Fall Fun

We have reached the most glorious time of the year here in the Midwest. Days are warm but rarely hot. The humidity has (mostly) disappeared. Nights are getting longer and cooler. There is magic in the air in October, when you wake to temperatures in the upper 40s and enjoy sunny afternoons in the mid-70s. It is a reward for our often punishing summers, a respite before long and dreary winter arrives.

A year ago at this time I had just participated in my first contest, the California QSO party. I really didn’t know what I was doing, logging on paper, doing my best to scribble down counties and contact numbers for the 18 QSOs I made. I believe I finished last in Indiana, which established my goal for future contests: don’t be last in Indiana.

Last weekend I had little interest in chasing CA stations. Mostly because the weather here was so nice and I had a lot of football to watch. Plus high school homecoming pictures to take. And so on.

Sometimes no matter how much we enjoy our hobby, real life stuff gets in the way. In this case it was all good stuff, so I did not complain.

I did check the bands Saturday evening, just as 20 was dying and 40 was filling with CA stations. I created a new logbook in World Radio League and called a couple stations. When I got no response I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to just get a handful of entries and went back to watching football.

My Ham Alert notifications have been going crazy the past couple days with a number of big activations in progress. This afternoon I was listening to the pileup for 9T0MD in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was audible, but just barely. I set the radio to split just in case he faded up, but between his signal strength and QSB, I never felt confident in calling.

It was fun to listen to the “Up Police” yell at people who didn’t understand or ignored the request to work split. One gentleman kept calling, bless his heart, and another op resorted to calling him “Numb-nuts,” which made me chuckle.

I checked the cluster sites and saw that 5WOF was spotted by many up in the 10 meter band. I jumped up there and he was the strongest signal I’ve heard on 10 since last winter. Fading deeply and often, to be sure, but still right there. After hearing another Indiana station make contact, I began calling. After two tries he called back. It took three rounds for him to get my callsign right but I am in the book. Moments later he faded up to an S9. An ATNO for phone.

5WOF is operating 6602 miles away from my QTH. Earlier in the afternoon I made contacts on two bands with a station operating from the nearest POTA park, 6.5 miles away.

While I never called 9T0MD today, I did get them on FT8 Monday. Also on digital, I got FW1P on two different bands within five minutes. My 148th and 149th entities contacted.