QRP Afield

It looked like a promising day for the annual QRP Afield event, which is sponsored by the New England QRP Club.

The weather was great, being in the 70s with lots of sun and mostly sunny skies. I set up both the NorCal Doublet and the PAC-12 in the backyard. The NorCal Doublet was supported at the center by my 20 foot Black Widow crappie pole.

There was not much activity at all. Calling CQ and alternately doing the "hunt and pounce" thing on 20 Meters in the morning yielded all of about 2 QSOs in the first hours of the contest. The NorCal played very well on 20 Meters but was giving me a very high SWR on 40 Meters, which is strange. It used to play very well for me on 40 Meters also; so I think there's a wire busted somewhere. I'll have to build another as I still have a goodly sized hunk of computer ribbon cable sitting in the basement.

Anyway, after getting the grocery shopping out of the way, in the afternoon I made contact with W5ESE in Texas and 20 Meters seemed to have more activity going on. Then the cell phone rang and I got called into work for an emergency. I ended up getting home around 8:00 PM and thus, my QRP Afield day got ruined.

If nothing else, it was a good excercize in portable antenna deployment.

73 de Larry W2LJ