Sunday, May 29, 2011

Hootowl Sprint Highlights

I had a lot of fun working the Hootowl Sprint tonight.  I am pulling the plug early, though.  There's an hour to go; but I have to have my son Joey at the local VFW early tomorrow morning as his Boy Scout Troop is participating in their Memorial Day program.

There was a goodly amount of activity; and it was great to hear a lot of stations.  I'm sure a lot of the guys were tired after participating in the CQ WW Prefix contest this weekend.  I made 21 QSOs in my effort.  We went out to dinner and I got back home past starting time; so that cut into my operating time a bit.

The main highlights were:

1) Working W7CNL on 20 Meters. I think Jack has the lowest QRP ARCI number that I have ever worked - # 271.  That's as close to the founding days of the organization as I think I'm ever going to get.

2) Working AI4SV on 40 Meters and hearing him send 500 mW as his power.  I get a kick out of milliwatting and working milliwatt stations.

3) Working Kelly K4UPG, my fellow Polar Bear on 20 Meters.  Kelly and I kid each other about how we always seem to miss each other during these QRP events.  Tonight we scored - Grrrrrrr.

I had three QSOs on 20 Meters, two on 80 Meters and the balance on 40 Meters.  80 Meters was already into summer time static crash QRM.  I thought 20 Meters would be busier than it was; and 40 Meters, is well, 40 Meters - ol' reliable.

There was no activity that I was able to sense near the old 7.040 MHz watering hole. The conversion over to 7.030 MHz as the standard 40 Meter QRP watering hole seems to be complete.  But there was some digital QRM around 7.034 MHz which was disturbing.  Can't 7.040 MHz be the "lower edge" already?  It's bad enough that these guys don't seem to listen at all before they transmit.  I was running a frequency for about 15 minutes when out of nowhere came some really loud digital noise that forced me to move.  Whatever happened to courtesy?

Sorry, guess I'm tired and crabby.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

2 comments:

  1. Yes it was fun. I think that's the first time we have worked? I also enjoyed working Jack and Kelly. Kelly was booming into Quebec at 0300Z... interesting propagation!

    I wrote up my hootowl sprint experience on my blog at:

    http://www.va3sie.com/blog/qrp/2011/05/30/hoot-owl-sprint/

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  2. Grrrr! Gud to werk ya Larry! Been a while since we have connected. Band dropped out on the final exchange. You were ear splitting one moment and then ESP level the next. That and the challenge of operating in the dark was very interesting. Look forward to the next event and a good ole rag chew!
    72,
    Kelly K4UPG

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