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Friday, January 01, 2010

New Year's Day

The first day of 2010 turned out to be a relaxing one; as well as kind of warm. It got up into the 40s today - around 43F (6 C), which is warm for this time of year. That's going to change; but more on that later.

We went to Mass as a family and came home and had lunch. Marianne went to visit her Mom for a bit; and then we took the kids to the movies. Joey and Cara had wanted to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks - the Squeakquel"; so we took them. Afterward, we stopped at the diner for dinner; so all and all it was a real nice day.

While Marianne was busy taking care of the visit to her Mom; I took the opportunity to take care of one of those previously mentioned New Year resolutions. I gathered the information for filing for QRP DXCC. It was actually quite easy - easier than I thought it was going to be. In fact, I had all the information I needed completed beforehand; I just didn't realize it.

I went to the "Operating" page of my Website to the table that I have with all my QRP DX contacts. And as it turns out, all the information that I provided in that table is already all the information that the ARRL requires. I highlighted the table and copied and pasted it into an Open Office spreadsheet. I printed it out; along with the QRP DXCC application and now all I have to do is make out a check and pop it in the mail - probably tomorrow. Along the way, I discovered that I had one more DXCC entity worked via QRP.

I went into Win-EQF and did a query to give me all my contacts that were made with less than 6 Watts. I then exported that sort as "QRP DXCC". I then ran a DXCC report on that log and found that I had 102 entities worked - not the 101 that I thought I had. Seems that back in 1994, I had worked C2MV - Nauru, with only 4 Watts. I definitely hadn't remembered that one.

The weather is supposed to get pretty cold overnight and into tomorrow and Sunday. The winds are supposed to kick in also, making it feel colder than it will actually be. The actual highs for tomorrow and Sunday and pretty much all of the coming week should be right at or below freezing.

I am hoping that after taking care of some errands tomorrow morning; that I will be able to spend the afternoon with my magnifying headset on in order to inventory the parts for the PFR3A. I also hope to keep a running dialogue of my progress here.

73 de Larry W2LJ

2 comments:

  1. Hello Larry, I will be riding along reading about the PFR build. My PFR was in the first 100 as the chip had to go back for re-programming. The build was easy axcept I have never got the BLT to tune anything. I have had it apart twice and still no go. Maybe the third time will be a charm hi ! de Paul N0NBD

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  2. Hi Larry, best wishes for 2010! Yes, I hope also to work more DXCC QRP this year with my new vertical. (low angle radiation) But its too cold for putting up the antenna at the moment. It will be spring before I can work with the vertical. 73 Paul

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