Posted: 10/25/2016 9:21:51 AM EDT
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Not the Rooski rifle, the Straight Key Sprint, tonight 8 - 10 PM Eastern (0000-0200Z 26/10/16)
Details here: http://www.skccgroup.com/operating_activities/weekday_sprint/ Grab a straight key, bug, or cootie key and pound some brass with us. 
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Maybe I'd have better luck tonight, with an antenna like this one. 
I've been looking at this antenna for years. It's not too far from my buddy's house. I was up that way today, and snapped a picture. This thing is GIGANTIC, and quite impressive, when you see it in person. |
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Nice run tonight, Kekoa. You were banging in here with a very good signal. Started out in my "armchair copy" station upstairs, but one of my wife's friends came to visit who has one of those loud fingernails-on-chalk-board voices (think FHRC at full screech). I retreated to the basement shack for the rest of the sprint.
20 was dead here when the sprint started, but 40 and then 80 opened up. Not as much QRN as in the past months, so it looks like winter propagation is starting to fire up. Now to tally up what happened. |
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I think we finally got the hot line connected up from TN to TX, Frank. I worked one other station from TN too. You were a solid 579, and maybe even a little stronger at times.
20 meters was actually in decent shape here, and the stations I worked had pretty good signals. But after about 30 minutes of calling CQ, I didn't get any more takers. I went upstairs and pulled the 40 meter antenna up, but as soon as I started calling CQ, something under the desk went "POP", and my SWR went off the scale.  The connections seemed fine, so I tried it again, and it was back to semi-normal. I backed the power down to 50 watts, just to be safe. When I went to take the antenna down, the connector I use to hook the 40 meter antenna to the coax from the K3 just fell off.  I must have cross threaded it, and it was clearly operator error. 
Well anyway, I had a good run going for about 40 minutes while calling CQ on 40 meters. I do wish some of these guys would take the time to zero beat, though. I keep the filter opened up a little when calling CQ, and I have to chase some of them all over the place with the RIT. |
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Yeah, I don't mind them being a little off, but I use the 400 Hz filter when calling CQ, and some guys are right on the edge.
In the last sprint, I had the other problem. AF2Z, and AF3Z were both answering my CQ at the same time, and they were right on top of each other. I kept sending "AF?", and they both would respond again. It was a mess, and they must have thought I was looney. 
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