I did get on the air and joined in on the NAQCC Sprint last night. it's been a long time - too long; and I had a lot of fun. I stayed up later than I had planned as I was having so much fun! It took me a while to fall asleep as I got wired (as I feared), but it was worth it.
I started off on 20 Meters, where I worked four stations. Conditions on 20 were tough! Signals were way down in the mud for me. The EFRW was extra noisy for some reason, so I switched over to the HF9V. By far the loudest station on 20 Meters was N9EEE. I really had to strain my ear to hear the other three that I worked.
40 Meters on the other hand, was THE band for the night! I switched back to the EFRW where my signal was even skimmed in Spain! I worked 23 stations on 40 Meters and I pretty much stayed on 7.038 MHz, running the frequency. I worked a lot of old friends and made some new ones. The lowest member number that I heard all night was John K4BAI, NAQCC # 644. I wonder how may people may have been taken aback with my NAQCC # 35!
When 40 Meters dried up for me, I switched over to 80 Meters and called "CQ NA" for a bit, but had no takers. It was 10:00 PM or 02:00 UTC at that point and I decided to pull the plug. My wake up call for work comes around too quickly at 5:00 AM, so I figured I'd better at least make an effort to fall asleep. i think I drifted off somewhere around Midnight.
It was great to hear so much activity! There's nothing worse than jumping into a Sprint only to be calling "CQ" continuously with no takers, or twiddling the dial and finding no one else calling "CQ", either. That's what makes you never want to bother again.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
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