The two hour SKCC Sprint  is this Tuesday night.  It is actually on Wednesday from 0000-0200Z, but for most of us, that translates to Tuesday evening.


Details  here.

Thunderstorms in my area right now.



Thunderstorms suck.

YEP IN HOUSTON

The thunderstorms were off to the west and not right on top of me, so I decided to give it a go.  20m was in good shape, so I stayed there for the whole sprint.  

I was ready for this one.

You need a bug to go in that lineup!

By golly, I FINALLY worked the bonus station! Got him in the last couple of minutes on the high end of 80. I was squatting on one frequency on 40, then tried a little spot and stalk on 80 and ran into him.

Worked 34 stations overall.

You beat me again, Frank.  I mostly called CQ on 20m, and I would get 3 or 4 answers.  But then, nothing for several minutes.  So I would go off and find 1 or 2 stations by doing the S&P thing for a while.  Then, back to calling CQ.  Ended up with 22 stations, and I was pretty happy with that.

I mostly used the Begali, but switched over to the Junker for the last part of the sprint.  It felt like I went from a Chevy to a Rolls Royce.  

I think I may have found my new favorite key.

The Junkers are excellent keys, and yours looks exceptionally nice as compared to the ones I've seen both online and in the wild. What paint did you use on it? Mine is one of the latter-day keys, probably from East Germany. The WWII models are worth quite a bit more from what I understand, especially if the eagle and Swastika emblem is intact.

I tired 20 for a few minutes with no luck, then switched to 40. I went back to 20 about halfway through the sprint and only worked one station in California. Then I was called by a non-sprint station in Casper, Wyoming and enjoyed a short chat with him. Went back to 40 untill no one responded to my CQs, then hit 80 agasisn and worked the bonus station in the last couple of minutes of the Sprint.

I'm pretty sure mine is also a more recent model.  It says D.B.G.M. on one corner, and Junker Honnef/RH on the other.  But it doesn't look like it's ever been used.  It may have even been one of those sold by Morse Express.

Finding matching paint was a challenge.   I bought a couple of different colors of spray paint, but they didn't match.  I had some Krylon, ultra-flat, olive drab left over from another project, but I knew it was too flat, and would not match.  I also had some clear, semi-gloss, spray lacquer left over from when I fixed up that old Philco radio.  So, I tried spraying the clear lacquer over the flat olive drab Krylon on a scrap of wood, and it matched almost perfectly.  I got real lucky.