Anticipation

It's only Tuesday and it feels like it should be Friday! These past two days at work have felt like a whole week.

That may be due, in part, to the fact that I am eagerly awaiting this Saturday, which is the date of the annual Raritan Valley Radio Club (RVRC) Hamfest. This hamfest used to be held in this quaint little park in the town of Dunellen; and that's why it is known as the "Dunellen Hamfest" to this day, even though it is now held at Piscataway High School.

I'm not looking to buy a lot of stuff. My main purchase will hopefully be a new hunk of coax for my "Inverted L" or end fed Zepp antenna. I'm always on the lookout for a bargain, however; and books and tools are always on my radar scope.

My main purpose for going is to reconnect with friends and faces that I get to see only all too seldomly. Since the Piscataway Amateur Radio Club pretty much faded away, I don't really get to see anyone on a regular basis. I still belong to the ETS of NJ which runs the famous (in NJ) Greenbrook repeater; but those meetings are on Friday nights; and Marianne (my wife) ALWAYS works Friday nights - it's a given. So I'm home with the kids on Friday nights.

Being a CW guy, I'm not a fixture on the local 2 Meter repeaters, although I do enjoy listening to K2ETS (Greenbrook) and W2QW (RVRC) very, very much. I just don't pick up the microphone and transmit all that much, except to say "hi" every now and then.

The forecast for Saturday is cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms. Hopefully the rain will hold off until later in the day; and I'll get in a few hours of rummaging and talking with old friends.

Oh, yes! The other thing I want to do is take along my 50 WAS QRP CW QSL cards and have two Ham friends sign off on my QRP-ARCI WAS application so I can send that in. ARCI doesn't need or want cards. All they want are the signatures of two fellow Hams to testify that they have seen the logs or QSL cards.

73 de Larry W2LJ