Hooking up with friends

One of the nice things about Amateur Radio, and particularly the QRP community, is that you meet a bunch of nice folks and you get the opportunity to make a bunch of new friends.

Tonight, I had the extreme pleasure of working Jim Cluett W1PID. Jim and I have worked each other in so many QRP Sprints of one kind or another that I lost count a long time ago. But even better is the fact that we've bumped into each other on the bands many times to just enjoy a nice ragchew with one another. Tonight we had another.

I was calling CQ on 40 Meters and Jim answered. He had a good 569 signal first time around which quickly improved to a 599 signal when the QSB would subside. Jim was using a straight key; and I was using my bug. Our conversation was about keys, the Straight Key Century Club, the horrible band conditions during Sunday night's "Run For The Bacon" and about our dogs.

Jim is not only an avid QRPer; but he's also quite the outdoorsman. His Webpage is complete with many stories and descriptions of his outdoor QRP adventures. You can check out his Website for ourself at: http://www.mv.com/ipusers/w1pid/

Band conditions have to be really terrible for Jim and I not to have a good connection. He is always a good 579 to 599 down here in New Jersey, even when he's using his 1 or 2 Watt rigs.
Tonight he was QRO running a whopping 25 Watts coming out of a Yaesu FT-900. The band changed on us and forced our QSO to a close; but while it lasted, it was one of those comfortable QSOs that you really enjoy looking back on.

73 de Larry W2LJ