The Only Hamfest Scheduled for Washington so far is the 30th Annual Mike and Key ARC Electronics show and Fleamarket on March 12, 2011.   Entrance fee is $8.00.. It is a very large Hamfest with lots of Amateur Radio and other things for sale. It is a good place to meet your friends and enjoy the day. I usually meet several guys I know and we all go over to Catlins for lunch.

 

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Homer is looking for a radio to purchase as his old Radio does not work. He says it’s burned out. He has been off the air for the past month or longer. He would like to get a used radio and may have to make payments. Anyone who knows where he might find one for Sale please let Allen W7QM know.

 

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Volunteers are needed for NCS and RN7 QNB Stations. WSN NCS does have to call the Net AM Session at 7:30 AM and the WSN/1 Session at 6:45 PM.
The RN7 QNB Station does have to QNI on WSN/1 at 6:45 PM and RN7/! At 7:30 PM amd RN7/2 at 9:30 PM..
Anyone who is interested please contact WSN Mgr, Allen W7QM

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We made it through the holidays none the worse for wear, and Carol is fine. She hasn't had any loss-of-consciousness seizures since 2008, and hasn't fallen for three months. That's good.

Me? You've heard me on the net, when I can. My radio capabilities are on the CW portions of five HF bands now. 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 work well, and I am active during the big contests. I see a large gathering of WSN members are also on 160 meters, which obviously come in handy when the 80 skip goes real long during December. I do have plans in the works for a 'full-size' 160 meter dipole to go up as high as I can get it around our property this summer. Hopefully the tuner on my FLEX-3000 SDR (software-defined-radio) will match to it. If not, I'll have to buy a real tuner. Summer.

I have enter three big contests since I last talked to you folks:

***2010 ARRL Sweepstakes***

I was able to get 195 contacts in the 2010 CW ARRL Sweepstakes the first weekend in November. That is about average for me for this contest, with 9.5 hours of actual butt-in-the-chair time putting me a little better than 20 contacts an hour, which, again, is a respectable average for me. Sunday afternoon I did quite a nice CQ run on 20 meters, snagging 30 contacts in a row on the same frequency, in 40 minutes. Jupiter 2, my TH3DX beam @35 feet, done good.

The antennas were not a problem this contest. The main problem was the software for this darn radio. Or, actually, more specifically, my darned operating system that mangled the Flex memory keyer Morse code database for my radio. During the very first contact, when I tried to slow down from 24 WPM to 23 WPM the keyer went squirrely, inserting a half a second delay after each sent character. It was MADDENING!!!

I'm not that comfortable cruising along at 24 WPM during any contest, so it was VERY disconcerting to not be able to slow down to 22 or 20 or even 18 WPM for the slower stations. To me, it's rude to send 24 WPM code to somebody only sending at 18 WPM.

And this year I noticed a troubling trend that the code speeds seem to be increasing in this contest every year. I'm not sure if that's because more and more participants are using computer-generated code, or if it is because I am getting older.

As I've said before, contesting is 90% mental, so I just couldn't work around the bug (sic) in the radio/program/OS for the first half of the contest. Therefore I only had 60 contacts in the log when I went to bed Saturday night. Usually I'm around 100 or so.

Sunday morning I ran at 24 WPM only, and most everyone I talked to was at that speed or faster, so I made reasonable progress.

Then, all of a sudden, at about noon Sunday, Vista decided to reinstate the database it had earlier corrupted, and, lo and behold, my keyer worked fine. I didn't do a damn thing.

I HATE intermittent problems, especially intermittent software problems that I didn't cause in the first freakin' place!

Have I ever mentioned that I really-really-really-really-REALLY hate Windows Vista a LOT??? I do.

So anyway, my radio was working fine for the last third of the contest, I almost broke 200, and I collapsed in a tired mass at 1859 local Sunday evening as per normal. At that point, it had been dark for 2 hours!

***2010 CQWWDX Contest***

Last year in the CQWWDX contest I was able to get 155 contacts, but this year I did 67 better than that, for a total of 222 QSOs in a little over eleven hours total on the air. I totaled 66 mults on all bands except 10 meters. Nary a peep up there, but worked several Japanese stations on 80 meters in the mornings.

