The weekend

I had limited time to work the NJ QSO Party. I gave it about and hour and a half in the afternoon and then another hour and a half in the evening, after dinner. My personal goal was to make at least 50 QSOs - big deal, right? But I did - I ended up making 52 when I decided to pull the plug with about 20 minutes of contest time remaining.

As I've stated so many times before, I'm not big into contesting to win. If I eneter a contest or Sprint, it's just to have fun and fatten up the logbook. All my QSOs were made on 40 and 80 Meters. I didn't even bother with 20 Meters as it was too early in the morning when I got on and too late in the evening when I got my second wind.

After the action ceased, this is the RBN map: - not bad for 5 Watts.

For a rare change of pace, I decided to forego "searching and pouncing" and spent most of my time calling "CQ NJQP". I nearly fell out of my chair when my CW was answered by RG5A in Russia. Granted, we were both 339/449, but we got the exchange done. Alex had to send his call a cou0ple of times as I thought it was a very weak KG5A or perhaps NG5A because of QSB.  When I finally heard that it was Russia, and he confirmed by giving his S/P/C as "DX", I was quite amazed This will be one of those that you remember for a long time.

Yesterday was FOBB Fall Edition, and I wanted to participate, but for some reason or other, I just was not able to get a good night's sleep on Saturday. I kept waking up for what seemed like every few minutes with sciatica discomfort. I ended up napping most of Sunday away. Towards the end of the Sprint, I did head downstairs and made 3 or 4 contacts as "a giver of points". I was too beat to do much else.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to sedn the very least!