The FCC's latest R&O

I have been reading a bunch of handwringing from people crying that the removal of the Morse requirement for licensing will bring about the end of ham radio. I have mixed feelings about the issue.

It is true that the removal of Morse will bring more people into the hobby. Some of those will be of a less than stellar quality, just like a cross-section of our society. But, I do not see us moving along the path towards CB radio. We are a self-policing group and the FCC still has an enforcement bureau. I do not forsee the FCC throwing up its hands and walking away from amateur radio like it has done with CB radio. Anyone who tries to hold out that we who are currently in the hobby are role models for what the amateur radio service should be have not listened to some of the rubbish down on 80 meters at night. I am embarrassed by what I have have heard there. But, thankfully, I have seen the FCC enforcement actions against some of these characters.

We must admit that our hobby is growing grayer. I am middle aged and am often one of the youngest hams at our local radio club meeting. We seriously need an infusion of new (and younger blood) into the hobby. It is up to those of us who have been licensed for a while to become elmers to our newer licensees and in this way we can prevent some of those bad habits that have been so feared in the past. Each of us (other than the embarrassing people mentioned earlier) have a part to play in the future of our hobby. Each of us has a particular portion of this hobby that we have become specialized in. Some of us focus on emergency communications while others focus on DXing and contesting. Others love the digital modes, while others love CW and have forgotten where their microphone is. Some have forgotten the code and focused on SSB. Our hobby is limitless and as Dave Bushong says it is truly 99 hobbies rolled up into one.

I unfortunately have forgotten the code by not using it and that is my fault. I was out of the hobby for a number of years (7, in fact) and never even turned on a radio during that time. But, now I am back and I am working on my code skills. Code may not be required for licensing, but I know there are many DXpeditions that spend more time on CW than on SSB. Since I want to enjoy the fullness of my specialities (DXing and contesting), I need to keep the code in my skills. So, over the next few months I will be working at improving my code skills and even taking the plunge and doing some CW contests.

So, in my humble opinion, they may take away the requirement for code for licensing, but the code will not be going away anytime soon!!!

The tower has arrived!!!

Well, this gem arrived about 11am this morning and I was very happy to see it. Now the paperwork begins. I am hoping that we will get a couple of good warm days this winter and the tower can be up before the weather breaks. I have to see what the county requires for paperwork and then start jumping through the hoops. But, it is sure a welcome sight. I was amazed at just how light the tower truly is. With a rotor and antenna on it, it should weigh less than 150 pounds total. It is much more expensive than the Rohn 25G, but as it will not require maintenance, it should make up for the difference.

Speaking of DXpeditions......

I talked to N2WB (Wild Bill) Sunday night and told him that I hope I have better luck hearing him on his DXpedition next month to Burkina-Faso than I am having with the current VU7 operation. He said that we should be able to hear them better. I truly hope so as I need that one for a new country!!!! I also enjoyed talking with Bill about the Peter I Island video that I got a couple of weeks ago. It is fantastic!!! You can order the video here.

I first heard Peter 1 back during the 1994 DXpedition, but was not able to work them. I was quite pleased to get them in February.

Upcoming DXpedition

NE1RD and a group of other Buddipole operators including Budd himself will soon be heading for Montserrat. Check out the details of this DXpedition at: http://dxpedition-vp2m.com/ and give them a call!!! This might be the kind of thing that I could get Larry (W3MGL) to come with me on........Of course, he probably won't want to leave Virginia, but there is still a lot of places to go in-state!

ARRL 10 Meter Contest Results

It's not enough for a big finish, but considering all I had going on that weekend, it was still fun. I just need more sunspots!!!!

ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: W4TMN
Operator(s): W4TMN
Station: W4TMN
Class: SO SSB LP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 2
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 0 0
SSB: 58 20
-------------------
Total: 58 20 Total Score = 2,320

A Wonderful QSO

Today while on my way to a seminar in Richmond, I ran into Curt, K9CH, who moved from Newport News to Hopewell this past summer. It was a wonderful QSO and I enjoyed catching up on everything with him. He is a professor who teaches communications and is just a fantastic guy. He gave a presentation on photography at the Williamsburg Area Amateur Radio Club meeting a number of months ago that everyone enjoyed thoroughly. He is a very talented person and a whiz with CW. He was John's (my youngest son's) first ever HF QSO and went the extra mile to make up a certificate for him and personally hand delivered it to him. There are a number of wonderful hams out there and I am priviledged to know and associate with many of them. I miss having Curt in the area for our almost daily QSO's.

