Las Vegas trip March

Our trip to Vegas was going to be from a Monday to Friday but with impending bad weather we decided to fly out a day earlier. I'm glad We did because our area received about 20 inches of snow!! Weather in Las Vegas was very nice with highs in the 60s-70s every day. We enjoyed eating, walking and exploring and even one show at Planet Hollywood featuring Miranda Lambert.

 The picture above was from our room at the new Versailles tower which we stayed at the first night. Nice room and view and then for the rest of the trip we stayed at the Paris hotel--another nice room although our view was not as nice!

 The only problem we encountered was our return flight was cancelled so We needed to book with another airline- -extra expense we didn't count on but needed to be back home. It was a fun trip, and we are already planning a future one.

73---Tim
 

MInnesota QSO Party 2024

 I had not planned to participate in this contest, but My schedule ended up being open, so I did participate for a short time. This contest starts at 8:00 am CST and ends at 6:00Pm. I have never operated the full 10 hours but usually lots longer than this year. 

 My first band was 80m and that ended up not being very productive, so I switched to 40m and this band produced QSOs up and down the band. I also checked 15 and 10m but was not much activity. The 20m band would have been a good choice if I wanted to try running but I was in and out of the shack too much, so I stayed mostly on 40m. 

  I usually have more contacts during this contest but since I only devoted short intervals to operating, I ended up with just over 50 contacts, majority on 40m. This contest also made me aware of some antenna issues on 80m which I have repaired and now both my vertical and dipole are tuning nicely.

73---Tim

CenturyLink DSL repair

 

I started to notice a problem with our internet connection dropping and slower connect speeds. This seemed to be happening mostly early morning and clearing up later in the day. This started several weeks ago. It finally was bothersome enough I did a test with the CenturyLink App on My iPhone and it did show an issue. I did an online chat with the repair people and they also verified a problem and set a time for an onsite visit.

 Close to the scheduled time of course the problem cleared up but the technician did see the problem we were experiencing from earlier. After some onsite checks He decided to add a filter/splitter to the incoming line. I looked it up on the internet and its a NID-01VTj. A simple device but effective so far. We have three analog phones with DSL filters at the phone jack but this will help the DSL modem to not "see" the phones and associated wiring. This fix has actually improved our connect speed and we are no longer experiencing retrains. 

  I wonder if the extra wiring to feed the three phones around the house acted like antennas and were picking up some interference--we see. Very happy to have a solid internet connection and again I've had another good CenturyLink repair experience!

 73--Tim

QSL cards and several new DXCC's

 

I received a couple QSL cards from the Zero Bureau recently and noticed its time to send more money for supplies. I also have a stack of outgoing cards to send to the ARRL outgoing bureau. I don' receive as many as I used to which is fine--many Hams are using electronic QSL cards for exchange like LOTW and EQSL.

 I also notice I have a new DXCC in my LOTW -HD8R- Galapagos Island which I had a contact with during the CQ WW SSB contest in 2021 that was just recently verified. I also have two contacts with V55Y from Namibia but He doesn't seem to be a LOTW user yet-maybe someday. I now have 129 confirmed DXCC's. I haven't actively been chasing Dx , just adding a few thru contesting.

73--Tim

 

ARRL RTTY RU 2024

 This contest started Saturday January 6th at 18:00 UTC and finished at 23:59 January 7th. I was hoping to have most of my contest time on Saturday, but I had antenna/tuner issues several hours after the start. The weather was wet and humid outside and eventually turned cold enough to freeze towards sunset and I suspect it affected my vertical antenna. I decided to wait until Sunday morning to investigate, which I did and cleaned the doorknob capacitors and connections on the antenna. It helped some but I still backed the power down to less than 50w just to be safe.

 I was able both days to make contacts on 40m through 10m and at the end of the contest was surprised to see 20m had the most contacts. The conditions were good for domestic QSO's but the DX was not as available. I still managed almost 200 contacts for a score 0f 11,136 so I was pleased with the results. I was suffering with a chest cold so this was the perfect contest for me--point and click and no voice needed!!

73---Tim