Amazed

I have to say that I witnessed something last night that I have not seen happen very many times in all my years of being an Amateur Radio operator.

Last night, I checked into the St. Max Net a few minutes before net start as Net Control, Lloyd K3QNT was looking for check ins. As we got closer to net start, the band changed a bit and we were able to begin to hear some other voices on the frequency and they were able to hear us.

It appeared that another net was on frequency, since the afternoon in fact, and they were complaining that the St Max Net would be interfering with them. Lloyd explained to them that their signals had just become audible and that there was no intention to interfere with them. Lloyd informed than that our net would begin at 0000 UTC and politely asked if they might have concluded their net by then.

They actually answered that they would be done by then and to stand by for the use of the frequency. So in turn, Lloyd postponed calling for early check ins until the appointed time, in order for them to conclude their session without interference.

It did my heart good to see two groups of considerate, and polite Amateur Radio ops successfully and congenially accommodate each other. It seems so often these days that in situations like these, the immediate response is to become stubborn, rude and unyielding. There ARE grown-ups on the Ham bands and it was great to see!

In other business, since the debacle with the disappearance of the 2024 Skeeter Hunt Scoreboard, I sat myself down in front of my computer and spent a goodly amount of time getting the 2024 certificates composed, and I'm about half way done at this point. The Top Five finishers get a printed hardcopy mailed to them. Because of prohibitive ink and postage costs, everyone else deserving of a certificate gets a .pdf certificate e-mailed to them, so they can print it out for themselves, if they so desire. It used to be that I would send a hardcopy to all the Skeeters who earned one, but that became cost prohibitive after a few years.

For a few years, I experimented with financing all that with markups on Skeeter Hunt merchandise available through Cafe Press. That didn't quite work out so well, so I went into the Skeeter Hunt store and changed all the markups on merchandise to 0%.  Cafe Press gets all the proceeds as I thought that the minimal markups that I had put on items made them too expensive. My philosophy is that if something is too expensive for me to buy, I wouldn't expect anyone else too, either.

I think this current solution probably works out for the best, as the Skeeter Hunt being such a small QRP Sprint that only occurs once a year, probably resulted with a lot of the certificates getting stowed away in a desk drawer or some place like that.  A Skeeter Hunt certificate is a nice thing to have, but I'm not sure of they're deserving of any wall space.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!