Tonight was the ARS Spartan Sprint, which occurs the first Monday night of each and every month. I jump in to boost my QSO total; and to have some fun. I like operating; and I join in even though I realize that I do not have a good enough antenna farm to acutally compete with the top guns.
Local noise on the AC line was intermittant. Someone in the neighborhood is using some kind of appliance that is generating a ton of RF hash. One of these nights, I'm going to have to go walking again to see if I could localize it. Last winter, I thought it was a bad insulator or something on a utility pole; but the random "on-off" pattern of the noise is convincing me otherwise. At least so far this year, it comes and goes, as compared to last winter when it just came on and lasted all night!
In any event, I made 24 QSOs with 5 Watts. The best DX was to Texas. 80 and 40 Meters were the only bands I used. I tried 20 Meters for a bit; but it was totally dead. 40 Meters was good from the beginning; but the at about 0300 UTC, it went way long. At that point I started hearing Texas and Mississippi and then it kind of conked out. The rest of the evening was spent on 80 Meters where the majority of my QSOs were made.
Tomorrow night is the beginning of the 2006/2007 QRP Fox hunting season. Tuesday nights will be the 80 Meter hunts, with the 40 Meter hunts to follow on Thursdays. I was given the honor of being one of the two Foxes on the first 80 meter hunt. I hope band conditions will be good with low background noise. I'd really love to work a lot of stations and hand out a ton of pelts. That would be the ultimate in fun!
73 de Larry W2LJ
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