Florida trip 2024

We traveled to Disney world and stayed at the Port Orleans riverside resort from Sunday to Saturday. The weather was very nice, and We were able to visit many parks and even took a boat to Disney Springs. I have decided a few rides are now beyond what an old guy should attempt to ride and definitely enjoy the slower less jarring ones. Staying on Disney property is very convenient with the shuttle buses and even the new Skyliner transport which we rode for the first time. It was a very enjoyable, relaxing trip and hope We can revisit Disney and Florida again soon.

  
 

California QSO party 2024

 The contest club I'm a member of has one contest a season which is a wild card. This year it's the California QSO party which starts on October 5th at 1600 UTC and ends October 6th at 2200 UTC. I participated the first day for about 2 hours before family showed up at our house and of course it was time to end for the day. Bands were doing very well so it was tuff to quit but I had Sunday yet to contest.

  The next day I was back on the air on 20m but not too early-1247 UTC although on the West coast it was still dark. This entire contest I was on 20,15 and 10 meters only. I never heard much activity on the lower bands, so I stayed were the action seemed to be. My favorite band is 10m mainly because it's the only HF band where I have aluminum in the air-my other antennas for Hf are an inverted L and a ground mounted vertical. The 10m Yagi performed well enough I had at least two contacts mention my great signal and nice sounding station!!

  I only managed 71 contacts for 5,112 points on SSB voice. If I was a CW guy my score would be double!! Oh well. Fun contest and the participants were very cordial. Might have to remember this one for next year!

73--Tim

CQ WW RTTY 2024

   I decided to try and double my score from last year's RTTY contest so Friday night I started at the opening and had some good success for about 2 hours. Both of my antennas for 75m are not great with narrow bandwidth for the RTTY frequencies but with the inline VCI tuner I managed to make a few contacts. The rest of the weekend I stayed on 40m and above so the Butternut HF6V ground mounted vertical and 10m yagi were used and they both perform well on the higher bands. 

The bands on 15 and 10m meters had fair openings both days and 20 and 40m seemed to have less activity because of that. I still did my usual start high and work low toward sunset so I was able to spread out the contacts between the bands. It was fun having contacts from around the world and I'm hoping to add a few new DXCC's to my total count. We will check LOTW soon and see ! 

  I was hoping for 200 contacts and when I reached 201 on late Sunday afternoon I decided that was enough and submitted my log with over 75000 points. I do expect that amount to drop since several stations kept dropping my second "J" on my call sign even after I sent it many times to correct them. Oh well such is the challenge of contesting!

 73---Tim

 

Las Vegas trip in August

 We went on vacation to Las Vegas before my wife goes back to work in September. Its maybe a little unusual to go during the summer when the temperatures are touching 110F, but it's a dry heat is what we tell ourselves. The mornings we enjoyed spending time at the pool and afternoon we did a little gambling and exploring. We never were close to our prearranged gambling limits so that was good. One evening we went to a Carrie Underwood show at Resorts World theatre which was fun. It's always interesting to check out other hotel/casinos for future trips. Summer is winding down so that's sad but we had fun and also managed to finish a few projects.

73---Tim

Shack clean up

 

After removing the old dipole antenna, I realized I had several old antennas fed thru coax switches and manual tuners. I also still had the ladder line strung through the shack that needed to be removed. The shack coax jumpers,two tuners and associated connections were complicated enough I had drawn a diagram so I would remember what I had connected through the years.

   I decided I was able to remove three old antenna connections plus the ladder line and consolidate the the rest on just one tuner and remove three coax switches plus coax jumpers. The shack looks much cleaner and easier to operate.

73--Tim

End of the Dipole

My 260' dipole I've had up in the air for about 30 years broke and was laying on the ground when I caught this bear passing by the house. He is one of many we've seen in our yard this year although usually the ladder line is about ten feet above any wildlife. When this antenna was first installed, I was young enough to climb the big pine tree to attach a rope to a garage spring and the insulating "T" for the dipole legs. This antenna was built by my Ham Radio Elmer Roger who gently nudged Me into the hobby with antenna and radio help. This antenna has performed over the years quite well and only parts have failed over the years.

The pine tree this is attached to has grown and surrounding woods has filled in to the point its actually difficult to get access and see where the failure occurred although after some brushing and chain sawing, I found the rope attached to the spring had broken. I cut enough lower dead branches to use a ladder to try to reattach the spring but as I was doing thing one leg of the dipole broke also. After i examined the break, I realized the wire was very old and becoming brittle. Not surprising with the age of this antenna.

I pondered this for a while and decided maybe it was time to retire this antenna not only because of its age but my age too. Probably not the best idea at My age to be climbing trees anyway. I still have a working inverted "L" that is not as old and seems to be working the low bands fairly well so time to retire the dipole---it served Me well for many years!!

73-Tim

 

13 colonies special event 2024

  This special event started on July 1st and ended July 8th--plenty of time to chase the colony stations and also the three bonus ones. This year I managed to contact four stations the first day and kept adding several during most of the following days. I even contacted WM3PEN bonus station on July 4th. I watched several stations operate mostly FT8 and CW and was wondering if I would have a chance for a contact with voice and eventually, I did manage all 13 colony stations for the clean sweep. I was lucky with the last one and heard them as I was dialing through 20m and contacted them before they were spotted.

 This is always a fun event to follow and again the operators did a great job with pile ups! It's a huge time commitment and I very much appreciate the time required to make this a success.

73--Tim

  
 

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

Christmas vacation cruise 2023

 

We decided to spend Christmas on a short Caribbean cruise this year instead of a white Christmas in the north country. The weather up north actually didn't cooperate for the usual snowy holiday and instead was a rainy, foggy, no snow Christmas but we enjoyed warm weather and palm trees with nice Caribbean breezes. 

  A plane ride to Tampa Florida, an overnight stay, then a short Uber ride and we were embarking on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship on a five-night holiday. We did have a few days at sea but enjoyed all aspects of the ship with stops at Coco Cay and Nassau, Bahama before cruising back to Florida. Travel days can be rather long and the return trip was no exception, but it was a memorable vacation. 

  Happy New Year---Tim