Sunday, April 12, 2020

The streak continues

No, no such streak as John K3WWP's never duplicatable QRP QSO a Day streak, but my personal goal of making at least two QSOs in each of the state QSO parties in 2020.

Yesterday was North Dakota, Georgia and New Mexico. And as expected, the Georgia QSO Party was like shooting fish in a barrel. I could have made two QSOs in that state QSO party without even thinking about it much. Surprisingly to me, North Dakota, while not as easy, proved to be relatively simple as well. I thought it would be much harder as ND is one of the "tougher: states for a lot of people working on their Worked All States Award.  But three QSOs came with only a modicum of  effort.

New Mexico was the toughie of the three. After I gave the lawn its first mowing of the season, I headed down the basement and got the above mentioned QSOs in relatively short order. At that point in the day, I was not hearing New Mexico at all. I listened on 20 Meters, 40 Meters and even listened on 15 Meters. Nothing. I truly thought my goal of succeeding in this personal State QSO Party Challenge was going to come to an abrupt end.

I came upstairs for a bit to take care of a few things and headed back downstairs around 4:00 PM local time, or about 2000 UTC. I started slowly twiddling the dial on 20 Meters and stopped when I heard K1JD calling "CQ NMQP". At first I thought he was a 1-land station trying to call NM stations, but then I heard him giving out his county as part of the exchange. Wow! He turned out to be an ex-patriot from 1-land now living in New Mexico! I got him in the log rather quickly and then followed that by making a QSO with K8TE. Same deal - I guess that maybe they are retired Hams who have moved from their home states to retire to New Mexico? Whatever. I got two NM stations in the log, which was my goal. I would have liked to have worked a few more ot have fattened up the log, but I have to admit ..... I never DID hear a 5 station calling "CQ NMQP" which was kind of weird.

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

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