On this snowy Patriots Groundhog Day, K1N is cooking away on 20-Meter CW. Their signal is a solid S6, and the pileup is about 10 KHz wide. Signals last night on 40-Meters (after the Pats won the Superbowl) were over S9.
And the 15-Meter SSB pileup was 30 KHz wide. It was almost fun to listen to the very strong K1N signal with various weaker stations trying to QRM but failing.
January was a good DX month, with cooperative sunspot activity and plenty of time to enjoy it. I had hoped to make at least one QSO every day this month, but that was cut short by the Blizzard as I had to leave home for the ARC HQ for a couple of days. So close!
Besides the points indicated in LowT below, I have QSL cards with another two new countries (Total of 223), one more 80-Meter country (89 Total), and 13 more band-countries Challenge Points (1,021 total). Applications for the DXCC Challenge, 30 Meter DXCC, and 12 Meter DXCC are pending (the ARRL is still finishing 2014 applications so they haven’t processed anything from 2015 yet).
Solar Cycle 24, weak and unimpressive by most counts, is at least hanging in there, with a SFI of 157 and a MUF of 30 MHz on this, the last day of January 2015. In fact, I was shocked last night to work my first Singapore station, S61PW on 15 Meters, only to work a second one today on 10 Meters.
This is a dual-peak cycle, which is unusual enough, but this one has been even more surprising as the second peak continues to have higher sunspot numbers than the first. So maybe the band openings will linger even longer through 2017 or beyond.
After finishing up the first of what is bound to be many situation reports for the Red Cross, dealing with the Blizzard currently underway, I took a couple of minutes to check my LotW account. Low and Behold, two confirmations came in from XR0YJ on Easter Island, bringing the LotW DXCC Challenge count to 1000 – Woot!!
The NWS is calling for a Blizzard in two days, a “Historic Winter Storm”. I can hardly wait until the local news media gets spinning that. What level is left, “Biblical Winter Storm”?
Anyway, that made me think of the following “Keep Calm” poster that Tom, NW7US, has on his QRZ page. This is the perfect plan for the coming Snowpocalypse.
I finally worked EP6T on 17 Meter CW yesterday. I probably spent about 3 hours trying to work them, and another 9 hours of listening. Since the pileups were horrible and the ham behavior even worse, I don’t know why I spent so much time listening, but I guess the bad behavior sort of fascinated me (sort of like a train wreck — you don’t want to look, but you just can’t help it).
I noticed that after a few days of abusive interference with EP6T, they would simply go off the air without fanfare, sometimes coming back on after 20 minutes, and sometimes changing bands or modes. Yesterday the abuse was continuing on top of the SSB signal, when they went off the air. I quickly tuned down to the CW segment, and sure enough EP6T was there. Within a couple of minutes I had snagged a contact. Were it not for that changeover resulting in fewer stations calling, I don’t know if I ever would have gotten through, but perhaps things have gotten easier as I’ve notice several RI friends have made one or more contacts.
I can’t say that I am motivated to make another contact given the grief of making just one, and I feel horrible for all the hams involved in the DXpedition — the poor behavior and abuse they have taken must be very discouraging. I am thankful that they have worked so hard to bring Iran back on the air (and to grow new Iranian hams for the future).
Edited: I was shocked to see that a LotW confirmation had also arrived this morning.
A couple more LotW confirmations came in from C5X today (still hope to get them on 80M — but they have been a fantastic DXpedition). That brings my Challenge count to 994. With QSLs in hand from E40VB, 3B9FR, and OD5ARMY, I actually have confirmations for 1,000 and a new country (Palestine).
The QSLs are far less convenient than LotW of course, as I have to get them to a checker, then to the league, then through the manual DXCC process. Who knows, if the weather holds, I might just take the 90 minute drive over to ARRL HQ and get it done there, and see if they can’t wrap up the 12M and 30M applications at the same time.
Or better still, simply wait for six more LotW confirmations.
And one other piece of trivia, I went over 6,000 QSOs today as well, counting from when I got back on the air, on Feb 10, 2011.
I spent more than 3 hours listening to EP6T tonight (about 2300 to 0200Z) on 10.122.96 MHz. Below is a picture of my band scope that shows a typical response to a EP6T CQ — About 6 KHz of tightly packed responders and another 4 KHz of stranglers. Given 30 Meter propagation, I’m sure this is only a small fraction of what EP6T would see. EP6T is a good 3 S-units above the local noise level here in RI after dark on 30 Meters.
Unfortunately the QSO rate is VERY low, often only one contact per minute, never more than three, and sometimes zero per minute. I can imagine that this is either due to wall to wall signals that simply can’t be separated, or perhaps horrible local noise.
The bad news is with this QSO rate the pile won’t be reduced any time soon.
And as I typed this, some 40 KHz wide signal with S7 peaks fired up — its been on for the past 12 minutes. Reminds me of the old over-the-horizon radar. (signal has peaks every 100 Hz — looks like a sine wave except it is in the frequency domain). It went away as suddenly as it began at 0208Z.
Wideband interference started about 0155Z (10.112 to 10.137 MHz)
I shifted to 40 Meter CW shortly after the noise appeared on 30. The signal level for Ep6T was about S6, a good 4-5 S-units above local noise, so even easier copy. But the pileup was just as large if not larger. They moved to SSB not long after.
Just for the record, not complaining, just observing, and spending far more time listening to understand the EP6T operator habits. Those pileups are mostly due to folks just blindly sending their call every 5 seconds over and over again.
After enjoying a straight-key QSO on SKN and thinking of the keys I had used back as a novice, I thought I’d see what I could find on eBay. I remembered a brass key that my father had used (another thing I hope is packed in a box somewhere in my mountain of boxes).
Without much trouble, I found what looked to be a nicely preserved (or restored) Western Electric key and put in a bid around $40. I remained top bid for many days until 5 minutes before bidding ended. A few adjustments later and I had won the key, which I mounted on a stained piece of black cherry.
While it was stamped on the shorting arm “Western Electric”, a bit of research indicated that it was a Western Electric model 1A. That key was actually built to their specifications by J.H. Bunnell — essentially a JHB Triumph key private labeled for WE in 1906. Since this key was designed for landline telegraphy over highly inductive circuits, the contacts are made of tungsten. You might be able to make out the more rose colored outer knobs that support the moving arm. These are made of bronze, probably because of its common use as a bearing material.
I couldn’t help but think of how the Signal Corps must have modeled their famous J-30 key (know as the J-38 key when mounted on the signature Bakelite base) after the Bunnell Triumph. Below is a photo of my J-38. There were no markings so I have no idea who made it (it certainly is NOT a Lionel). While the frame of the key is crudely cast brass, it has been plated with Cadmium so it appears as white metal, with silver plated contacts.
I can sit back and watch the sunspots fade away with the completion of 30 Meter DXCC. All I have remaining are 80 Meters and 160 Meters DXCC (I doubt I’ll ever complete 160 Meters) — both of which will benefit from reduced sunspots.
The final confirmation for 30 Meter DXCC came in this morning from Dan, CX9AU, in Uruguay. My 12 Meter application is still pending, plus with only 21 band-countries remaining before completing the DX Challenge, I might be stay backed up for a bit.
