Batting .500

 I went one for two last night, with a solid single in the 40 Meter Fox Hunt last night.

Ed N9EP in Illinois was an easy find and I worked him at the four minute mark. Brian K0DTJ in California was another matter altogether. I found the pack of Hounds chasing him easy enough, but hearing Brian himself was quite the chore. Twiddling 1 - 2 kHz down from the pack yielded nothing for a while until I decided to make use of the KX3's Audio Peaking Filter. It was only then that I was able to make out where Brian was, about 1 kHz down.

Even with all the controls set for maximum receive, Brian was definitely not workable. I could tell where he was and when he was transmitting, but if I would have thrown out my call, I would have never been able to tell if he was coming back to me. So why QRM the frequency and ruin someone else's chance? I only stayed on frequency until 0245 UTC last night - the halfway point of the Hunt. I figured that Brian most likely wasn't going to get much louder and I was starting to nod off as it was. I'm paying for this late night foray (for W2LJ at least, it was a late night foray), this morning.

After the Hunt, I saw on the qfox e-mail reflector that Steve WX2S in Kingston, which is about 20 to 25 miles South of me, managed to work both Foxes.  Obviously, he has a better antenna farm than W2LJ has, but I'm happy with what I got done last night - although working both Foxes would obviously been a much better outcome.

All in all we did well with the storm last night. Everyone made it home safe from work and we received 2.70 inches of rain The winds were pretty steady out of the SSE at about 8-10 MPH with an occasional gust near 20 MPH. No trees or branches down and no loss of power, we did just fine, thanks be to God!

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!