It was a good day!

It was a beautiful day here in Central NJ, It was sunny; and we had beautiful blue skies. The temperature ran up to about 72 Degrees F (22 C), and it was a bit breezy; but very comfortable.

But even better than that was that I got the chance to get out to the park near the work QTH during lunchtime. To maximize my operating time, I simply plopped the 20 Meter Hamstick on the magmount on top of the car. To my surprise and delight there were a lot of signals to be heard ... finally!

There was a powerhouse station coming through on 14.040 MHz. CT/DL1YD was coming through 599 +++++. He was working stations DXpedition style; so I decided to give a call. On the second try, I snagged him! I got a 599 report, and I doubt that I was THAT loud; but there were no requests for repeats of my callsign - so my signal must have been at least halfway decent.

5 Watts to a Hamstick made it all the way over the vast Atlantic Ocean to Portugal. Just thinking about that boggles my mind. From NY to Portugal is about a 6 or 7 hour airplane ride. My 5 Watts covered that distance at the speed of light. Using less power than the average night light bulb; and I communicated with another Ham on the other side of the ocean. How can you become jaded by that; or come to regard such things as "routine"?

After that, I called CQ up around the FISTS watering hole and had a nice conversation with Lloyd VE1VEI in Aylesford, Nova Scotia where it wasn't so nice - rainy and about 62 Degrees F. Signals were nice as we gave each other 599 reports. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay on with Lloyd for too long as I had to get back to work; but it was definitely nice to get two lunchtime QRP QSOs in the logbook.

73 de Larry W2LJ