By great coincidence, I was in the United Kingdom at the same time as last week’s World Radiosport Team Championship. Sadly I was not there as part of the contest, or in any radio capacity for that matter. This was purely a family affair and I had no room in my bags for radio equipment. Even the SDR app on my iPad failed to work properly, so I could not even tune in and monitor the event.
The summer radio doldrums continue. I got the long holiday weekend off to a good start, logging six 13 Colonies stations by Thursday. I also nabbed Belarus on FT8. As a bonus they immediately confirmed on LOTW. Then the heat hit, our family holiday plans kicked in, and my radio remained off the rest of the weekend. Best laid plans, etc., etc., etc. One positive radio development of the week was finally squaring away my IC-705 setup.
My first Field Day as an active operator! What a dud. Not because of ionospheric conditions or local weather or malfunctioning equipment. No, none of that, but rather because I spent the weekend out of state, and was scheduled to the gills with activities that did not allow for breaking away and operating, let alone hauling any gear on the plane. We knocked out my youngest’s first college campus visit. We attended a wonderful wedding.
Yet another slow week in my radio life. Not that I didn’t try to make it interesting. Wednesday I attempted my first solo POTA activation. I drove over to Ft. Harrison State Park, US-2256 bright and early, when the gates were wide open and admission was free. I set up my POTA Performer, plugged in the FT-891, and was hearing signals. Promising! The first signal I found was from Indonesia. The noise level was too high, and his signal was too weak, though, for me to attempt to call him.
Summer can slip away easily. Here we are a month in, at least from when my kids all wrapped up their academic years, and I feel like I’ve not made much progress on my summer radio goals. The biggest was to attempt a POTA activation weekly, at minimum. I haven’t been out since my very first activation over a month ago. Why? Bad weather. Waiting on contractors. The flood of appointments that get scheduled when the students in the family are no longer in class.
In between thunderstorms, grad parties, and spending time outside I played around in the ARRL International Digital contest over the weekend. This was my first digital contest, so I was not sure what to expect. Would the bands be jam-packed like they are for big SSB contests, with elite contest crews scattered to locations around the world that offer advantageous propagation? Or would it be an afterthought? In my experience, it was much closer to the latter.
Not much radio time over the past several days. I was able to spin the dial a bit Sunday evening. To my great surprise the two loudest stations on 20 meters were both DX. I suppose it was a sign of how bad conditions have been lately that the pileups were insane for each. These weren’t DXpeditions from rare countries, either; one was from the Netherlands, the other a special event station from the Dominican Republic.
Memorial Day weekend is always busy for us. Family gatherings. Swim parties. Yard work. And so on. The Indy 500 is generally background noise to whatever we are doing, but despite living 12 miles from the track, it does not dominate our weekend. Throw in a couple thunderstorms and lots of family in the house, and the antennas were unplugged and radios put away most of the weekend. Sadly it looks like I missed a nice opening on the bands.
Claiming that technology is ruining things we love probably began the moment humans crafted crude tools to make hunting and gathering easier. (Much) More recently, it seems like nearly every hobby I’ve dabbled with in my adult life has legions that insist technological advances have changed it beyond recognition. Technology has ruined golf by making it too hard to hit bad shots (not true in my experience!). Technology has ruined tennis by turning it into a power game and taking away the artistry of the serve-and-volley.
I spent Friday in Xenia, OH, at my first Dayton Hamvention. It lived up to just about every expectation I had for the event. K9MLP and I rolled out of Indy just after 5:00 AM. Other than a gorgeous sunrise, our drive was uneventful. We hit the grid lock to park outside the fairgrounds around 7:15, we were parked by 7:40. K9MLP brought his IC-705 and a whip antenna for 40 meters, and we hoped to pass the time making some contacts.
I did my weekly LOTW upload this morning and sent 71 entries over, my best effort in a couple months. Sadly each one was an FT8 contact. Between mediocre band conditions - does anything over 20 meters exist for phone at the moment? - and the college kids being home,1 there weren’t a ton of opportunities. There were two ATNOs in that upload, Turkey and Malawi. Turkey and Greece were both confirmed on LOTW, giving me 102 countries for the mixed award.
It was a better week, but still not back to where things were in early March. The local noise has been more sporadic, disappearing completely some days, raging on others. I guess that is progress. Band conditions have seemed poor more often than not. Or at least when I am able to attempt to get on air. It is frustrating to scroll through 10 meters and hear nothing, where just a few months ago right around lunch time it would be packed with European stations.
The local noise is back. Thankfully installing a choke at the radio has abated it somewhat, so I’ve been able to operate from home more this week than any time in the last month. No DX contacts on phone, and just few on FT8. At least I’m adding logbook entries. To balance that, I had my first successful POTA activation today. I’ll call it an unqualified success. My buddy K9MLP texted me this morning asking if I wanted to head to Ft.
A week with both good radio news, and aggravating radio news. With the opportunity to hit a state park on Friday, I took my POTA antenna out to a city park last Wednesday for a portable trial run. Bands seemed light but I quickly made two contacts, both to the south west of my location. Then things dried up. I could hear several stations on the east coast, but they couldn’t seem to hear me.
Occasionally I find a way to remind myself that I am not very smart. After several weeks of what I assumed were just terrible band conditions, I finally realized something else was causing my difficulties making contacts. While I’ve not fully identified the issue, I believe a local source is generating intense noise that has rendered the HF bands largely unusable for me. At first I wondered if my EFHW antenna had been damaged when the support cord failed.
It’s been the slowest radio week for me in months. A few days of storms kept the feed lines disconnected. We hosted family for Easter, meaning I had to pack away all my radio equipment much of the weekend so my office could be used as spillover for food and storage. And then the band conditions seem to really stink every day I try to get on the air. I thought I understood the relationship between propagation and the solar cycle from my SWL days.
An eventful week. We escaped the Midwest for a few days to enjoy some sun, heat, and sand. Naturally it was quite warm in Indianapolis a couple of the days we were gone, and in the 40s when we returned. Such is life in the Midwest in March… While we were away I at long last received a new callsign. For various reasons, I moved the call I applied for back in January down to the third spot on my latest application.
It is quiet in my shack. I had hoped to do some antenna repairs Sunday, but more high winds made that impossible. The wind storm continued into Monday and we’ve had off-and-on snow the last three days. Now kids are rolling in for their spring breaks and another relative will be staying with us briefly. My radio activities will be likely shut down for another week or so. That’s a shame because there is a new rig in the shack.
When you put up an antenna it is inevitable that there will be problems. Today, in the midst of hours of 60 MPH gusts, mine came crashing down. That’s a slight exaggeration. It is just a wire antenna, not a tower. The wire itself is fine. The paracord that ran into the tree the far end was anchored to failed. No wonder no one was calling me back on either phone or digital this afternoon.
The antenna feed line is disconnected as the final round of storms moves through our area today. Fortunately we just had lots of rain and wind and a little thunder. A couple limbs down in the yard, some mulch washed away by a downspout that is clogged, but nothing close to the damage done to our northwest last night. Because there is no connection to the antenna, I can’t take the new addition to my shack for a spin.