A strange couple of days on the bands. They’ve either been noisy or dead, at least at my QTH. I spun the dial this morning and other than POTA folks and AM rag chewers, it was hard to find any signals, quiet or loud. I monitor a couple daily nets, waiting to see if anyone checks in that I need before I check in. They seemed like the effort to make contact would be more than I was willing to put in.
Friday afternoon I tried to cut through the band noise and make a few contacts before it was time to make dinner. The results are in the image at the bottom of the post. (I’m either an idiot or micro.blog’s image embed feature is not working. If you could see the screenshot I tried to share, it would show eight straight contacts with Japan in a 15-minute run.) My first Indonesian station followed by a flood of Japanese.
I was officially voted into one of my local radio clubs last night. It seems like a good group, a mixture of folks both older and younger than me. Which I think is what you want in a club. I’ve always been a learn by reading and doing on my own person. It will be nice to have resources to actually talk to and watch as I prepare to jump into POTA, antenna design, and other areas where just watching a YouTube video might not cut it.
I’ve finally dipped my toes into the dark side of the hobby: FT8. Since I became active last fall I’ve not had any great interest in the digital modes. I want to “talk” to people, even if it is a simple exchange of 59’s and 73’s. That’s how I fell in love with radio, listening to signals that traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to reach me. With digital, it all seems so disconnected.
An All Time New One for me today, T77LA in San Marino. He’s on a lot, so not the toughest of catches. But this was the first time I’ve caught him both when he was loud enough I could clearly hear him and there wasn’t a big pile up fighting for his attention. It is always fun to listen for a few minutes, make one call, and get picked up right away.
A few words about WWA, the contest that’s not a contest, but rather an award. I chased my share of WWA stations last month. Some days those seemed to be the only non-POTA stations to be found. It felt like I talked to Stuart in New Brunswick daily. That was the one bummer to me: I heard pretty much the same few stations every day. VE9WWA, N1W, CR6WWA, EG3WWA. I did squeeze in a couple new ones the final weekend, 4M5A and YU45MJA.
A few days of thinking about radio and doing some rearranging to my “shack.” Looking back at my dismissed vanity application, it appears that every call I had on my application expired during the government shutdown and received an extension before they officially become available. Each says Expired but remain unavailable on sites like AE7Q. Which explains why all the prediction sites had my first request in Green status. I guess.
I’m not sure why but my vanity call application was dismissed. I say I’m not sure why because based on the many tools available online, all but one call on the list I submitted should have been available. Those calls are still available today. And, yes, I hold an Extra class license, so I have sufficient privileges to apply for each of them. I did modify my initial application, so perhaps I messed something up when doing that.
Another snowy weekend, another contest. Or, given it was Winter Field Day, I guess I should say “contest.” Like the ARRL 10 Meter contest in December, I sat in front of the radio this weekend and racked up contacts while heavy snow fell. We had a basketball game on the calendar before the storm hit, so I had no plans to operate outside the house. When basketball was cancelled, that gave me more radio time.
I read somewhere this morning that our current geomagnetic storm is the biggest in over 20 years. I have no idea if that is true or not but it is certainly the biggest storm since I became active and has wiped out the HF bands. I made a casual pass this morning and was rewarded with nothing on most bands. There were a few signals on 40 and 80, although there was so much noise there that it wasn’t worth hanging around and attempting to make contact.