On the way home, I was able to talk to Curt more until his wife, Edie came home and I let him get off the radio and spend time with his lovely wife.

So, it was great to hear Curt and to have his company as I motored in the Richmond area today. I am hoping that we can have more of these in the future.

Sad News from KE9V

Jeff, KE9V, has said that he is going to shut down his blog......I was sorry to hear that as I enjoy reading his thoughts. But, fortunately, he is going to be continuing his podcasts!!! Even Allyson, who has absolutely no interest in becoming a ham, enjoys his podcasts. So, I am looking forward to continuing to listen to his well-done and thought out work on the podcast side of things.

But, even with the podcasts continuing, there is still a part of me that will miss reading about his interests and thoughts about many different topics.....

73 to ya, Jeff.............and thanks for not going totally QRT, just QRP!!!!

The Tower is Coming!!!!

The folks at Universal Towers sent me an e-mail today saying that the tower went out the door today. They sent me the shipping company's tracking number and they are anticipating it arriving at my house on Monday. So, it is definitely time to get that permit to put it up in the air!!!

I am hoping that all goes well and the process will go smoothly. If so, we should be able to have the tower ready by the end of January if there are no hitches.

So, now it is about to get serious.............

10 Meter contest

Well, I didn't get much time last weekend to operate in the 10 Meter contest and my score definitely showed it. I worked less than 3 hours and only made 58 contacts. This was not my best showing. There were a number of things working against me: a very busy schedule with church activities, an appointment with Santa on Saturday morning, sleep, family and propagation. The solar weather was terrible and the band seemed to be constantly shifting. On Sunday afternoon, I did get some trans-equatorial contacts, but they were few. I heard a Hawaiian station, but they could not hear my puny 100 watts. I then lost the Hawaiian in the static and started hearing West Coast stations. I worked a few and then the band shortened and I was able to add Minnesota and other 0 stations. Then the band shortened again and I had a pipeline to Minnesota!!! A couple more stations and then Michigan and Ohio were on the menu. The band got quiet, so I tried running stations and did get my QSO rate up to a respectable 40 QSOs/hour for a few minutes until the band stopped cooperating. After that, all I could hear is the despised bacon frying sound of static. So, it was very depressing. I still have to add the contacts to my logging program and send my entry to the ARRL. Hopefully, I will get this done over the next few days, along with posting my scores here on the blog.

Busy times!

I ordered a 40 foot self-supporting tower on December 4th. I called Universal Tower yesterday and they said that it is expected to ship the end of this week or the first part of next week. It will be greatly welcomed here!!!

I have watched the 3Y0X DVD that I ordered here a few weeks ago. I would love to be able to go on a DXpedition sometime!!! Larry and I are planning our mini-DXpedition and all is going well on that front. We are going to do a test run at Larry's with the Buddipole set up in his driveway. If that turns out well, we are then going to go out to a location and see how many contacts we can rack up.

Tonight, I bought an automatic antenna tuner from one of our club members. I am looking forward to seeing how it helps my contesting. I have installed it and it seems to work just fine. I will give it a shot over the next few weeks and hopefully it will cut down on tuning time.

We had our club meeting tonight and we are definitely going to be setting up a special event station for the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown next May. My work schedule does not lend itself to operating a lot from the special event stations, but I am hoping that I will get some time to go down and get on the air.

So, lots of things coming up.........These are going to be exciting times!!!!

WAS

Well, I bit the bullet and applied for WAS today. I had to, because now I had no excuse. I have had the application paperwork for some time and have been eligible since the time I worked Alaska in the winter. I had just been dragging my feet. It was on my to do list, but I just had not done so. Today, I was downloading my LoTW returns and I found that a fellow PVRC member AJ1M had confirmed me so I did not have to send in that single WV card. I immediately went online and sent the application in to ARRL. So, I anticipate seeing that certificate roll in here in a few weeks. Now, if I could just get so lucky for my DXCC award!!!! But, I have the cards separated out and I just need to spend some time working on that one.

So, I now have one major award down and the other in progress......