Overall, that's 45% better than I did last year in the same amount of time, with a rate just shy of 20 contacts per hour. That ain't bad just searching and pouncing.

20 meters had strong openings to Europe both Saturday and Sunday mornings, and 15 meters was wide open to the Caribbean and South America in the afternoons. 40 meters did well to Asia and Oceania both days. It sure was nice to be able to transmit more than 5 watts on this band without locking up my computer application. That was one of the main reasons I relocated the 40 meter inverted vee against our back property line, some 70 feet from my computer. 40 meters is a good DX band if the sun's not up. So is 80 meters if you work hard enough, but I only worked a few JAs there this year.

But most importantly, how did I do 'new country'-wise? I was at 99 countries before I uploaded this log to LOTW, and FO8RZ put me up to 100 when I worked him on 20 meters Sunday morning. I don't have his QSL card yet, but I'm working on that. So as a result of all those DX contests I have entered over the years, I have finally achieved verifications from one hundred countries. Yes, technically right now I do qualify for DXCC, but I'll probably wait till I get up to 101 or 102 before I do the paperwork. Right now I have 87 on the LOTW, and 13 other countries in my 2,600 QSL card collection. Maybe I'll talk to the ARRL verifier this spring.

***2010 ARRL 10 meter contest***

I participated in my seventh ARRL 10 meter contest 10-12 December 2010. In 2008 I was able to get 82 contacts, and last year I amassed an impressive total of 109 contacts with only 8 hours on the air.

This contest is the most dependent on sunspots and solar flux of all the contests in which I regularly participate. 80 through 20 meters are affected by sunspots slightly, and 15 meters even more so. During times of high sunspot activity, 15 meters will be open almost all day long, from before sunrise to well after sunset. During times of low sunspot activity, 15 meters will only be open for a few hours around midday.

10 meters is even more dependent on solar activity than that: During times of high solar activity 10 meters can be open to all over the world with 5 watts. During times of low solar activity, 10 meters will be dead, as a doornail, 24/7. I won't be able to talk to ANYBODY, except local stations, with a kilowatt.

And all types of different conditions in between. Last year the band was wide open to the USA most of the day Saturday, and even got a few DX.

Then Sunday it was dead as a doornail. 10 meters does that. It can be VERY tricky!

This year I got 29 on Saturday, mostly locals, but a few South America stations and a weak one in CA. Then it died early, no evening openings, ect.

But then Sunday morning it opened to the east coast and stayed open for TWO HOURS! Of course the opening was right in the middle of me trying to feed Carol and me eat breakfast, but real life is like that. At about 0900 my SDR panoramic display had huge loud signals all the way from 28.000 to 28.080, it was an awesome band opening. It was the most activity I had seen on 10 meters since Cycle 23. It was such an awesome band opening I even called CQ and put together a respectable run for about an hour, not bad for 75 watts.

Right in the middle of my run, my cousin Gary, K0LUZ happened to hear me from where he is in Florida, and gave me a call. It was nice to hear him again. He's a BIG gun contester, much bigger than I, and has a station I can only dream of. I usually hear him once a year or so, we chatted.

Later on in the morning the band shifted to South America and I got a few more contacts, but it didn't last too long, and I wrapped it up by about 1300.

71 contacts with 25 multipliers in 6.25 hours on-the-air is a fine result for Jupiter 2. I should probably keep historical track of solar flux during this contest, but I keep putting it off.

Next big contest for me: ARRL DX contest in February. CU all on the net!

73 Leroy N7EIE

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January 2011 is here and I hope we all have a wonderful NEW Year and wonderful things will happen for all of us. One nice thing to think about is the Life Span is much longer now days. In 1900 it was 46.3 years for Males and 48.3 for Females. As of  2004 life expectancy for Males is 75.7 and Females is 80.8.  How many of us thought we would even reach the year 2000 when we were young children. I know I never thought I would reach the age of 82 but here I am and I keep telling my wife Beverly that I will still be here in my 90s. I think it helps to have a positive attitude.

Beverly and I spent Christmas with our family in Snohomish, WA. We had 18 people for dinner. We drew names for Christmas Gifts had a lot of fun opening them up especially 4 Grandchildren and 5 Great Grandchildren. At last count we have 16 Grandchildren and 8 Great Grandchildren. For a total of 24 Grandchildren.

Allen W7QM