might have to put my vertical wire back up.

I've seen lots of people on JT65 indicate that they're calling for a specific state by doing something like

CQ KC9YTJ MO

which I have now done twice and gotten Florida the first time and Washington the second.

Come on!  Jeez, people, this isn't rocket science.

I guess I worked WQ5O in Wisconsin on October 2.  It's in my log, and it just popped up in LoTW yesterday.  Thanks for that!

Yesterday, I couldn't make a QSO to save my life.  Then, out of frustration and out the blue, I tuned from 20m JT65 to 20m JT9 and there was AB3OF calling CQ from Delaware.

Then I had to shut down because we had friends over for dinner and movies.  But I thought I'd try one more time after they left, and bang, there was N8FKF on 20m JT65 from Montana.

So, six states to go for WAS Basic.  And now that I look at WAS Digital, I could have gotten Arkansas and North Dakota yesterday if I'd remembered that I needed them, and then it would be just six for WAS Digital, too.

And WTF is up with W1AW/0 from Missouri?  They're not being spotted and I don't see them anywhere.

Last night I worked WA1UZO on 20m JT65 for my first QSO in the lovely state of Connecticut.

That leaves me with eight states to go for WAS Basic. I still need Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, West Virginia and Wisconsin on any band and any mode (except CW, sorry, I am no-code*) to get the Basic award.  (JT65 or JT9 preferred, but I can do phone if I must.)

For WAS Digital I need those eight states plus Arkansas and North Dakota.

Since I don't spend tons of time in the shack, that's not bad for me for just since April.

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* I learned code in the Boy Scouts forty years ago. I had no use for it after that so it went away. Now I have no time to spend learning code. I do hope to find some time in the next year or so to get my code back, but it's not like it's on my bucket list.

I have (as I may have noted below at some point) an LDG YT-450 tuner that goes with my Yaesu FT-450D.  I actually have two of them, the first one having had the smoke let out of it one time when I was on 6 meters and forgot to kick it out.  The second one has never really been happy, and in fact seems to have an advanced case of Alzheimer's, because whenever I switch bands, I have re-tune from scratch.  That isn't supposed to be the way of things, and I figured one of these days I'd get another tuner (possibly the new YT-1200) and send the YT-450 back to LDG to see if they could figure it out.  But the YT-1200 doesn't seem to be generally-available yet and I got tired of waiting.

So just for laughs and giggles, I purchased an MFJ-949E manual tuner and hooked it up this weekend.

Holeee shite.  The difference is like night and day.  I worked W1AW/KL7 on 20m SSB on Saturday and it sounded like she was right there in the room with me.  Shoot, I even worked a Brit on 17m SSB, and he gave me a 55 (unfortunately I had to give him a 45 and it was probably worse than that, really, but I was able to pull him out of the noise).  And digital modes, shoot, I was seeing prefixes I'd never seen before.

The only problem, of course, is that it's a MANUAL tuner, so of course I have been keeping copious notes of what settings I'm using for what.  But hell, I'm not complaining.

People bitch about MFJ all the time but in this case (other than a bad front panel fit that keeps the meter light switch from pushing in and out expeditiously) I'm certainly happy with their product.