My weekend.

Unfortunately, my weekend wasn't as "QRP Heavenly" as I had anticipated in my earlier post from last week. On Saturday, the Simulated Emergency Test took out a big chunk of my day. In addition to that, grocery shopping, mowing the lawns and chauffeuring my daughter back and forth from the SATs pretty much killed the day.

Our SET exercise was a success, though. We simulated providing AUXCOMM for a freight train derailment in town with a fire and hazardous material spill as part of the scenario.

That meant that unfortunately, the Leaf Peepers Sprint was out of the question for me. And I am truly disappointed to have missed that inaugural event. My apologies to Tim W3ATB, who worked so hard on bringing this off.  As the Brooklyn Dodger fans were famous for saying ....... "Wait 'til next year!"

Sunday was a bit more generous to me. I was able to participate in the Peanut Power Sprint. But even there, I am such an idiot at times! I was going by previous years and started looking for activity around 4:00 PM EDT. Not hearing any, I thought maybe the bands were swallowed by a CME or other solar event. An e-mail from W3BBO alerted me to the fact the Sprint had been moved up two hours.  And I complain when people don't read ....... I'm just as guilty as the next person!

Much to my relief there was a decent amount of QRP activity at the proper start time (duh!). In all, I managed to work 18 stations. I didn't operate the entire time as the dinner bell rang at 7:00 PM Also,  I didn't set up as a portable station outside, either - I sprinted from the basement shack. With the PPS now running from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT, I didn't feel like disassembling the station in the dark - it's pretty much pitch black around here by 7:15 PM.

I hate this time of year. As much as I hate the cold that will be coming shortly, I hate the loss of daylight even more. Dark in the morning when I wake up, and dark way too early in the evening. I can't even mow the lawn after work now, as it's too dark by the time dinner is finished. That's just one more chore that now gets moved to already jam packed weekends. Ugh.

The ONLY good thing about this time of year is that 80 and 160 Meters will become usable again. Summer thunder static will decrease more and more each week as we head towards autumn type weather. You have to find your silver lining where you can get them.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!