13 Colonies special Event 2017

I've participated in this special event since 2012-only missing the first three years. I have achieved a clean sweep three years ( contacting the original 13 colony stations) and have been hit or miss with the bonus stations-WM3PEN and W3FT. The most recent bonus station from the United Kingdom -GB13COL I have not contacted much less heard! Band conditions at My QTH for any contact with them other than CW or Digital lately seems very tough. If 10 or 15m was open--probably increase My chances alot!
  Several Years I forgot about the Event until it was almost over so I needed to play catch-up. Not this year--in fact I had 8 contacts within the first 24 hours so I expected a clean sweep was going to happen.The band conditions during the next several days and time limitations kept the clean sweep goal distant.I managed a contact every so often and even snagged the  WM3PEN station thru the noise on 40m one evening.
 The last twelve hours I tried to add the last two stations I needed eventually contacting  K2H from Massachusetts but never making it thru the noise and pile ups to K2I ( New Jersey). He did stay a little longer on CW - conditions maybe?? By time He was on SSB the band was very iffy and I finally gave up towards the end.Twelve stations plus the one bonus is all I could manage!
  This is always a fun event and since I take some vacation around the 4th of July I have extra time to participate. My hat is off to all the superb operators who are willing to give their time and energy to make this event on the radio so successful.It seems to be growing bigger every year.A job well done--God Bless America, Happy July 4th
and---73s---Tim
 

Las Vegas trip 2017

The last week of March was Our trip to Las Vegas and we looked forward to more seasonal weather and a relaxing time with a small bit of gambling too. Very small-- not much of a gambler! Our flight was leaving Duluth Sunday evening with a connection at MSP airport. As luck would have it the weather did not cooperate.Duluth does tend to have its share of fog and late Sunday afternoon the fog settled in around Duluth and Lake Superior. Our daughter was dropping Us off for Our flight and continuing to College for the week.
At the airport it soon became apparent Our flight was going to be delayed enough to miss our connection at MSP airport.What to do? We hated to have Our daughters evening spoiled coming back to get Us and besides the Fog was very thick.After consulting with the airline we decided to change flights and catch a very early flight Monday. Rented a car for transportation home and back and about 5 hours later, and away We went.Figured We wouldn't be the only sleep deprived tourists in Vegas!
Arrived nice and early at Las Vegas with the time change, checked into the Stratosphere Hotel and started exploring. We saw a broadway style show,visited the titanic exhibition ( it was great) and toured the Hoover Dam.
Thursday we decided on some pool time and were enjoying the pool by 10am. Later We noticed the wind was really starting to pick up.Weather reports the night before had predicted a very strong wind by noon. They were right and We decided to check out the Stratosphere tower and maybe find a restaurant.
The Stratosphere tower is about 110 stories high. Impressive. I don't relish heights but was willing to accompany My wife.While up at the gift shop at 108 story level we noticed movement back and forth. We were told the tower was engineered to move several feet to accomadate extreme winds.Yup-enough for Me! Down We went and found a ground floor restaurant. Later we went up to our room and relized the Las Vegas area was having a rather significant sand storm with winds in Our area gusting to 60-70mph! Yikes!!
With the weather being less than stellar, thought maybe some guests would be concerned. Nope.Casino operating like it was a nice summer day. Nobody concerned in the least! Eventually towards dusk the winds calmed down and strip returned to normal--well except for the 50 some thousand without power!! We had power so we ate supper, gambled some and had an enjoyable evening. Flight back to Minnesota was the typical hurry up and wait and feeling like cattle being hearded! Like I said-typical!
All in all a fun but interesting trip.We're ready to do it again !
73---Tim

