CQ IDQP

I managed to talk to K7SU this morning.  He was doing the Idaho QSO Party.  I don't know what power he was using, but it was just blasting in here.  I logged him in QRZ, but his page says he uses LoTW.  Turns out to set that up you have to download their program, submit a request for a certificate, then you get a postcard in the mail.  So, will be a few weeks before I can log him I guess.  Still, very exciting.

Lots to report!

Despite not getting much sleep last night and being rather exhausted, I managed to get on the air a good bit tonight.

• I had the boys come out and play with the radio a bit.  I hooked the output to the aux input of my guitar amp so they could hear (only external speaker I could find in the house).  Evan tuned around to find us QSOs, and then read off the screen to see what they were saying.  Miles got excited, ran into the other room, and came back with an iPhone running Morse It so he could decode, too.  Good times.  :)
• Despite the bands sounding rather noisy, I managed to have a very nice QSO with a guy in Utah.  He was also new at CW (was like his 10th qso to my 2nd), but sent very well.  We were both sending at like 3wpm farnsworth, but I managed to copy everything without looking at the QCX decoder.  Result!
• I wasn't getting picked up on RBN at all tonight, so I thought I'd put on wspr just to see what things looked like.

What is that at the very bottom?  THAT'S ANTARCTICA!  WOOHOO!

WSPR with the QCX

I built the QLG1 GPS receiver today - went together really quickly.  Took me a little longer to figure out exactly how you were supposed to setup the QCX for it (some of the bits about setting frequency were a little vague), but got it up and had great results.  10,000 miles on 2 watts!  Got South Africa (2), Canary Islands, Sao Paulo, and Hawaii (2).

Tried calling CW a bit after that, but no takers.  (Got spotted in Texas on RBN, so at least I was getting out.)

First QSO!

After I posted my last post, I called CQ a few more times... AND SOMEONE CAME BACK!

I ended up having a nice little chat with Roy, WB6OVV.  Who turns out actually lives a couple of blocks over from me!  He's apparently been doing this for 55 years, but was very patient with my ham-fisted fist.  Did tell me to slow down and that operators would usually match your speed.  I hope I didn't embarrass myself too badly - I got so excited I kind of forgot the whole "qso format" thing, so was desperately googling while he was sending.  I relied on the QCX decoder more than I wanted, but actually was copying find once I calmed down.

So exciting!

(For my future reference, it was 8:15p March 1, 2020 on 7.022.)

CW!

I've been doing CW.

Specifically, I challenged myself to practice every day for 90 days.  I even got people on reddit to do it, too.  That's been going pretty well, but I couldn't actually *use* it.

The homebrew I had on my desk was taking a while to come together.  I mean, technically I could use what I had, but the T/R switch was noisy, and I could just stay on the one frequency with my NS-40.  And while I could do something with the mighty mike amp I had, I really wanted to use the class E I was working on, but progress there had stalled a bit.

So I decided to build a kit.  I ordered the QCX a while back, just finished it today.  It takes a while to go together (really dense board), but the instructions are great.  I got it up and it worked right away... then stopped.  I could still see a *tiny* signal on the scope, but not the several watts I was seeing before.  So I figured I blew the finals.  But before I pulled anything out, I poked around, emailed the list, asked on reddit chat.  And eventually found that the last toroid in the BPF wasn't connected anymore.  I had definitely checked it, and it was definitely working, but something must have shifted.  Anyway, burned off some more enamel and I was in business.

Was not sure my antenna was going to work - there are a few cuts in the coax - but tested with the nanovna and it looks to still be working.

I lashed up my homemade paddle to a cut-up headphone cord and sent out my CQ.

And someone heard me!  Well, RBN again, but still!

KO7SS - 753 miles away on something like 2.5 watts!