November Sweepstakes

This is the year that the PVRC is going to take back the gavel for Sweepstakes from the Northern California Contest Club. Larry and I planned to give our all for the PVRC. Unfortunately, Larry cannot do a full 24 hours. I had planned on a full 24 hours, but then I had to go to Pennsylvania because Allyson's aunt Shirley has terminal cancer and is only expected to live a couple more weeks. Allyson was going to go with her sister Christie, but then she would not make it home in time for John's baptism on Sunday. So, I went and had a good time. Of course, I did have my 2m with me and made a few contacts while on the drive. I was hoping to catch Jim (WX3B) on the Thurmont, MD repeater and say hello to him as I was driving through. Jim is the president of the PVRC and was very helpful in getting me voted in as a member earlier this year. I have found everyone in the PVRC very helpful and more than willing to help us small guns make an even louder noise during contests!

I was able to leave Lancaster, PA about 4:30pm on my way home. I was thinking that I would only miss about 4 1/2 to 5 hours of the contest that way. But, travelling with my 3 year old and my wife, it was not as easy as getting in the car and driving straight through. I will say that Allyson did not ask to stop often and for a while Emma was asleep, so I was able to get some drive time in. After a stop in Thurmont for a quick dinner, we were back on the road again.

I wound up getting home at about 10pm. I was hoping to be on the air by 10:30pm but I found that when I turned on the radio, the audio did not sound right. I checked everything in the shack and then headed outside where I found the feedline had broken over the past day in the storm that we had been having. So, solder gun in hand, I did a repair of the antenna and got on the air about 11pm. Fortunately, not everyone had gone to bed, so I worked as many by S&P as I could on 40 and 80. After about 2am, things started slowing down a bit and my rate was suffering. But, I hung on through the night until things got so slow that I decided to take a quick shower. Refreshed and ready to do battle again 20 minutes later, I got back into the fray. I walked away from the radio later in the morning long enough to wake up Allyson and go back to the hunt. When it got close to time for us to leave for church, I stopped and got dressed. John was going to be baptized and there was no way that I was going to miss this.

Right after church, I came straight home. Allyson had driven separately so I could get home quickly. Things went well up until the time I had to go back to church again on Sunday night. Again, right after church, we hurried home and I was able to get back into the hunt. I was very happy at the end of the contest when I realized that this was my personal best for Sweepstakes, even though I had operated much less than the alloted 24 hours.

ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB

Call: W4TMN
Cass: Single Op LP
Summary: Band QSOs
160: 0
80: 241
40: 83
20: 58
15: 10
10: 0
Total: 392 Sections = 73 Total Score = 57,232

So, my first contest as an Extra Class was better than my previous best, even though I did not work as long as I have in the past.

It was great to work a lot of the "big guns" during this one such as N4PN (always a wonderful QSO and a great contester), K0GAS, W6YI, KZ1O, KC1F and others!

I could not believe that I did not work a SC, SB, ND or AK this time. I can understand not working some of the Canadian provinces (I missed 4), but I normally get SB & ND. I heard only one SB and one SC and they were S&P like me. I heard an Alaskan, but they had a pileup that a stick of dynamite would have a hard time breaking. I heard not a peep of any ND station.

But, I must say it was fun, even though I was wiped out all day Monday!!

Equipment upgrades

I have added a couple of Kenwood TM-271A radios to my equipment list. They are for the vehicles. I have started programming them for the various areas that I travel in.

I have added a Buddipole for Larry (W3MGL) and I to do some portable operations in the future.

I will be purchasing an aluminum tower soon from Universal Towers to put the tri-bander on so I won't have to deal with any more failures.

So, the contest/DX station is coming together nicely. I hope that this trend continues.

Extra Class exam

On November 4th, I passed the Extra Class Exam. It was a real squeaker as I had not had the opportunity to study much over the past couple of weeks due to work, contests and family committments. I was ready to take the exam 3 times, if necessary. I told the lead examiner, W4NYY (Mike Conte) to just keep bringing me the tests as long as the money held out. I was not very confident of my ability. The more I studied, the more it seemed that I did not know. After I finished my exam, I just just sat there and closed my eyes (actually hoping I could sleep since I had to go to work that night!!!). They finally called me up and congratulated me. Needless to say, I was shocked. Joe (K4JJS) asked me if I knew how hard it was for the VE's to keep a straight face. Well, I was so excited that I nearly left the EOC without my jacket. I called Larry (W3MGL) to let him know and he was almost as excited as I was.

Now, I have all of the ammo that I need to pursue the DX and contest contacts that I need, frequency wise.

CQ WW DX - Phone

What a weekend!!!! Allyson was very helpful in keeping distractions down to a minimum for me. I was able to spend lots of time working on the radio, but conditions were lousy. Saturday was pretty good, but Sunday was hard work.

CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Class: SOAB LP

Summary: Band QSOs Zones Countries
160: 0 0 0
80: 1 1 1
40: 76 42 14
20: 219 71 20
15: 100 54 17
10: 1 1 1

Total: 397 169 53 Total Score = 236,652

It was my personal best for CQ WW DX, but it could have been better if I had the tri-bander up, my Extra Class ticket and more sunspots! Next year will be better. I did get a couple of new countries out of it: China, New Zealand and Dodecanese so it was not all bad!!

Pennsylvania QSO Party

Pennsylvania QSO Party
Call: W4TMN
Operator(s): W4TMN
Station: W4TMN
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: VA

Summary:
Band Ph Qs
160: 0
80: 132
40: 143
20: 0
15: 0
10: 0

Total: 275 Mults = 63 Total Score = 19,725



It was a lot of fun, as always. The special call stations (N3SH) were everywhere. I racked up a lot of bonus points because of them.

Catching up

I have not been able to do some catching up on the blog, so I am going to give the short and sweet version and then give more details later........

I have done the PA QSO Party, CQ WW DX phone, and November Sweepstakes contests.

I have purchased a couple of Kenwood 2m radios for the vehicles.

I am buying a Universal Aluminum tower for the back yard to put the tri-bander on.

I am still married, in spite of all of the above!!!

California QSO Party time!!!!

Well, I did not have the use of the tri-bander for this contest. My only goal was to beat the 58 QSO's that I had in last year's contest. I was all set and ready to go on Saturday morning. I had the software loaded and working properly. The contest started and I was loving the fact that I was hearing a bunch of stations on 15 meters. Then it went all downhill from there. My computer started doing wierd things. My keyboard seemed to lock up. It was not wanting to work properly. The tab key would work, but everytime I hit the "6" key, the program would minimize and would not let me type anything more. I swapped out keyboards and that did not work either. I fiddled with it for a while and lost a number of potential QSO's because of the problem. Then, after it seemed to clear up, Allyson told me that the phone was for me. The contest was only an hour old and my boss was calling telling me that I needed to come into work because of the severe weather we were having. People were being evacuated from their homes and the phones were ringing off the hook in dispatch. So, I went into work. Almost 6 hours later, I returned to the contest. Conditions had changed and 20 was the band for action. I worked 20 as long as I could. When I switched to 40, there was no one there. So, I was prepared to call it quits about 9pm. I spent some time with Allyson and then went to look at my logs from last year. I noticed that 40 did not heat up until later, so I went back to check. There was some action there and was able to work a number of stations before the foreign broadcasters took over the band. I did not hear anything on 80, so I called it a night. After church on Sunday, things were hopping on 20 and 15 again, so I worked all I could until I finally had to take a nap. I was pleased that I almost doubled my score and number of QSO's this year. I worked all but 12 of the 58 counties this year, so I can say that I was pleased with the result, even though I had lost the use of the tribander. This is what the final stats looked like:

Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160: 0 0
80: 0 0
40: 0 11
20: 0 75
15: 0 29
10: 0 0
6: 0 0
2: 0 00
--------------------
Total: 0 115 Mults = 45 Total Score = 10,350

I am happy with this, even though it won't be enough to win one of the bottles of wine in the contest!!! But, it does give me a goal to strive to beat next year.

WAE DX contest

Well, I was finally able to get out my Worked All Europe DX contest logs. I had problems with the logging software I used and decided to re-input the few contacts I made into another program that would number everything correctly. I learned my lesson there.

Here is what the final results looked like for me......

Summary:
Band QSOs QTCs Mults
-------------------------
80: 0 0 0
40: 3 0 3
20: 24 0 14
15: 0 0 0
10: 0 0 0
-------------------------
Total: 27 0 17 Total Score = 875

Tragedy

Well, it wasn't a hurricane or a even a tropical storm. But we had a nor'easter come through here this weekend. Winds were gusting up to 60 mph. When I came home on Friday the 6th, I found this waiting for me. Allyson said that she saw it coming over and it was a slow fall, fortunately. I did go out in the rain on Saturday and remove the tribander and rotor from the mast. There is some damage on the reflector end because it crimped a little bit of the mast when the weight of the antenna was pressed against the side of the mast. It does look to be repairable. Unfortunately, I was looking forward to using the tribander in the California QSO Party, but it was not meant to be. But, I am going to do my best to have it up in some form for the CQ WW DX contest at the end of the month. This antenna project has definitely been a big one, but I am hoping that I will be able to afford a tower soon so that we will not have to worry about these types of problems anymore.