Win XP cleanup

I have multiple old computers in My shack. All hand me downs which I've spent time cleaning up the OS of each and try to make them useable. I recently inherited an  upgraded laptop when My wife received a new one for Christmas. Its a Dell Vostro 1520 running a free download of Win10. A nice laptop with Win10 and definite improvement over My other older PC's running XP.
  My main PC is a desktop Dell dimension 2400 running Win XP. Big hard drive with plenty of room and just enough RAM to make it fairly speedy for an old PC. Last week I noticed it was no longer speedy but incredibly slow--virus? malware?. Not sure but since it has 99% of My Ham radio life on it, I wanted to attempt to save it.
  I've always known the old XP is slowly running out of time--lots of programs it no longer supports but I wasn't ready to junk it yet. I decided to try any and all means to save it. While running various virus,cleaning,malware programs I started to add Ham Radio related programs to the Win10 PC in case My attempts at saving this one were not successful. New N1MM, new loggers, sound card RTTY ,etc. During this time I ran anti-virus several times on the old XP----slow,slow slow.Painfully slow! Then tried cleaning and malware programs. Deleted unused programs and did a defrag of the hard drive and MS disk clean.The speed of the PC I noticed increasing as each program was run-sometimes multiple times. During this time I also restarted and powered down several times.One of the power cycles I took the time to open up the case and vacuum clean the dust bunnies out.Lets just say they had babies big time!!!
  I also reseated cards and memory along with various ribbon cables. After all the maintenance both software and hardware I now have a speedy( for XP) PC again.I can't pinpoint one remedy but think the combination of everything was the key. I know its days are numbered but for now its actually seems faster than before! OK-maybe wishful thinking!
  73---Tim
PS-not much to advertise but I used all free shareware programs along with Microsoft software included with XP

CQ WW 160 m contest 2017

 I've participated in this contest every year except one since 2008.Its always fun on the "gentlemans" band and if I devoted more time I'm sure I would turn in a respectable score.On the other hand if sleep is more important ( like it is for Me!) the actual operating time is limited.
  This contest start time was changed several years ago to begin at 2200 UTC instead of the 2 hour later start.Each year I manage a few contacts during the earlier daylight hours but truthfully the band is just not ready to perform that early.
  Both Friday and Saturday the QRN was very bad at My QTH with Friday being the worse. I actually listened Saturday a few hours before sunset and was hopeful for Saturday night since conditions seemed quieter. Wasn't great conditions later so didn't contest too hard either night.I mainly just wanted to keep the participation streak going ,which I did.I do think this was one of those years I was actually not hearing stations as well as they were hearing Me.Usually its opposite in I have a very quiet location.but not this time.Localized snow both nights caused the band to be noisy up north.
  Low score but good time anyway.Maybe added a few states towards WAS ?? Can only hope. As always the Gentlemans band lived up to that moniker--- only polite operators. :)
  73--Tim

Catch up time

 I've participated in contesting for many years and always enjoy the certificates earned. The CQ contests have many "certificates of merit" literally for any contest participated in. I printed a few of the better ones.Several I was in the top five in My category.Not bad. Usually only time receiving recognition is being number one! I do enjoy the "wallpaper" !
 I also took some time to catch up with QRZ logbook. not many new entries but have had several inquires about QSO's. Now I'm caught up--at least till the next contest!
  The 80m band tonight was superb.I listened to several nets in the surrounding states and everyone was booming in at "10 over 9" or more.Even checked into to local section net!
  73 for now--Tim

ARRL RTTY RU contest 2017

I really like RTTY contests. I've managed to participate in this one for several years in a row.Nice to be in the warm shack when its frigid outside. RTTY contests are unique in being almost like a video game--point and click, point and click.Relaxing,can enjoy a nice cup of coffee and still rack up contacts.
  This year the bands were definitely not as productive for DX.  The stateside stations made up for the lack of Dx activity- enough so I was only 2 QSO down from last year although because of the lack of DX my multplier totals suffered.Oh well -still fun. I managed contacts on all the bands from 80-10 although 80 and 10 were thin pickings. My money band this year was 20m and when I quit early on Sunday, it was loaded with stations. Ended with 254 contacts which is not bad for Me. I'm very happy.
  73---Tim