Posted: 4/7/2016 6:10:34 PM EDT
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Starts Saturday, 4/9, 8AM Eastern (1200Z UTC).
DETAILS HERE It would be a good chance for those getting started in CW to jump in and work a few (or many) stations to get the hang of it. You don't necessarily have to use a straight key, just don't submit a score. If you don't yet have a number, send your power. Signing up for a number is easy, just click HERE. It's free. |
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I'll be around.
Tried the SKS Europe for about 30 minutes, this afternoon. The bands were terrible, and I only heard one station. Called CQ, but no one answered. Turned the rig off and went out to the garage to work on a modification for the shelf on my shack desk. Going to do a little rearranging. 
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Quoted:
We'll be looking for you. Hope you have half as much fun as i do operating. Check the bonus points scoring for this month's Sprintathon. Put a slash and the # of years you've been a ham after your name It turns out I already had a number - 12359. A good one to remember but can be confused with a signal report. No promises but I will try this weekend. How do I count years of being a ham? I've been a ham since I was born 45 years ago because my dad is a ham. Got first licensed overseas in 1989 and had an equivalent of an Extra ticket. Got first licensed in the US in 1994 (if I remember correctly ). I guess 1989 will be the date of me first getting licensed, right? |
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Quoted:
It turns out I already had a number - 12359. A good one to remember but can be confused with a signal report. No promises but I will try this weekend. How do I count years of being a ham? I've been a ham since I was born 45 years ago because my dad is a ham. Got first licensed overseas in 1989 and had an equivalent of an Extra ticket. Got first licensed in the US in 1994 (if I remember correctly ). I guess 1989 will be the date of me first getting licensed, right? Quoted:
Quoted:
We'll be looking for you. Hope you have half as much fun as i do operating. Check the bonus points scoring for this month's Sprintathon. Put a slash and the # of years you've been a ham after your name It turns out I already had a number - 12359. A good one to remember but can be confused with a signal report. No promises but I will try this weekend. How do I count years of being a ham? I've been a ham since I was born 45 years ago because my dad is a ham. Got first licensed overseas in 1989 and had an equivalent of an Extra ticket. Got first licensed in the US in 1994 (if I remember correctly ). I guess 1989 will be the date of me first getting licensed, right? Hey, you've been a member 4 days longer than me. Shouldn't be any confusion, as the exchange always goes: RST, State, Name, Member number....in that order. I'd say you have been a ham 28 years....2016 - 1989 + 1 = 28. If you use the "dad method", I've been a ham for 50 years. |
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From the scoring rules:
...Count your first year and the current year, no matter how short, as a full year. So, WB7EUX was first licensed as WN7JYK on 5/7/1968. WB7EUX can count 1968 as his first year. The formula to calculate How Long a Ham: Current Year minus First Year plus 1. For WB7EUX that would be 2016 - 1968 + 1 equals 49 years.
The exchange would be: RST SPC NAME / Years A Ham SKCC NUMBER. For example: W1AW de WB7EUX QSL ES TU 599 OR TOM/49 NR 9833S Bonus Points: - If you have an exchange without ham years both ways, then you receive zero bonus points. - If you transmit your ham years but don't receive ham years in return give yourself credit and add on 5 bonus points. - If you receive ham years from the other op but forget to send yours, give yourself 5 bonus points. - If you successfully transmit and receive ham years then give yourself 10 bonus points. You can exchange your ham years with another station once per band. So if you exchange ham years both ways and you have the exchange on three bands with the same station you would receive 30 bonus points. Wait, what if I dropped out of amateur radio (became unlicensed - like WB7EUX did) during the calculation period? Let's just say you were a ham at heart during those bleak, missing years and don't exclude them... The number of years you've been a ham don't count toward the score, just the fact that you sent them and received another ham's years. When you think about it, it's the only fair way to do it, otherwise us old farts would win hands down. There's a boatanchor sprint where the number of tubes in your transmitter and receiver count toward the score. Those can get wild. |
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Quoted:
From the scoring rules: The number of years you've been a ham don't count toward the score, just the fact that you sent them and received another ham's years. When you think about it, it's the only fair way to do it, otherwise us old farts would win hands down. There's a boatanchor sprint where the number of tubes in your transmitter and receiver count toward the score. Those can get wild. Quoted:
From the scoring rules: ...Count your first year and the current year, no matter how short, as a full year. So, WB7EUX was first licensed as WN7JYK on 5/7/1968. WB7EUX can count 1968 as his first year. The formula to calculate How Long a Ham: Current Year minus First Year plus 1. For WB7EUX that would be 2016 - 1968 + 1 equals 49 years.
The exchange would be: RST SPC NAME / Years A Ham SKCC NUMBER. For example: W1AW de WB7EUX QSL ES TU 599 OR TOM/49 NR 9833S Bonus Points: - If you have an exchange without ham years both ways, then you receive zero bonus points. - If you transmit your ham years but don't receive ham years in return give yourself credit and add on 5 bonus points. - If you receive ham years from the other op but forget to send yours, give yourself 5 bonus points. - If you successfully transmit and receive ham years then give yourself 10 bonus points. You can exchange your ham years with another station once per band. So if you exchange ham years both ways and you have the exchange on three bands with the same station you would receive 30 bonus points. Wait, what if I dropped out of amateur radio (became unlicensed - like WB7EUX did) during the calculation period? Let's just say you were a ham at heart during those bleak, missing years and don't exclude them... The number of years you've been a ham don't count toward the score, just the fact that you sent them and received another ham's years. When you think about it, it's the only fair way to do it, otherwise us old farts would win hands down. There's a boatanchor sprint where the number of tubes in your transmitter and receiver count toward the score. Those can get wild. There is already some confusion about this. Over on the K3UK schedule page, someone is saying that your bonus is the number of years you have been a ham. I suspect we are going to see some very large bonus points reported on this WES. 
Doesn't really matter though, since most of us are just in it to make a few CW contacts. 
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Not having much luck here. I've only heard 3 or 4 stations, and have only worked 2. Called CQ for a while on 20m, but no one answered. Well actually, I think someone tried to answer, but he was too far down in the noise.
Been running the K2, but if this keeps up I might have to fire up the K3......and all 100 watts.
EDIT: Got some storms and lightning just to the west of here, and they're moving this way. 
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20 and 15 suck, 10 is non-existant. I wandered through the wilderness for over an hour and managed to work 2 stations, one in Puerto Rico on 15 and another in Texas on 20.
40 is showing bad QSB, but scored 30 stations in 2 hours. Hopefully 80 will be good after the sun goes down and the D layer collapses. Be safe in the storms. We had a dusting of snow on the roof and grass this morning. Ohio and Michigan got dumped on. |
Thanks. Most of those were scored on 40 Meters. 15 and 20 were good for 1 QSO each. 
I've seen some bad operating conditions, but this weekend just about topped the list, barring solar flares or CME events. The QSB on 40 was unreal, stations swinging from S7 to down in the noise in only a few seconds. 80 was fairly stable, though. Things died down shortly after mid-day Sunday, so I called it quits. A couple of hours later I decided to play with the K1 and heard two stations ragchewing just above 7.055, so I gave one a call after he signed. We chatted for a few minutes and when we cleared, a WES station called me. In the next 25 minutes I worked 9 WES stations with the K1. It seemed like an unusually large number of stations had their keying set too soft, and a few had the dot duration on their bugs set too short. That made marginal copy almost unintelligible. |