Saturday, March 07, 2009

80M was tough tonight!

Spring is coming! But by the QRN levels on 80 Meters tonight, you might have thought it was already July!

The local QRN racket on 40 Meters raised its ugly head for the first time in a long time, tonight; which forced me to go on down to 80 Meters. The local QRN was not a problem; but the atmospheric QRN was indeed a problem!

I had a short QSO with Tom W4VHH out of North Carolina. I gave him a 569 and got a 459 in return. The QRM and QSB were bad, forcing a very short QSO upon us. This was a bad thing as I was in the mood for a good "chew".

After Tom and I called it quits, I called CQ for a bit more - however, there were no takers.

For those of you into QRP, I'd like to introduce you to a Website that you might not know about. It's a QRP Cluster, per se, named QRPSPOTS. It's sponsored by the Four States QRP Group and you can get to it by clicking here.

I think this site is a wonderful idea! You can list yourself when your headed for the great outdoors and you want everyone to know that you're out there, braving the elements and tickling the aether with your 5 Watts of RF. Or, you can list yourself when you're at home calling CQ from the home station and you feel like reaching out to other QRPers.

Either way, so far the site seems to have received only light traffic. But it's another wonderful free service to QRPers; and I think we should make the most use out of it that we can! I know Terry WAØITP and the Four States QRP group would love this site to take off and be used worldwide by QRPers.

Personally, I'd love to see "DX" QRPers post their times of operating on there. It's exciting to see how far you can make 5 Watts reach. So spread the word! If you're getting on the air via QRP - let EVERYONE know!

73 de Larry W2LJ

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